Ku Klux Klan Research Paper

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WHAT IS THE KKK? WHO ARE THEY?

Ex-Confederate soldiers established the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866. They developed the first two words of the group's name from the Greek word kuklos, meaning "group or band," and took the third as a variant of the word clan. Starting as a largely recreational group, the Klan soon turned to intimidating newly freed African Americans. Riding at night, the Klan terrorized and sometimes murdered those it opposed. Members adopted a hooded white costume—a guise intended to represent the ghosts of the Confederate dead—to avoid identification and to frighten victims during nighttime raids.

The Klan fed off the post-Civil War resentments of white southerners—resentment that centered on the

Named after the "comical" minstrel show character who was white, but black-faced to show and mock the African-American/Negro race of America that were shipped to America to be used as slaves, these laws thoroughly enforced segregation of public places, such as park benches, eating areas and restaurants, toilets and convenience stores all around America. Segregation refers to the policy of keeping black and white Americans separate from one another. In 1875, the Enforcement Act, or the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was passed by 'Radical Republicans' in an effort to end Jim Crow Laws, However, it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court within a few

Many, if not all people of colour (African Americans, Hispanics and many other ethnic minorities within America), were against this march, as the KKK was not something they would like to support or promote, and like hell were people letting them march in public, fully robed (however, the government at the time made the Klan march without their masks for security reaosns and to make sure that if anything happened, the face of the perpetrator would be easy to recognize) and in full force, promoting the one thing all people of colour feared most: white supremacy.

In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was at the peak of its membership, numbering 3 million strong. The growth of the hate group was fueled by the 1915 release of the silent film Birth of a Nation, which portrayed members as heroes, coinciding with the widespread xenophobia following the devastation of World War I. The KKK's hatred was directed not only against black people, but also against European Catholic and Jewish immigrants flocking to the U.S. after the