Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the most infamous - and oldest - of
American hate groups. Although black Americans have typically been the Klan's primary target,
it also has attacked Jews, immigrants, gays and lesbians and, until recently, Catholics. Over the
years since it was formed in December 1865, the Klan has typically seen itself as a Christian
organization, although in modern times Klan groups are motivated by a variety of theological
and political ideologies.
Started during Reconstruction at the end of the Civil War, the Klan quickly mobilized as a
vigilante group to intimidate Southern blacks - and any whites who would help them - and to
prevent them from enjoying basic civil rights. Outlandish titles (like imperial wizard and exalted
cyclops), hooded costumes, violent "night rides," and the notion that the group comprised an
"invisible empire" conferred a mystique that only added to the Klan's popularity. Lynchings, tarand-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy became
a hallmark of the Klan.
After a short but violent period, the "first era" Klan disbanded after Jim Crow laws secured the
domination of Southern whites. But the Klan enjoyed a huge revival in the 1920s when it
opposed (mainly Catholic and Jewish) immigration. By 1925, when its followers staged a huge
Washington, D.C., march, the Klan had as many as 4 million members and, in some states,
considerable political power. But a series of sex scandals, internal battles over power and
newspaper exposés quickly reduced its influence.
The Klan arose a third time during the 1960s to oppose the civil rights movement and to
preserve segregation in the face of unfavorable court rulings. The Klan's bombings, murders and
other attacks took a great many lives, including, among others, four young girls killed while
preparing for Sunday services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.
Since the 1970s the Klan has been greatly weakened by internal conflicts, court cases, a
seemingly endless series of splits and government infiltration. While some factions have
preserved an openly racist and militant approach, others have tried to enter the mainstream,
cloaking their racism as mere "civil rights for whites." Today, the Center estimates that there are
between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members, split among dozens of different - and often warring organizations that use the Klan name.
Source: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan
A rare photograph of a Klansman from the late 19th century.
Source: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan
Klan glossary
AKIA: A password meaning "A Klansman I Am", often seen on decals and bumper stickers.
Alien: A person who does not belong to the Klan.
AYAK?: A password meaning "Are You a Klansman?"
CA BARK: A password meaning "Constantly Applied By All Real Klansmen."
CLASP: A password meaning "Clannish Loyalty A Sacred Principle."
Genii: The collective name for the national officers. Also known as the Kloncilium, or the
advisory board to the Imperial Wizard.
Hydras: The Real officers, with the exception of the Grand Dragon.
Imperial Giant: Former Imperial Wizard.
Imperial Wizard: The overall, or national, head of a Klan, which it sometimes compares to the
president of the United States.
Inner Circle: Small group of four or five members who plan and carry out "action." Its members
and activities are not disclosed to the general membership.
Invisible Empire: A Ku Klux Klan's overall geographical jurisdiction, which it compares to the
United States although none exist in every state.
Kalendar: Klan calendar, which dates events from both the origin and its 1915 rebirth Anno Klan,
and means "in the year of the Klan," and is usually written "AK."
Kardinal Kullors: White, crimson, gold and black. Secondary Kullors are grey, green and blue. The
Imperial Wizard's Kullor is Skipper Blue.
K.B.I.: Klan Bureau of Investigation.
KIGY!: A password meaning "Klansman, I greet you!"
Klankfraft: The practices and beliefs of the Klan.
Klanton: The jurisdiction of a Klavern.
Klavern: A local unit or club; also called "den."
Kleagle: An organizer whose main function is to recruit new members. In some Klans, he gets a
percentage of the initiation fees.
Klectokon: Initiation fee.
Klepeer: Delegate elected to Imperial Klonvokation.
Klonkave: Secret Klavern meeting.
Klonverse: Province convention.
Kloran: Official book of Klan rituals.
Klorero: Realm convention.
SAN BOG: A password meaning "Strangers Are Near, Be On Guard."
Terrors: The Exalted Cyclops' officers.
