Ku Klux Klan Research Paper

During the period of the 19th century, many African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and Immigrants were terrorized by a group called the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan is also known as the KKK were founded in the year 1866, by a group of former confederate veterans as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee. KKK derived from the Greek word “kuklos” meaning circle. The first leader who was chosen was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Leading Confederate general. In a matter of four years the KKK extended into almost every southern state and became the enzyme for white southern resistance to the post-reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan dressed up in scary disguises with and masks riding the night frightening African Americans. They threatened African Americans with beatings, whippings, arson, and even drove them off their land.

The Republicans tried to fight back by organizing militia groups to break up the KKK for good. In 1871 the Ku Klux Act was passed by Congress, which was authorized by Ulysses S. Grant and he used military force to suppress them. This resulted in about nine counties in South Carolina being placed under martial law, and in addition to leading to tons of arrests. In the late 1800s, the U.S. Supreme Court claimed that the Ku Klux Act was unconstitutional, but Reconstruction was coming to an end causing the KKK to disappear. Unfortunately, the 20th century was an era when the Ku Klux Klan made the decision to revive themselves. During the early 1900s the KKK revives themselves because of the immigration problem, and in the mid-1900s their revival was a response to the African American civil rights movement. In 1915 a second raid was in Stone Mountain, Georgia which involve the lynching of African Americans, and the third raid happened in 1946 during the Civil Rights Movement and still going on until this