Ku Klux Klan

===First Klan: 1865–1871===
{{main|First Klan}}
{{see also|Nathan Bedford Forrest#Ku Klux Klan membership}}

====Creation and naming====
[[File:Kkk-carpetbagger-cartoon.jpg|thumb|A [[cartoon]] threatening that the KKK will [[lynching|lynch]] [[scalawag]]s (left) and [[carpetbagger]]s (right) on March 4, 1869, the day [[Ulysses S. Grant|President Grant]] takes office. [[Tuscaloosa, Alabama]], ''Independent Monitor'', September 1, 1868.{{efn|An analysis of this cartoon can be found in {{harvnb|Hubbs|2015}}}}]]

Six [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] veterans from [[Pulaski, Tennessee]], created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, shortly after the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], during the [[Reconstruction Era in the United States|Reconstruction]] of the South.{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=9|ps=: The founders were John C. Lester, John B. Kennedy, James R. Crowe, Frank O. McCord, Richard R. Reed, and J. Calvin Jones.}}{{sfn|Fleming|1905|p=27}} The group was known for a short time as the "Kuklux Clan". The Ku Klux Klan was one of a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence, which included the Southern Cross in [[New Orleans]] (1865) and the [[Knights of the White Camelia]] (1867) in [[Louisiana]].{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=679–680}}

Historians generally classify the KKK as part of the post-Civil War [[insurgent]] violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy. In 1866, Mississippi governor [[William L. Sharkey]] reported that disorder, lack of control, and lawlessness were widespread; in some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roamed at will. The Klan used public violence against Black people and their allies as intimidation. They burned houses and attacked and killed [[Black people]], leaving their bodies on the roads.{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=671–675}} While racism was a core belief of the Klan, antisemitism was not. Many prominent [[Jews in the Southern United States|Southern Jews]] identified wholly with southern culture, resulting in examples of Jewish participation in the Klan.{{sfn|Lindemann|1991|p=[https://archive.org/details/jewaccusedthreea0000lind/page/225/mode/2up 225]}}

[[File:Anti-kkk-cartoon.jpg|thumb|This Frank Bellew cartoon links the Democratic Party with secession and the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate cause.]]<ref>[https://elections.harpweek.com/1868/cartoon-1868-Medium.asp?UniqueID=9&Year=1868#qmitemhl0_13_3 Harper's Weekly] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803051551/https://elections.harpweek.com/1868/cartoon-1868-Medium.asp?UniqueID=9&Year=1868#qmitemhl0_13_3 |date=August 3, 2020 }}.</ref>|alt=]]

At an 1867 meeting in [[Nashville, Tennessee]], Klan members gathered to try to create a hierarchical organization with local chapters eventually reporting to a national headquarters. Since most of the Klan's members were veterans, they were used to such military hierarchy, but the Klan never operated under this centralized structure. Local chapters and bands were highly independent.

[[File:NathanBedfordForrest.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Nathan Bedford Forrest]] in Confederate military uniform ]]
Former Confederate brigadier general [[George Gordon (Civil War General)|George Gordon]] developed the ''Prescript'', which espoused white supremacist belief. For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of "a white man's government", "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/his101/kkk.html |title=Ku Klux Klan, Organization and Principles, 1868 |publisher=[[State University of New York at Albany]] |access-date=February 27, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303192240/http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/his101/kkk.html |archive-date=March 3, 2016 }}</ref> The latter is a reference to the [[Ironclad Oath]], which stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union.

Confederate general [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]] was elected the first [[Grand Wizard|grand wizard]], and claimed to be the Klan's national leader.<ref name=autogenerated1 /><ref>{{cite book |title=A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest |last=Wills |first=Brian Steel |year=1992 |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers |location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/battlefromstart00bria/page/336 336] |isbn=978-0060924454 |url=https://archive.org/details/battlefromstart00bria/page/336 }}</ref> In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest stated that the Klan's primary opposition was to the [[Loyal Leagues]], [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] state governments, people such as Tennessee governor [[William Gannaway Brownlow]], and other "[[carpetbagger]]s" and "[[scalawag]]s".<ref>''The Sun''. "Civil War Threatened in Tennessee". September 3, 1868: 2; ''The Charleston Daily News''. "A Talk with General Forrest". September 8, 1868: 1.</ref> He argued that many Southerners believed that Black people were voting for the Republican Party because they were being hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues.<ref>[[s:Interview with Nathan Bedford Forrest|Cincinnati ''Commercial'', August 28, 1868]], quoted in {{harvnb|Wade|1987}}</ref> One Alabama newspaper editor declared "The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan."{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=27}}