Source: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan
Ku Klux Klan, «KOO KLUHKS KLAN», is a group of white secret societies who
oppose the advancement of blacks, Jews, and other minority groups. The Ku Klux Klan, also
called the KKK or the Klan, is active in the United States and in Canada. It often uses violence to
achieve its aims. Klan members wear robes and hoods, and burn crosses at their outdoor
meetings. They also burn crosses to frighten nonmembers.
The KKK has had four major periods of activity: (1) the mid-1860's to the early 1870's, (2) 1915
to 1944, (3) the late 1940's to the early 1970's, and (4) since the mid-1970's.
Birth of the Klan. The KKK was formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans
in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865 or 1866. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate general,
was the Klan's first leader, called the Grand Wizard. The group took its name from the Greek
word kuklos, meaning circle, and the English word clan.
Klan members, who believed in the superiority of whites, soon began to terrorize blacks to keep
them from voting or exercising the other rights they had gained during Reconstruction, the
period following the end of the American Civil War in 1865. The Klan threatened, beat, and
murdered many blacks and their white sympathizers in the South. To hide their identity, Klan
terrorists wore disguises, draped sheets over their horses, and rode at night. The KKK spread
rapidly throughout the Southern United States and became known as the Invisible Empire. Its
attacks helped drive blacks out of Southern political life.
In 1871, Congress passed a law called a force bill, which gave the president the authority to use
federal troops against the Klan. The KKK soon disappeared.
The Ku Klux Klan, an American group, used terrorism to keep African Americans from voting and
to deny other rights to African Americans, Jews, and other minority groups. This picture shows
Klan members on horseback in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1923.
Early 1900's. In 1915, William J. Simmons, a former Methodist clergyman, organized a new Klan
in Atlanta, Georgia, as a patriotic, fraternal society for American-born white Protestants. The
Klan directed its activities against groups it considered un-American, including blacks,
immigrants, Jews, and particularly Roman Catholics.
The KKK grew rapidly and by the mid-1920's had more than 2 million members throughout the
country. Some Klan members burned crosses and whipped, tortured, and murdered people
whose activities angered them, but most relied on peaceful means. By electing public officials,
the Klan became a powerful political force throughout the South and also in many Northern and
Western states, including Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, and Oregon. However, public
criticism of Klan violence and quarrels among Klan leaders weakened the organization. By the
1930's, only local Klan groups in the South remained strong. The organization died out again in
1944.
Mid-1900's. Samuel Green, an Atlanta physician, revived the Klan in 1946. Green died in 1949,
and the Klan then split into many competing groups. However, all of the groups opposed racial
integration.
Increased civil rights activities during the 1960's brought a new wave of Klan violence. Klan
members were involved in many terrorist attacks, including the killing of three civil rights
workers in Mississippi, and the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, church in which four black
girls were killed. President Lyndon B. Johnson used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to probe
the Klan. Some members were sent to prison, and membership fell to about 5,000 by the early
1970's.
Late 1900's and early 2000's. Beginning in the mid-1970's, new leaders tried to give a more
respectable image to competing Klan groups. Some accepted women as members and set up
youth groups. The KKK especially appealed to whites who resented both special programs
designed to help blacks and job competition from blacks and recent immigrants. Also in the
1970's, it largely abandoned its opposition to Roman Catholics.
Klan membership rose to about 10,000 by 1980. The KKK still attracted people with extreme
views who often used violence. In 1979, Klan members and their supporters killed five anti-Klan
demonstrators in Greensboro, North Carolina. Klan members murdered a black youth in Mobile,
Alabama, in 1981. Since then, Klan membership has declined due to prosecutions for illegal
activities and financial penalties for KKK violations of civil rights. Membership has dropped to
less than 6,000. Most members live in the South or the Midwest.
Contributor:
• Robert P. Ingalls, Ph.D., Professor of History, University of South Florida.
How to cite this article:
To cite this article, World Book recommends the following format:
Ingalls, Robert P. "Ku Klux Klan." World Book Student. World Book, 2012. Web. 24 May 2012.
