Ku Klux Klan

==Overview==
===First Klan===
{{see also|Nathan Bedford Forrest#Ku Klux Klan leadership}}
[[File:Ku Klux Klan costumes in North Carolina in 1870.jpg|thumb|Depiction of Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina in 1870, based on a photograph taken under the supervision of a federal officer who seized Klan costumes]]
The first Klan was founded in [[Pulaski, Tennessee]], on December 24, 1865,<ref name="HCUA">{{cite book |title=The present-day Ku Klux Klan movement: Report by the Committee on Un-American activities |date=1967 |publisher=U. S. Government Printing Office |location=Washington, DC}}</ref> by six former officers of the [[Confederate States Army|Confederate army]]:<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite web|url=http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/history.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk |title=Ku Klux Klan&nbsp;– Extremism in America |publisher=Anti-Defamation League |access-date=February 20, 2011  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110212043142/http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/history.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk |archive-date=February 12, 2011}}</ref> Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe.<ref>{{cite web|date=October 23, 2018|title=Ku Klux Klan not founded by the Democratic Party|url=https://apnews.com/afs:Content:2336745806|access-date=July 19, 2020|website=AP News|archive-date=July 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200707094431/https://apnews.com/afs:Content:2336745806|url-status=live}}</ref> It started as a fraternal social club inspired at least in part by the then largely defunct [[Sons of Malta]]. It borrowed parts of the initiation ceremony from that group, with the same purpose: "ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and the amusement for members were the only objects of the Klan", according to Albert Stevens in 1907.{{sfn|Stevens|1907}} The manual of rituals was printed by Laps D. McCord of Pulaski.<ref name="dixonsomeofitsleaderstennessean">{{cite news|last=Dixon| first=Thomas Jr. |title=The Ku Klux Klan: Some of Its Leaders|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/119491892/?terms=%22John%2BW.%2BMorton%22%2B%22ku%2Bklux%2Bklan%22|access-date=September 28, 2016|work=The Tennessean|date=August 27, 1905|via=[[Ancestry.com#Newspapers.com|Newspapers.com]]|page=22|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161023054555/https://www.newspapers.com/image/119491892/?terms=%22John%2BW.%2BMorton%22%2B%22ku%2Bklux%2Bklan%22|archive-date=October 23, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> The origins of the hood are uncertain; it may have been appropriated from the [[Spain|Spanish]] [[capirote]] hood,<ref>Michael K. Jerryson (2020), [https://books.google.com/books?id=pfjtDwAAQBAJ&dq=Capirote+kkk&pg=PA217 ''Religious Violence Today: Faith and Conflict in the Modern World''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407210437/https://books.google.com/books?id=pfjtDwAAQBAJ&dq=Capirote+kkk&pg=PA217 |date=April 7, 2023 }}, p. 217</ref> or it may be traced to the uniform of Southern [[Mardi Gras]] celebrations.<ref>{{Cite magazine
| title = How the Klan Got Its Hood
| last = Kinney
| first = Alison
| magazine = The New Republic
| date = 8 January 2016
| access-date = 29 November 2022
| url = https://newrepublic.com/article/127242/klan-got-hood
| quote = 
| archive-date = February 5, 2023
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230205134207/https://newrepublic.com/article/127242/klan-got-hood
| url-status = live
}}</ref>

According to ''The Cyclopædia of Fraternities'' (1907), "Beginning in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation.&nbsp;... The members had conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it all—that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to do."{{sfn|Stevens|1907}}

