Ku Klux Klan Research Paper

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The Ku Klux Klan: A challenging time in American history
“The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a white supremacist group that was created in 1866. Throughout its infamous history, factions of the secret fraternal group have used acts of terrorism.Including bombing, lynching, rape, arson, and murder—to oppose the granting of civil rights to Blacks. Deriving its membership from native born white Protestant U.S. citizens, the KKK has also been anti Semitic and anti Catholic http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Ku_Klux_klan.aspx
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 …show more content…

Congress organized a joint select committee made up of seven senators and 14 representatives to look into the Klan and its activities. It then passed the civil rights act of 1871, frequently referred to as the ku klux klan act, which made night-riding a crime and empowered the president to order the use of federal troops to put down conspirators by force. The law also provided criminal and civil penalties for people convicted of private conspiracies—such as those perpetrated by the KKK—intended to deny others their civil rights.http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Ku_Klux_Klan.aspx--
In 1915, the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan was born. The second Klan, a memorial to the Reconstruction Klan and its work in the postbellum South, was to act as a restructured fraternity that supported white supremacy, the purity of white womanhood, nationalism and Protestant Christianity. William J. Simmons, a fraternalist and former minister, organized the charter for the new order and consecrated its beginning by setting afire a cross on the top of Stone Mountain, …show more content…

Reporters commented on the Klan's platform, its stated intentions and its historical connections to the Reconstruction Klan. Some of the initial coverage, in the South especially, was favorable. The Columbia Enquirer Sun wrote, “Proof that the noble spirit that actuated the members of the famous Ku Klux Klan in the reconstruction period still lives among the sons is shown in the remarkable growth of the organization…” (1) The new order seemed to have the potential to reform the region—and possibly the nation http://www.readex.com/blog/religion-and-rise-second-ku-klux-klan-1915-1922-kelly-j-baker
Members of the original Ku Klux Klan of the 1860s and 1870s wore masks or hoods and sometimes robes, but it was the second Ku Klux Klan, which started in 1915, which really established the consistent "look" of the hooded and robed Klans member that is still seen today. Indeed, the image of a hooded Klansman has become a popular hate symbol itself, displayed on t-shirts and tattoos by white supremacists around the