Despite Gordon's and Forrest's work, local Klan units never accepted the ''Prescript'' and continued to operate autonomously. There were never hierarchical levels or state headquarters. Klan members used violence to settle old personal feuds and local grudges, as they worked to restore general white dominance in the disrupted postwar society. The historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership:

<blockquote>Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of anti-Black vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime [[guerrilla]] bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of Black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]], was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen.{{sfn|Parsons|2005|p=816}}</blockquote>

{{Wikisource|Interview with Nathan Bedford Forrest}}
Historian [[Eric Foner]] observed: "In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the [[planter class]], and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party's infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the Black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.{{sfn|Foner|1988|pp=425–426}} To that end they worked to curb the education, economic advancement, [[voting rights]], and [[right to keep and bear arms]] of Black people.{{sfn|Foner|1988|pp=425–426}} The Klan soon spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a reign of terror against Republican leaders both Black and white. Those political leaders assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman [[James M. Hinds]], three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who served in constitutional conventions."{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=342}}

====Activities====
In a 1933 interview, William Sellers, born enslaved in Virginia, recalled the post-war "raids of the Ku Klux, young white men of [[Rockingham County, Virginia|Rockingham County]] who would go into the huts of the recently freed negroes or catch some negro who had been working for thirty cents a day on his way home from work...and cruelly whip him, leaving him to live or die."<ref>{{Cite news |date=1933-07-07 |title=Former Negro Slave Resident of Shippenberg |pages=6 |work=The News-Chronicle |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-news-chronicle-former-negro-slave-re/129748355/ |access-date=2023-08-10 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> Seemingly random whipping attacks, meant to be suggestive of previous condition of servitude, were a widespread aspect of the early Klan; for example in 1870–71 in Limestone Township (now [[Cherokee County, South Carolina|Cherokee County]]), South Carolina, of 77 documented attacks, "four were shot, sixty-seven whipped and six had had [[Cropping (punishment)|their ears cropped]]."<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Simkins |first=Francis B. |author-link=Francis Butler Simkins |date=1927 |title=The Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, 1868-1871 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714040 |journal=The Journal of Negro History |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=606–647 |doi=10.2307/2714040 |jstor=2714040 |s2cid=149858835 |issn=0022-2992 |access-date=August 10, 2023 |archive-date=August 10, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230810230435/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714040 |url-status=live }}</ref>
[[File:Mississippi ku klux.jpg|thumb|upright|Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in [[Tishomingo County, Mississippi]], September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.preachthecross.net/history-of-the-ku-klux-klan/|title=History of the Ku Klux Klan – Preach the Cross|access-date=September 15, 2014|publisher=preachthecross.net|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140916012701/http://preachthecross.net/history-of-the-ku-klux-klan/|archive-date=September 16, 2014}}</ref>]]
{{Wikisource|Why the Ku Klux}}

Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers by voice and mannerisms. "The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night."{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=677–678}} The KKK night riders "sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious Blacks. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously."{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=432}}

The Klan attacked Black members of the [[Union League|Loyal Leagues]] and intimidated Southern Republicans and [[Freedmen's Bureau]] workers. When they killed Black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of Black people.

"Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were killed as whites." Masked men shot into houses and burned them, sometimes with the occupants still inside. They drove successful Black farmers off their land. "Generally, it can be reported that in North and South Carolina, in 18 months ending in June 1867, there were 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault."{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=674–675}}

[[File:George W. Ashburn.jpg|thumb|[[George W. Ashburn]] was assassinated for his pro-Black sentiments.]]
Klan violence worked to suppress Black voting, and campaign seasons were deadly. More than 2,000 people were killed, wounded, or otherwise injured in [[Louisiana]] within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although [[St. Landry Parish]] had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 200 Black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact.{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=680–681}}

In the April 1868 [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] gubernatorial election, [[Columbia County, Georgia|Columbia County]] cast 1,222 votes for Republican [[Rufus Bullock]]. By the [[1868 United States presidential election|November presidential election]], Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for [[Ulysses S. Grant]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 |title=Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era |author=Bryant, Jonathan M |website=[[The New Georgia Encyclopedia]] |publisher=[[Georgia Southern University]] |access-date=August 26, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080919005917/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 |archive-date=September 19, 2008 |url-status=live  }}</ref>

Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in [[Jackson County, Florida]], and hundreds more in other counties including Madison, Alachua, Columbia, and Hamilton. Florida Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies.{{sfn|Newton|2001|pp=1–30|ps=. Newton quotes from the ''Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Enquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States'', Vol. 13. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1872. Among historians of the Klan, this volume is also known as ''The KKK testimony''.}}

[[File:1875.08.23Prophet1A copy.jpg|thumb|upright|Garb and weapons of the [[Ku Klux Klan in Southern Illinois]], as posed for [[Joseph A. Dacus]] of the ''Missouri Republican,'' in August 1875]]
Milder encounters, including some against white teachers, also occurred. In [[Mississippi]], according to the Congressional inquiry:

<blockquote>One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in [[Monroe County, Mississippi|Monroe County]], was visited ... between one and two o'clock in the morning in March 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her "gentlemanly and quietly" but complained of the heavy school-tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county.{{sfn|Rhodes|1920|pp=157–158}}</blockquote>

By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease.{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=375}} Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential Southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it.{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=102}} There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian [[B. H. Hill]] stating "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain."{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=375}}

====Resistance====
{{Wikisource|Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871}}

Union Army veterans in mountainous [[Blount County, Alabama]], organized "the anti-Ku Klux". They put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning Black churches and schools. Armed Black people formed their own defense in [[Bennettsville, South Carolina]], and patrolled the streets to protect their homes.{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=435}}

National sentiment gathered to crack down on the Klan, even though some Democrats at the national level questioned whether the Klan really existed, or believed that it was a creation of nervous Southern Republican governors.{{sfn|Wade|1987}} Many southern states began to pass anti-Klan legislation.<ref name=Ranney2006>{{cite book|last1=Ranney|first1=Joseph A|title=In the Wake of Slavery: Civil War, Civil Rights, and the Reconstruction of Southern Law|date=2006|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0275989729|pages=57–58}}</ref>

[[File:BenFrankButler.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Benjamin Butler|Benjamin Franklin Butler]] wrote the [[Third Enforcement Act|Civil Rights Act of 1871]].]]

In January 1871, [[Pennsylvania]] Republican senator [[John Scott (Pennsylvania)|John Scott]] convened a congressional committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan atrocities, accumulating 12 volumes. In February, former Union general and congressman [[Benjamin Butler|Benjamin Franklin Butler]] of Massachusetts introduced the [[Third Enforcement Act|Civil Rights Act of 1871]] (Ku Klux Klan Act). This added to the enmity that Southern white Democrats bore toward him.{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=373}} While the bill was being considered, further violence in the South swung support for its passage. The [[governor of South Carolina]] appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state. A [[Meridian race riot of 1871|riot and massacre]] occurred in a [[Meridian, Mississippi]], courthouse, from which a Black state representative escaped by fleeing to the woods.{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=88}} The 1871 Civil Rights Act allowed the president to suspend ''[[habeas corpus]].''<ref name="Scaturro">{{cite web| last=Scaturro |first=Frank |title=The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, 1869–1877 |url=http://faculty.css.edu/mkelsey/usgrant/granthist4.html |publisher=[[College of St. Scholastica]] |date=October 26, 2006 |access-date=March 5, 2011  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719151209/http://faculty.css.edu/mkelsey/usgrant/granthist4.html |archive-date=July 19, 2011 }}</ref>

In 1871, President [[Ulysses S. Grant]] signed Butler's legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act and the [[Enforcement Act of 1870]] were used by the federal government to enforce the civil rights provisions for individuals under the constitution. The Klan refused to voluntarily dissolve after the 1871 Klan Act, so President Grant issued a suspension of ''habeas corpus'' and stationed federal troops in nine South Carolina counties by invoking the [[Insurrection Act of 1807]]. The Klansmen were apprehended and prosecuted in federal court. Judges [[Hugh Lennox Bond]] and George S. Bryan presided over [[South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials of 1871-1872|South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials]] in Columbia, S.C., during December 1871.<ref>p. 5, United States Circuit Court (4th Circuit). ''Proceedings in the Ku Klux Trials at Columbia, S.C. in the United States Circuit Court''. Edited by Benn Pitman and Louis Freeland Post. Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, 1872.</ref> The defendants were given from three months to five years of incarceration with fines.<ref>''The New York Times''. "Kuklux Trials&nbsp;– Sentence of the Prisoners". December 29, 1871.</ref> More Black people served on juries in federal court than on local or state juries, so they had a chance to participate in the process.<ref name="Scaturro" /><ref name="jimcrow-stories" /> Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned during the crackdown, "once the national government became set upon a policy of military intervention whole populations which had scouted the authority of the weak 'Radical' government of the State became meek."<ref name=":5" />

====End of the first Klan====
Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men and that he could muster 40,000 Klansmen within five days' notice. However, the Klan had no membership rosters, no chapters, and no local officers, so it was difficult for observers to judge its membership.<ref>''The New York Times''. "N. B. Forrest". September 3, 1868.</ref> It had created a sensation by the dramatic nature of its masked forays and because of its many murders.

