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How Did The Ku Klux Klan Affect The Civil Rights Movement

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How Did The Ku Klux Klan Affect The Civil Rights Movement
When the K.K.K first emerged, they completely ravaged and destroyed the African American hopes of equality. As many people know, “The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), or simply ‘the Klan’, is the name of the 3 distinct past and present movements in the United States that have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism of groups or individuals they opposed” (“ Ku Klux Klan”). During the civil rights era, African Americans began to fight back against the racists, and the K.K.K began to re-emerge. In the beginning, the Klu Klux Klan used brutal methods to keep former slaves from exercising their rights while in the civil rights era the K.K.K. was used to …show more content…
Usually, there would be a few Klans scattered in movement affected areas. A few actually did try to unify the Klans, yet none were successful. “Several leaders throughout the 1950s and 1960s attempted to reunify the movement, but none were successful. Most Klaverns (local units) remained stubbornly independent, although the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s encouraged some unification into independent realms of varying sizes” (“Ku Klux Klan - History”). Many Klaverns had different opinions on how to discourage desegregation in many places. Some thought along the lines of Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence, but many other Klaverns believed that violence was the only way to destroy the African American people’s hopes.
During the Civil Rights Era many people, including the government, saw just how terrible the K.K.K. was. So they began to take action. Many people (African American or not) began to speak out against the Klan and shunned those were a part of the infamous group. Although the K.K.K used brutal methods to keep minorities quiet (or supporters of minorities), they are remembered for getting little to nothing done. Even though the K.K.K. never ended after the Civil Rights Era, many splinter groups broke off to form other Klavern

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