The KKK had no organizational structure above the chapter level. However, there were similar groups across the South that adopted similar goals.{{sfn|Trelease|1995|p=18}} Klan chapters promoted [[white supremacy]] and spread throughout the South as an [[insurgent]] movement in resistance to Reconstruction. Confederate veteran [[John W. Morton (Tennessee politician)|John W. Morton]] founded a KKK chapter in [[Nashville, Tennessee]].<ref name="tennesseanobit">{{cite news|title=John W. Morton Passes Away in Shelby |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/119557576/?terms=%22John%2BW.%2BMorton%22|access-date=September 25, 2016|work=The Tennessean|date=November 21, 1914|pages=1–2|via=[[Ancestry.com#Newspapers.com|Newspapers.com]]|quote=To Captain Morton performed the ceremonies which initiated Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest into the KKK.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161008185807/https://www.newspapers.com/image/119557576/?terms=%22John%2BW.%2BMorton%22 |archive-date=October 8, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> As a secret [[vigilante]] group, the Klan targeted [[Freedman#United States|freedmen]] and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder. "They targeted white Northern leaders, Southern sympathizers and politically active Blacks."<ref>{{cite book|author=J. Michael Martinez|title=Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan: Exposing the Invisible Empire During Reconstruction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MV02AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA24| year=2007|publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]] |isbn=978-0742572614|page=24}}</ref> In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the [[Enforcement Acts]], which were intended to prosecute and suppress Klan crimes.<ref>{{cite web|last=Wormser| first=Richard| title=The Enforcement Acts (1870–71) |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html|publisher=PBS |series=Jim Crow Stories|access-date=May 12, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120304103101/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html|archive-date=March 4, 2012|url-status=live}}</ref>

The first Klan had mixed results in terms of achieving its objectives. It seriously weakened the Black political leadership through its use of assassinations and threats of violence, and it drove some people out of politics. On the other hand, it caused a sharp backlash, with passage of federal laws that historian [[Eric Foner]] says were a success in terms of "restoring order, reinvigorating the morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling Blacks to exercise their rights as citizens".{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=458}} Historian [[George C. Rable]] argues that the Klan was a political failure and therefore was discarded by the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] leaders of the South. He says:

{{blockquote|The Klan declined in strength in part because of internal weaknesses; its lack of central organization and the failure of its leaders to control criminal elements and sadists. More fundamentally, it declined because it failed to achieve its central objective – the overthrow of Republican state governments in the South.{{sfn|Rable|1984|pp=101, 110–111}}}}

After the Klan was suppressed, similar insurgent [[paramilitary]] groups arose that were explicitly directed at suppressing Republican voting and turning Republicans out of office: the [[White League]], which started in Louisiana in 1874; and the [[Red Shirts (United States)|Red Shirts]], which started in Mississippi and developed chapters in the Carolinas. For instance, the Red Shirts are credited with helping elect [[Wade Hampton III|Wade Hampton]] as governor in South Carolina. They were described as acting as the military arm of the Democratic Party and are attributed with helping white Democrats regain control of state legislatures throughout the South.{{sfn|Rable|1984}}

===Second Klan===
{{see also|Ku Klux Klan in Canada|Indiana Klan}}
[[File:KKK night rally in Chicago c1920 cph.3b12355.jpg|thumb|KKK rally near [[Chicago]] in the 1920s]]
In 1915, the second Klan was founded atop [[Stone Mountain]], Georgia, by [[William Joseph Simmons]]. While Simmons relied on documents from the original Klan and memories of some surviving elders, the revived Klan was based significantly on the wildly popular film ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]''. The earlier Klan had not worn the white costumes and had not burned crosses; these aspects were introduced in [[Thomas Dixon Jr.|Thomas Dixon]]'s book ''[[The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan]],'' on which the film was based. When the film was shown in [[Atlanta]] in December of that year, Simmons and his new klansmen paraded to the theater in robes and pointed hoods – many on robed horses – just like in the film. These mass parades became another hallmark of the new Klan that had not existed in the original Reconstruction-era organization.<ref>{{cite web|title=A 1905 Silent Movie Revolutionizes American Film – and Radicalizes American Nationalists|publisher=Southern Hollows podcast |url=http://www.southernhollows.com/episodes/birthofanation|access-date=June 3, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180527210102/http://www.southernhollows.com/episodes/birthofanation|archive-date=May 27, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref>

Beginning in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of using full-time, paid recruiters and it appealed to new members as a fraternal organization, of which many examples were [[Golden age of fraternalism|flourishing]] at the time. The national headquarters made its profit through a monopoly on costume sales, while the organizers were paid through initiation fees. It grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions pitting urban versus rural America, it spread to every state and was prominent in many cities.

