Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) originally referred to a secret and violent white-supremacist organization founded by veterans of the Confederate Army in 1865, but it was disbanded by 1880. The original group opposed the reforms enforced on the South by Federal troops regarding the treatment of former slaves.

A second distinct group using the same name was started near Atlanta in 1915 by William Simmons. This second group existed as a money-making fraternal club and fought to maintain the ways of the past against increasing numbers of Roman Catholics, Jews, blacks and immigrants into the United States. This group, although preaching racism, was a mainstream organization with 4 million members at its peak in the 1920s. Its popularity fell during the Great Depression, and it was disbanded during World War II.

The name Ku Klux Klan has since fallen into the public domain. It was adopted in different forms by many different unrelated groups who opposed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.

Today, the name is a symbol of hatred and intolerance to many, but is still used by some small, disjointed organizations.

Etymology

The name Ku Klux Klan comes from kyklos, the Greek word for circle, and "clan". Another etymology proposes an onomatopoeia of the loading of a gun.

Traditions

Members of the Klan wear white robes with hoods, representing the ghosts of soldiers that returned from the dead to get revenge on their enemies, and hiding their faces. Another explanation of the white robes and hoods was the "anonymity of good works" -- as the Ku Klux Klan members believe their works were given to them by God, they wear the robes and hoods as a symbol of humility. Titles such as "Grand Wizard," "Exalted Cyclops," and "Kleagle" are used to indicate status.

History

The Original Ku Klux Klan

The original Ku Klux Klan was first established in Pulaski, Tennessee after the end of the American Civil War on December 24, 1865 by Confederate veterans. It grew to prominence after a convention held in Nashville in the summer of 1867. At this convention, General Nathan Bedford Forrest presided as the Grand Wizard.

The organization had several goals. It sought to aid Confederate widows and orphans of the war, but also to oppose the extension of voting rights to Blacks, and other measures to end segregation, that were introduced as part of Reconstruction. As federal control of the ex-Confederate states was withdrawn, the local white population re-established their power and with it segregation laws. Additionally, Forrest officially disbanded the organization in 1869 because it had evolved into an entity which he believed had strayed from its original mission and had instead grown increasingly violent and antagonistic.

In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant put what was believed to be the final nail in the Klan's coffin, and signed The Klan Act and Enforcement Act. The Klan became an illegal terrorist group, and the use of force was authorized to suppress and disrupt the organization's activities. These efforts were so successful that the Klan was eliminated in South Carolina and decimated throughout the rest of the country. (The Klan Act was declared unconstitutional in 1882, but the Klan was largely gone by then.)

The second Ku Klux Klan

The second Ku Klux Klan was established during World War I, a feat which arguably would not have been possible without Presidential Woodrow Wilson's influence and D. W. Griffith's controversial classic film, The Birth of a Nation (endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson: "It was like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true."), based on the play The Clansmen and the book The Leopard's Spots, both by Thomas Dixon who intended "to revolutionize northern sentiment by a presentation of history that would transform every man in my audience into a good Democrat!". Many poor whites were drawn to the idea that their economic woes were caused by Blacks, or by Jewish bankers, or by other such groups, similar to the Nazi party's propaganda in Germany. This Klan was operated as a profit-making venture by its leaders, and participated in the boom for fraternal organizations at the time. It differed from the first Klan; the first Klan was Democratic and Southern, this Klan boasted members from both the Democratic and Republican parties and was influential throught the United States, with major political influence on politicians in several states. It collapsed largely as a result of a scandal involving David Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of Indiana and fourteen other states, who was convicted of rape and murder in a sensational trial (the woman he attacked was bitten so many times one man who saw her described her condition as having been "chewed by a cannibal"). The second Klan dwindled in popularity throughout the 1930s. It was disbanded in 1944 and the name Ku Klux Klan fell into the public domain.

The third Ku Klux Klans

Klan members at a rally during the 1920's.

After World War II, several organizations using the name Ku Klux Klan were established to counter the Civil rights movement of the 1960s. These are the Klans that are still seen today, though as American society has become more racially tolerant the Klan has once more shrunk dramatically and fractured. The major factions currently include the Imperial Klans of America, the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and Knights of the White Camelia.

Doctrine

The KKK organizations are Protestant Christian organizations. From the early 1900s through the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), primarily in the South saw the KKK as a part of their faith. Millions more viewed the KKK's tactics as morally reprehensible and extreme, but nonetheless saw its members as valid Christians and generally agreed that WASPs were inherently superior to other groups. At that time, oppressing black people, as well as Jews and Catholics, was seen by many as part of "God's plan" (by the early 1970s, however, most groups claiming ties to the KKK dropped anti-Catholicism from their officially-stated doctrines, and in the mid-1980s a Klan chapter was found to exist in New York City's borough of Queens, with most of its reputed members in fact being Catholic, primarily of Irish descent). A much smaller number of Americans still have such views today. Many people hold that the Klan's members were not really Christian, as they didn't follow the nonviolent, "turn the other cheek" teachings of classical Christianity. Others hold that this is a case of the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

Political influence

The second Ku Klux Klan rose to great prominence and spread from the South into the Midwest and Northern states and even into Canada. The KKK controlled the government of Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon in addition to those of the Southern states. It even claimed to have inducted President Warren Harding at the White House. At its peak in the 1920s, its membership exceeded 4,000,000 and counted many politicians among its members. Even the 33rd president Harry Truman was on the verge of becoming a member of the Klan, though he soon changed his mind because of their anti-Catholicism. In Saskatchewan, Canada the KKK was seen as having a dramatic effect on the provincial election of 1929, which defeated the James G. Gardiner Liberal government and installed the 1929-1934 Conservative government of James T.M. Anderson. Another former Klansman to rise to national prominence was the Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who repudiated the racist views of the Klan. West Virginia's Democratic Senator Robert Byrd is also a former Klansman, although he has renounced the Klan on several occasions and calls joining the group his "greatest mistake."

Symbols

In its original 19th century manifestation is not known to have used any flags or symbols, the 20th century version originating in 1915 focused on the use of the American flag and a flag bearing a Christian cross, as is documented in Klan instructional materials and photographs from the 1920s, the Klan's heyday. Some Klan groups in the 1950s and 1960s attempted to usurp the use of the Confederate battle flag (the Southern Cross, not related to the "Stars and Bars" or governmental flag of the Confederacy) in efforts aimed against desegregation and racial integration in the South. This appropriation of Southern symbols has been widely disavowed by historical and heritage activists in the South today. In its current fragmented form, the Klan in some instances continue to use both the Battle Flag and the American flag, but in both instances without official sanction.

Klan groups in the 1920s used the movement's official flag, a white field upon which was a black cross, thereupon superimposed a red symbol representing either a flame or a drop of blood (explanations of this symbol vary). Although this emblem is little used by the many splinter "Klan" groups today, it may well be considered the official flag and symbol of the Ku Klux Klan. Although Confederate symbols are sometimes mistakenly associated with the KKK, this usage occurred only in the 1950s and later, and is historically inappropriate.

Today

Though often still discussed in contemporary American politics as representing the quintessiential "fringe" end of the far right spectrum, today the group only exists in the form of a number of very isolated, scattered "supporters" that probably do not number over few thousand. In a 2002 report on "Extremism in America" the Anti-Defamation League wrote "Today, there is no such thing as the Ku Klux Klan. Fragmentation, decentralization and decline have continued unabated." However they also noted that the group's supporters' "need for justification runs deep in the disaffected and is unlikely to disappear, regardless of how low the Klan's fortunes eventually sink."

External links