Why ku klux klan formed

At least 10 percent of the Black legislators elected during the constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven who were killed. By , the Ku Klux Klan had branches in nearly every southern state. Even at its height, the Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership.

Klan activity flourished particularly in the regions of the South where Black people were a minority or a small majority of the population, and was relatively limited in others. Among the most notorious zones of Klan activity was South Carolina , where in January masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight Black prisoners.

In the regions where most Klan activity took place, local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan or declined to take action against it, and even those who arrested accused Klansmen found it difficult to find witnesses willing to testify against them.

After , Republican state governments in the South turned to Congress for help, resulting in the passage of three Enforcement Acts, the strongest of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of For the first time, the Ku Klux Klan Act designated certain crimes committed by individuals as federal offenses, including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to hold office, serve on juries and enjoy the equal protection of the law.

The act authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and arrest accused individuals without charge, and to send federal forces to suppress Klan violence. This expansion of federal authority—which Ulysses S. Grant promptly used in to crush Klan activity in South Carolina and other areas of the South—outraged Democrats and even alarmed many Republicans.

From the early s onward, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of , the entire South was under Democratic control once again. This second generation of the Klan was not only anti-Black but also took a stand against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labor. It was fueled by growing hostility to the surge in immigration that America experienced in the early 20th century along with fears of communist revolution akin to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia in The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country.

At its peak in the s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide. The civil rights movement of the s saw a surge of local Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of Black and white activists.

These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause. In , President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the s onward.

As of , the Anti-Defamation League estimated Klan membership to be around 3,, while the Southern Poverty Law Center said there were 6, members total. In outright defiance of the Republican-led federal government, Southern Democrats formed organizations that violently intimidated blacks and Republicans who tried to win political power. Originally founded as a social club for former Confederate soldiers, the Klan evolved into a terrorist organization.

It would be responsible for thousands of deaths, and would help to weaken the political power of Southern blacks and Republicans. Racist activity in the South often took the form of riots that targeted blacks and Republicans. In , a quarrel between whites and black ex-soldiers erupted into a full-fledged riot in Memphis, Tennessee.

White policemen assisted the mobs in their violent rampage through the black sections of town. By the time the violence ended, 46 people were dead, 70 more were wounded, and numerous churches and schools had been burned.

Just two months later, on July 30, a similar outbreak of violence erupted in New Orleans. This time, a white mob attacked the attendees of a black suffrage convention, killing 37 blacks and three whites who allied with them.

In this violent atmosphere, the Ku Klux Klan grew in size and strength. By , the Klan had evolved into a hooded terrorist organization that its members called "The Invisible Empire of the South. White Southerners from all classes of society joined the Klan's ranks. In the name of preserving law and order in a white-dominated society, Klansmen punished newly freed blacks for a variety of reasons, including behaving in an "impudent" manner toward whites.

They whipped the teachers of freedmen's schools and burnt their schoolhouses. But first and foremost, the Klan sought to do away with Republican influence in the South by terrorizing and murdering its party leaders and all those who voted for it.

In the time leading up to the presidential election, the Klan's activities picked up in speed and brutality. The election, which pitted Republican Ulysses S. Grant against Democrat Horatio Seymour, was crucial. By the earlys, the Klan's size and influence wanes, and white supremacy is reestablished with segregationist "Jim Crow" laws. After the release of the film, The Birth of a Nation , directed by D.

Griffith and portraying the historic Ku Klux Klan in a positive light, the second Klan is founded and grows to be vastly larger and more mainstream than the first. It declined from some 6 million members in the mids to less than 30, members in the s, to virtually non-existent in the s.