Writer [[W. J. Cash]], in his 1941 book ''[[The Mind of the South]]'' characterized the second Klan as "anti-Negro, anti-Alien, anti-Red, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Darwin, anti-Modern, anti-Liberal, Fundamentalist, vastly Moral, [and] militantly Protestant. And summing up these fears, it brought them into focus with the tradition of the past, and above all with the ancient Southern pattern of high romantic histrionics, violence and mass coercion of the scapegoat and the heretic."{{sfn|Cash|1941|p=337}} It preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]]. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the [[Catholic Church]], using [[Anti-Catholicism in the United States|anti-Catholicism]] and [[nativism (politics)|nativism]].{{sfn|Pegram|2011|pp=47–88}} Its appeal was directed exclusively toward white Protestants; it opposed Jews, Black people, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern and Eastern European immigrants such as [[Italians]], [[Russians]], and [[Lithuanians]], many of whom were Jewish or Catholic.{{sfn|Baker|2011|p=248}}

Some local groups threatened violence against rum runners and those they deemed "notorious sinners"; the violent episodes generally took place in the South.{{sfn|Jackson|1967|pp=241–242}} The [[Red Knights (organization)|Red Knights]] were a militant group organized in opposition to the Klan and responded violently to Klan provocations on several occasions.<ref name=MacLean>{{cite book |last=MacLean |first=Nancy |title=Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |date=1995 |isbn=978-0195098365}}</ref>

[[File:JudgeMagazine16Aug1924.jpg|thumb|The "Ku Klux Number" of ''[[Judge (magazine)|Judge]]'', August 16, 1924|alt=]]

The second Klan was a formal [[fraternal and service organizations|fraternal organization]], with a national and state structure. During the resurgence of the second Klan in the 1920s, its publicity was handled by the [[Southern Publicity Association]]. Within the first six months of the Association's national recruitment campaign, Klan membership had increased by 85,000.{{sfn|Blee|1991}} At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization's membership ranged from three to eight million members.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s |series=American Experience |publisher=PBS |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flood-klan/ |access-date=2022-04-05 |website=www.pbs.org |language=en |archive-date=July 5, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220705230424/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flood-klan/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1923, Simmons was ousted as leader of the KKK by [[Hiram Wesley Evans]]. From September 1923 there were two Ku Klux Klan organizations: the one founded by Simmons and led by Evans with its strength primarily in the southern United States, and [[Indiana Klan|a breakaway group]] led by [[Grand Dragon]] [[D. C. Stephenson]] based in [[Evansville, Indiana]] with its membership primarily in the [[midwest]]ern United States.<ref name="Lutholtz 1993 43,89">{{cite book |last=Lutholtz |first=M. William |date=1993 |title=Grand Dragon: D. C. Stephenson and the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana |url=http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/titles/format/9781557530103 |location=West Lafayette, Indiana |publisher=Purdue University Press |pages=43, 89 |isbn=1557530467 |access-date=March 25, 2015 |archive-date=June 28, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220628014141/http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/titles/format/9781557530103 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders – especially Stephenson's conviction for the [[D. C. Stephenson#Convicted of murder|abduction, rape, and murder]] of [[Madge Oberholtzer]] – and external opposition brought about a collapse in the membership of both groups. The main group's membership had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded away in the 1940s.<ref>{{cite web |last=Lay |first=Shaun |title=Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2730 |website=[[New Georgia Encyclopedia]] |publisher=[[Coker College]] |access-date=August 26, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051025072407/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2730 |archive-date=October 25, 2005 |url-status=live}}</ref> Klan organizers also operated in [[Canada]], especially in [[History of Saskatchewan|Saskatchewan]] in 1926–1928, where Klansmen denounced immigrants from [[Eastern Europe]] as a threat to Canada's "Anglo-Saxon" heritage.{{sfn|Sher|1983|pp=52–53}}{{sfn|Pitsula|2013}}

===Third Klan===
The "Ku Klux Klan" name was used by numerous independent local groups opposing the [[civil rights movement]] and [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]], especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in [[Birmingham, Alabama]]; or with governor's offices, as with [[George Wallace]] of [[Alabama]].{{sfn|McWhorter|2001}} Several members of Klan groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 and of children in the [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing|bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham]] in 1963.

