The Strive for White Power
Imagine waking in the middle of the night, your house in flames, men in white hoods murdering your parents and siblings. My great-great grandmother and her sister escaped. They could’ve been killed for helping African-Americans move into free land. The Ku Klux Klan were a white supremacist group around the country, against blacks, Jews, or anybody that didn’t fit their code of the white race. The Ku Klux Klan was formed for a horrible purpose, and did terrifying things to targeted racial groups. The Ku Klux Klan was formed to make a superior white race (West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, 2005). The first leader, or “grand wizard”, of the KKK was the leading confederate general at the time, Nathan Bedford Forrest (History.com Staff, 2009). The Klan was made up of a lot of confederate veterans (History.com Staff, 2009). “At it’s peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded four million people nationwide,” according to History.com. The KKK weren’t alone. They partnered with related groups - the Knights of Camelia and the White Brotherhood (History.com Staff, 2009). The Ku Klux Klan were formed to eradicate anybody who didn’t fit their code of the superior race.
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Eight black prisoners were lynched at the Union County Jail in South Carolina by 500 masked men (History.com Staff). Four African-American girls were killed and several injured in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama (West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, 2005). Bombing beatings, and shooting of black and white activists rises in the 1960’s during the civil rights movement (History.com Staff, 2009). In Mississippi, 1964, three civil rights workers, Michael Schuerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, were killed (West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, 2005). The KKK killed several people while in pursuit of the superior white