Ghostly vision: More 50,000 of the Ku Klux Klan gathered in the shadow of the Capitol¿s dome
for two parades in Washington DC in 1925 and 1926
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2100077/Ku-Klux-Klan-Extraordinary-images-divisive-era-capture-day-reckoning-50-000white-supremacists-marched-Washington-DC.html#ixzz1vo0Lp8jQ
Ku Klux Kontraction
How did the KKK lose nearly one-third of its chapters in one year?
By Brian Palmer|Posted Thursday, March 8, 2012, at 4:55 PM ET
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970
Members of the Fraternal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan participate in the 11th Annual Nathan Bedford Forrest Birthday march July 11,
2009 in Pulaski, Tenn.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The number of hate groups in the United States is on the rise, but the Ku Klux Klan is losing
chapters, according to data released on Wednesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The
number of KKK chapters dropped from 221 to 152 in just one year. Why is the Klan shrinking?
Consolidation and defections. The Klan is not a stable organization. There’s no real national
leadership, and chapters are constantly appearing, disappearing, splitting, and merging. In 2010,
to take one example, the True Invisible Empire Knights of Pulaski, Tenn., merged with the
Traditional American Knights from Potosi, Mo. to form the True Invisible Empire Traditionalist
American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. (Note: this link, like others in this article, leads to an
extremist website.) Such mergers decrease the number of chapters without necessarily changing
membership totals. Not all the Klan’s losses are just on paper, though. Jeremy Parker, who led
the Ohio-based Brotherhood of Klans, left the KKK for the Aryan Nations in 2010 and likely
took a significant number of members with him. The Brotherhood of Klans was the secondlargest Klan association in the country, with 38 chapters.
Membership totals are hard to track, because the Klan doesn’t willingly release member lists.
Over the long term, the KKK is clearly contracting, since its rolls have shrunk from millions in
the 1920s to between 3,000 and 5,000 today. But no one knows how membership has changed in
the last few years.
Klan-watchers, however, suspect that the nation’s oldest domestic terrorist organization is indeed
struggling to keep pace with other racist hate groups. Young racists tend to think of the Klan as
their grandfathers’ hate group, and of its members as rural, uneducated, and technologically
unsophisticated. The Klan doesn’t seem to have used the web and social media as well as its
competitors. The group’s failure to effectively deploy technology is a bit of an irony, since one of
those newfangled motion pictures, The Birth of a Nation, launched the KKK’s second era in 1915.
The Klan’s history of violence is another challenge to recruitment. The organization will always
be associated with the lynching of innocent African-Americans in the 20th century, which puts
off more moderate racists.
The KKK is also suffering from a proliferation of competitors. People who wanted to join a white
supremacist movement back in the 1920s didn’t have a lot of choices. Today, there are countless
options, enabling an extremist to find a group that matches his personal brand of intolerance. The
more extreme groups in the burgeoning patriot movement cater to anti-Muslim, homophobic, and
xenophobic sentiment, with less animosity toward African-Americans and Jews. Aryan Nations
offers a heavy focus on Christian identity. Some groups preach more violence, while others offer
a veneer of intellectualism. American Renaissance, for example, caters to “suit-and-tie” racists,
offering pseudo-scientific papers on white supremacy. The group even holds conferences at a
hotel near Dulles airport in Virginia.
Many young racist activists aren’t bothering to join groups at all anymore, further hampering the
Klan’s recruitment efforts. Former KKK Grand Wizard Don Black in 1995 launched the website
Stormfront, which enables individuals in the white supremacist movement to share ideas and read
news stories reported from a racist perspective. The community-building site, and others like it,
lessens the need for racists to socialize at Klan barbecues or introduce their children to Klanta
Klaus at the KKK Christmas rally.
Explainer thanks Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Chris Hale of LSU-Shreveport, Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of
Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino and co-editor of Hate Crimes, and Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation
League.
Click this link to see a video on the KKK.
http://www.history.com/videos/the-kkk#the-kkk