The United States government still considers the Klan to be a "subversive terrorist organization".<ref name=autogenerated2>{{cite web |url=http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk |title=About the Ku Klux Klan |publisher=Anti-Defamation League |access-date=January 2, 2010  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091226085812/http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/default.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk |archive-date=December 26, 2009}}</ref><ref name="Virginia Tech">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/16/us/inquiry-begun-on-klan-ties-of-2-icons-at-virginia-tech.html|title=Inquiry Begun on Klan Ties Of 2 Icons at Virginia Tech |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=November 16, 1997 |page=138 |access-date=January 2, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101006202735/http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/16/us/inquiry-begun-on-klan-ties-of-2-icons-at-virginia-tech.html |archive-date=October 6, 2010|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Lee, Jennifer">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/us/06bowers.html|title=Samuel Bowers, 82, Klan Leader Convicted in Fatal Bombing, Dies|last=Lee|first=Jennifer|date=November 6, 2006|work=The New York Times|access-date=January 2, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110512151534/http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/us/06bowers.html|archive-date=May 12, 2011|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Brush, Pete">{{cite news |url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/28/supremecourt/main510317.shtml|title=Court Will Review Cross Burning Ban|last=Brush|first=Pete|date=May 28, 2002|publisher=[[CBS News]]|access-date=January 2, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101006224439/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/28/supremecourt/main510317.shtml|archive-date=October 6, 2010|url-status=live}}</ref> In April 1997, [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and for conspiring to blow up a [[Natural-gas processing|natural gas processing]] plant.<ref>[http://dallas.fbi.gov/history.htm Dallas.FBI.gov "Domestic terrorism by the Klan remained a key concern"]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100305075543/http://dallas.fbi.gov/history.htm |date=March 5, 2010 }}, FBI, Dallas office</ref> In 1999, the city council of [[Charleston, South Carolina]], passed a resolution declaring the Klan a terrorist organization.<ref name="Charleston">{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=c0wPAAAAIBAJ&pg=6460,2081194&dq=klan+terrorist-organization&hl=en|title=Klan named terrorist organization in Charleston|date=October 14, 1999|agency=Reuters|access-date=January 2, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150605152433/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=c0wPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J4YDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6460,2081194&dq=klan+terrorist-organization&hl=en|archive-date=June 5, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref>

The existence of modern Klan groups has been in a state of consistent decline, due to a variety of factors: from the American public's negative distaste of the group's image, platform, and history, infiltration and prosecution by law enforcement, civil lawsuit forfeitures, and the radical right-wing's perception of the Klan as outdated and unfashionable. The [[Southern Poverty Law Center]] reported that between 2016 and 2019, the number of Klan groups in America dropped from 130 to just 51.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://theconversation.com/the-kkk-is-in-rapid-decline-but-its-symbols-remain-worryingly-potent-112320|title=The KKK is in rapid decline – but its symbols remain worryingly potent|first=Kristofer|last=Allerfeldt|website=The Conversation|date=March 2019|access-date=May 16, 2022|archive-date=May 16, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220516151557/https://theconversation.com/the-kkk-is-in-rapid-decline-but-its-symbols-remain-worryingly-potent-112320|url-status=live}}</ref> A 2016 report by the [[Anti-Defamation League]] claims an estimate of just over 30 active Klan groups existing in the United States.<ref name="TatteredRobes">'l [https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/combating-hate/tattered-robes-state-of-kkk-2016.pdf "Tattered Robes: The State of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States"]. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171118095816/https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/combating-hate/tattered-robes-state-of-kkk-2016.pdf |date=November 18, 2017}}, Anti-Defamation League (2016).</ref> Estimates of total collective membership range from about 3,000<ref name="TatteredRobes" /> to 8,000.<ref name="SPLCKlan">[https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan "Extremist Files: Ku Klux Klan"]. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406084839/https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan |date=April 6, 2018}}, Southern Poverty Law Center (accessed October 21, 2017).</ref> In addition to its active membership, the Klan has an "unknown number of associates and supporters".<ref name="TatteredRobes" />