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Ku Klux Klan Research Paper

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Imagine living in a world where the color of your skin, your religion or where you came from would make you a target for violence and murder. This is what the African Americans, immigrants and anyone who was not considered a Christian endured in the Southern states and nationwide throughout much of America’s history. Racism fueled by anger after the American Civil War was a dangerous combination and that’s when the Ku Klux Klan or KKK was formed. The Klan is a hate group who targeted not only African Americans but Jews, Catholics, and liberals. The KKK is the most infamous and oldest of American hate groups. The American Civil War was fought from 1861-1865, it ended the institution of slavery. The Reconstruction period followed …show more content…

Simmons reestablished the organization. This was definitely the most popular era for the KKK. It was more of a formal fraternal organization with national and state structure. It included the middle class white Americans and their families. The members varied from small business owners to ministers to doctors and lawyers. Violence wasn’t the attraction to most members. Most didn’t even consider themselves mean-spirited. The second Klan not only had to be a white male, but Christian, religion became the centerpiece. The target was immigrants coming mostly from southern and eastern Europe, mostly Catholic’s. It was spread nationwide. The membership was $10 which was used to pay the Kleagels or recruiters to recruit more members. This movement opposed Catholic and Jews. By 1925, it had somewhere between 4 to 5 million members and support from many more.They used xenophobia as a way to attract new members. The second Klan also wore white costumes and used the same terminology as the first Klan. The emblem was They started burning crosses as an intimidation tactic. A series of sex scandals, internal battles of power, extreme violence and newspaper exposes quickly reduced its influence. It was around 1944 that it dwindled down yet

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Up until the Ku Klux Act, the Ku Klux Klan’s (KKK) influence spread throughout the Southern states and acted as a violent and driving continuation of the Confederate movement after the Civil War. It was created right after the Civil War by six Confederate Army veterans. Not only had the South just suffered their most humiliating military loss, but they also lost the institution of slavery, money, government power and beloved family members. As a result of their loss in the Civil War and the emancipation of their slaves, the Southern white man felt great embarrassment and humiliation. Though he could not preserve the institution of slavery, he now felt an obligation to preserve and reassert white supremacy.

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Founded in 1866, the (KKK) extended into virtually each southern state by 1870 and have become a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed toward establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged associate underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Congress passed legislation designed to curb KKK, the organization saw its primary goal “the reestablishment of white supremacy” fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South within the decennary. Once an amount of decline, white Protestant nativist teams revived the KKK within the early twentieth century, burning crosses and staging

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The Ku Klux Klan first emerged in Pulaski, Tennessee following the Civil War. As we know today, the mere mention of the Klan triggers fear as the KKK is known for its various tactics of violence that came in the form if lynchings, murders, and mutilations. Following their emergence, the KKK were quickly symbolized and portrayed as the protectors of the South, following the defeat of the Southern states in the Civil War and the beginning of the period of Reconstruction by the federal government (Gurr, 1989, p. 132). During the 1920s, the KKK achieved its greatest political success and growth outside of the South. During this period, the membership of the Klan heavily expanded to the states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Oregon, to which the KKK obtained two to two and one-half million members at its apex.

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The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist group that ruined the lives of millions of African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan founded in 1915 by a William J. Simmons, who was a Methodist preacher, who had groups, or “klaverns”, in Alabama plus Georgia. In American history there has been three waves of the Ku Klux Klan. First was the Reconstruction-era Klan. They started in the South towards the conclusion of the Civil War that had a few thousand members.

