Copyright - 1992 Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.

Ku Klux Klan

      {koo kluhks klan}

      The Ku Klux Klan is the name of two distinct groups of white 
      racists in U.S.  history.  During the RECONSTRUCTION era, when 
      the votes of newly enfranchised black Southerners put Republicans 
      in power in the Southern states, white Southerners resorted to 
      force to preserve white supremacy. From 1866 to 1872 they 
      organized into secret societies that terrorized local white and 
      black Republican leaders and blacks whose behavior violated old 
      ideas of black subordination.  Especially strong in Tennessee and 
      North and South Carolina, many of these organizations coalesced 
      under the largest, the Ku Klux Klan, which was for a time led by 
      former Confederate general Nathan B.  FORREST.  Sworn to secrecy, 
      its members wore white robes and masks and adopted the burning 
      cross as their symbol. They were most active during election 
      campaigns, when their nighttime rides to murder, rape, beat, and 
      warn were designed to overcome Republican majorities in their 
      states.

      In most states Republican authorities were unable to suppress the 
      violence, fearing that they would provoke outright race war if 
      they sent their mostly black state militias against the Klan.  In 
      many areas Democratic law-enforcement officials were themselves 
      Klan members or sympathizers.  Even where local officers took 
      action, Klan members sat on juries and acquitted accused night 
      riders.

      By 1871 the violence was so serious that Republicans in Congress 
      gave President Ulysses S.  Grant authority to use national troops 
      to restore order in affected districts.  Faced with trained 
      soldiers empowered to arrest suspects and hold them without 
      trial, the Klan collapsed with surprising swiftness.  Although 
      Southern whites resorted to violence to regain control of their 
      states from 1874 to 1877, the Klan as an organization disappeared 
      by the end of 1872.

      In the 1870s most Americans repudiated the methods of the Ku Klux 
      Klan, even Southerners agreeing that the organization had become 
      out of control. However, at the turn of the century the story of 
      the Klan was popularized in Thomas B. Dixon's The Clansman (1905) 
      and D. W. GRIFFITH's powerful movie The Birth of a Nation 
      (1915).  This led to the establishment of a new Ku Klux Klan, 
      which spread throughout the nation and preached anti-Catholic, 
      anti-Jewish, anti-black, antisocialist, and anti-labor-union 
      "Americanism." Often taking the law into their own hands, mobs of 
      white-robed, white-hooded men punished "immorality" and 
      terrorized "un-American" elements.  At its height in the early 
      1920s, the Klan had over 2 million adherents and exercised great 
      political power in many Southern, Western, and Midwestern states.

      In many ways a response to the great changes taking place in 
      American society in the post-World War I years, the Klan began to 
      wane as people adjusted to the new environment in which they 
      lived.  By the 1930s it had lost nearly all of its power.  Some 
      remnants of the Klan did continue to exist;  there was a 
      membership spurt in the South in response to the civil rights 
      movement of the 1960s.  The various independent Klan groups 
      competing for publicity probably numbered fewer than 10,000 
      members by the early 1990s.

      Michael Les Benedict

      Bibliography:  Chalmers, David M., Hooded Americanism:  The First 
      Century of the Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1965, 3d ed.  (1987); Katz, 
      William L., The Invisible Empire:  Impact of the Ku Klux Klan on 
      History (1986);  Lowe, David, KKK:  The Invisible Empire (1967);  
      Rice, Arnold S., The Ku Klux Klan in American Politics (1962;  
      repr.  1972);  Sims, Patsy, The Klan (1978); Trelease, Allen W., 
      White Terror:  The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern 
      Reconstruction (1971);  Wade, W.C., The Fiery Cross (1987).