Ku Klux Klan

===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}}