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The KKK was founded in 1886 by old Confederate soldiers who did not believe the Reconstruction act of the Civil War. The clan demised slightly, then resurfaced in 1915. Prior to the 1920’s, the clan only focused on Africa-Americans. But during the twenties they not only focused on the hatred of African-Americans, but they also began to focus on the hatred of Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. (6)

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The Jim Crow laws weren’t originally named the Jim Crow laws in the reconstruction era (1865-1877) when they were first passed. They were started to called that by the actor named Jim Crow who was a white man who blacked his face and he danced around and sang about not having a care in the world. The Reconstruction era was the period of time after the civil war after the north triumphed over the south. Things weren’t a smooth transition for the people of the south with many people staying as racists and the creation of hate groups and deadly gangs such as the Ku Klux Klan were rampant after the northern soldiers left the south when reconstruction was over. The treatment of the innocent black people was unfair and unjust.

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The Ku Klux Klan is an infamous extremist group in the United States, and dates back to 1866. The roots started in Pulaski, Tennessee as a social club with six members. It also had no malicious intent in the beginning days, but it quickly grew into the well-known terrorist group. In the beginning, the members were Civil War generals, especially Confederate soldiers. The group mainly operated under a system of racial oppression, similar to slave patrol.

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The Ku Klux Klan started to do actions to help grow the Klan after this. By the spring of 1920 the newly founded Ku Klux Klan only had a few thousand members. William Joseph Simmons decided to hire Mary Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young as publicity promoters to help grow the Klan. They sent out thousands of solicitors to recruit members for a $10 fee (Rothman). Soon after, the Klan grew at an astonishing

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ver heard of the term KKK, and wondered what is represented ? The Klu Klux Klan (also known as the KKK) is a “white supremacist organization.” This organization was founded in 1866 by Confederate Veterans . The first known leader was Nathan Bedford and members of the group would often refer to him as a “grand wizard. ”(“Klu-Klux-Klan”)

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During the economic depression of the 1930s the Klan remained active on a small scale. The Klans rebuth in the 1920’s was very successful and progressive, though the Klan ran into some hurdles along the way they still achieved a lot of their bigotry goals. Until 1920 the klan exercised little influence. Then one night 1,500 men in white robes and masks came together in a valley in the hills above Oakland, California. “A fiery cross

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He came to represent the troubles of the African Americans as they laughed in public and wept in their souls. This segregation gave way to White Supremacy groups that exist to conserve the social order that was established by the Jim Crow laws. The Ku Klux Klan is the most widely known of all the groups that came about in the period. The “Klan” as it is also known advocated extremist positions in the fields of white supremacy, white nationalism, and also anti-immigration. The first “Klan” flourished in the South of the United States of America in the late 1860s immediately after the Civil War.

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Racism in the 1920’s was widespread and inescapable for African Americans and other races as well as religions as they were terrorized and discriminated against persistently. A prime example of this discriminating was a group called the Klu Klux Klan, or the KKK. The first branch of the KKK was founded in 1866 by a group of former confederate veterans in Pulaski Tennessee. It first started as a social club for the group, but soon spread to over 4 million members across the United States by the mid 1920’s.

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989 Words | 4 Pages

The Ku Klux Klan, made up of former Confederate officers who idealized an antebellum Southern heritage, became folk heroes by terrorizing outsiders who challenged race relations by assisting blacks. Catholics, foreigners, former slaves, and their sympathizers were targeted for wanting to push reforms that went against the Southern way of life. As one historian points out, the KKK gained sympathy because they were seen as defenders and policemen of the people who protected the prevailing values of society, including Protestantism, whiteness, and genteel southern culture (Kinshasa 15). The KKK and its sister organizations were even sponsored by state governments, such as Kentucky and Mississippi, as a police force to maintain the status quo (Parsons 160). The presence of the Klan and other forms of white resistance offered white residents a form of security during this uncertain time period.

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It had the most members than the other two by millions. It was founded in 1915 and was very popular by the mid-1920s. They opposed catholics and jews. There was around 3-6 million people during the second Klan’s peak in 1924-25. However, the second Klan rapidly declined in the second half of the

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From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan’s goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by Southern blacks after the Civil War. At first it was formed as a social club for Confederate soldiers after the war, but it soon progressed to be one of the biggest terror groups in American history. Most Klan action was designed to intimidate black voters and white

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