The Ku Klux Klan is a very important piece of our country's history. Characterized by not only animosity towards African-Americans, but also violence towards Jewish people, and equality supporters. It is one of the most brutal organizations to ever start in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan started and fell, but then reappeared in a reorganized fashion. They tried multiple times to reemerge as a more powerful and collected group but ultimately dissolved. The Ku Klux Klan is an organization started by six college students as a social club, and the club would spend their time galloping around town each night on broom sticks. To the clubs surprise, their nightly occurrences scared the people in their community, especially former slaves. Because …show more content…
W. Griffith and based on the novel and play 'The Clansman' by Thomas Dixon, Jr. and "glorified the original Klan and its 'gallant and heroic' Knights"(Alchin). The movie's hatred towards blacks was extremely controversial, even in this time. The first revival of the Klan could not have had better timing because of the immigrants coming into the United States. The Klan jumped on this opportunity saying that they were an extremely good club with no bad intentions and received members immediately. In 1918-1920, the Red Scare was huge and received so much attention that thousands of members joined the Ku Klux Klan. When World War One began, the Klan seized this moment to capitalize on the conflict by promising to defend the home front against "alien enemies, slackers, idlers, strike leaders and immoral women, as well as African-Americans, Catholics and Jews" (ADL). In 1924, the Klan reached its peak of members and decided to parade through the streets of Washington D.C. during a national convention with over 40,000 Klansmen. This new and improved era of the Ku Klux Klan had the idea of "Americanism" and targeted all blacks, as well as immigrants that came into the country. The Klan peaked at about 4 million members, but by 1928, its members had dropped to only a few