In 1870, a federal grand jury determined that the Klan was a "[[terrorist]] organization"{{sfn|Trelease|1995}} and issued hundreds of indictments for crimes of violence and terrorism. Klan members were prosecuted, and many fled from areas that were under federal government jurisdiction, particularly in South Carolina.{{sfn|Trelease|1995}} Many people not formally inducted into the Klan had used the Klan's costume to hide their identities when carrying out independent acts of violence. Forrest called for the Klan to disband in 1869, arguing that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace".<ref>Quotes from {{harvnb|Wade|1987|p=59}}</ref> Historian [[Stanley Horn]] argues that "generally speaking, the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment".{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=360}} A Georgia-based reporter wrote in 1870: "A true statement of the case is not that the Ku Klux are an organized band of licensed criminals, but that men who commit crimes call themselves Ku Klux".{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=362}}

[[File:NCG-WilliamHolden.jpg|thumb|upright|Gov. [[William Woods Holden|William Holden]] of North Carolina]]
In many states, officials were reluctant to use Black militia against the Klan out of fear that racial tensions would be raised.<ref name="jimcrow-stories">{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |title=The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow – The Enforcement Acts (1870–1871) |author=Wormser, Richard |publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service]] |access-date=February 27, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160228064916/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |archive-date=February 28, 2016 |url-status=live  }}</ref> Republican [[governor of North Carolina]] [[William Woods Holden]] [[Kirk–Holden war|called out the militia against]] the Klan in 1870, adding to his unpopularity. This and extensive violence and fraud at the polls caused the Republicans to lose their majority in the state legislature. Disaffection with Holden's actions contributed to white Democratic legislators impeaching him and removing him from office, but their reasons for doing so were numerous.{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=85}}

Klan operations ended in South Carolina{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=102}} and gradually withered away throughout the rest of the South. Attorney General [[Amos Tappan Ackerman]] led the prosecutions.<ref>{{harvnb|Wade|1987|p=109}}, writes that by 1874, "For many, the lapse of the enforcement acts was justified since their reason for being—the Ku-Klux Klan—had been effectively smashed as a result of the dramatic showdown in South Carolina".</ref>

Foner argues that:

{{blockquote|By 1872, the federal government's evident willingness to bring its legal and coercive authority to bear had broken the Klan's back and produced a dramatic decline in violence throughout the South. So ended the Reconstruction career of the Ku Klux Klan.{{sfn|Foner|1988|pp=458–459}}}}

New groups of insurgents emerged in the mid-1870s, local paramilitary organizations such as the [[White League]], [[Red Shirts (Southern United States)|Red Shirts]], saber clubs, and rifle clubs, that intimidated and murdered Black political leaders.{{sfn|Wade|1987|pp=109–110}} The White League and Red Shirts were distinguished by their willingness to cultivate publicity, working directly to overturn Republican officeholders and regain control of politics.

In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in ''[[United States v. Harris]]'' that the Klan Act was partially [[Constitutionality|unconstitutional]]. It ruled that Congress's power under the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] did not include the right to regulate against private conspiracies. It recommended that persons who had been victimized should seek relief in state courts, which were entirely unsympathetic to such appeals.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/opeds/historylesson1.pdf |title=History Lesson |author=Balkin, Jack M. |year=2002 |publisher=[[Yale University]] |access-date=February 27, 2016  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304054220/http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/opeds/historylesson1.pdf |archive-date=March 4, 2016}}</ref>

Klan costumes, also called "[[Ku Klux Klan regalia and insignia|regalia]]", disappeared from use by the early 1870s,{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=109}} after Grand Wizard Forrest called for their destruction as part of disbanding the Klan. The Klan was broken as an organization by 1872.<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: The Enforcement Acts, 1870–1871"], Public Broadcast Service {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019161432/https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |date=October 19, 2017}}. Retrieved April 5, 2008.</ref>