Ku Klux Klan Research Paper

In the 20th century, America’s social landscape was changing, industrialization, urbanization and a mass influx of Catholics immigrants from Europe. As time as passed, certain groups of people thought Catholics threatened American values. That group or organization was known as the Ku Klux Klan, also known as the KKK. The KKK was an organization who strongly believed in white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism aimed at groups or individuals whom they opposed. By the 1920 Klan membership was over 4 million including urban residents who won political power. Began in the Civil Rights Era 1950, blacks began to end the Jim Crow laws in the south that legally supported discrimination laws. Riots began to rise and that’s when the Ku Klux Klan came to full effect to attack against blacks movement. The man who got the Klan started was William Simmons, a former Methodist minister from Georgia. The KKK organization was most likely to make attacks on Catholics, Jews immigrants, then

One of the main reasons for it had to do with political power. Their goal was to devote their time to an underground campaign of violence towards Republic leaders and voter, which included whites as well. This was to reverse the policies of the Radical Reconstruction and to restore white supremacy in the South. Klan members normally did their attacks during night periods often wearing white masks and dressed in their signature robes with only their eyes being visible. A good portion of the legislators elected during the 1867-1868 that were African Americans were violently victims. Other targets for the Klan during the Reconstruction era were white republicans and black churches, and schools. This activity was most popular in the south due to the fact that majority of the population were blacks where the KKK was aiming to restore the white