The Ku Klux Klan's Role In The Reconstruction Era

Following the American Civil War in Pulaski, Tennessee, six Confederate Army veterans organized the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a notorious terrorist organization. The Klan initially confined itself to fraternal rituals and riding at night dressed in bizarre costumes, but it soon became involved in the bitter politics of the Reconstruction Era. The central question during this period was the future status of the recently emancipated African American population. The federal government’s efforts to grant full civil and political equality to these freedmen fueled white racial hatred, resulting in widespread violence against African Americans and white Republicans. The Ku Klux Klan eventually assumed a central role in this wave of criminal activity. In
By 1920, the second Ku Klux Klan had about 2,000 members and was only based in Georgia and Alabama. Clark and Tyler were professional organizers who helped turn the weak, unsuccessful Klan into a mass-membership organization. Northern newspapers, meanwhile, used the expanding Klan as a tool to increase circulation. For example, the New York World ran a three-week series on Klan activities in all 48 states, which brought national media to the operations and actions of the Ku Klux Klan beginning in September 1921. As a result, many other major newspapers picked up the coverage, which led to even more nationwide conversations, and Simmons was called to testify before a concerned congressional committee. He assured the association that the Klan did not encourage, participate in, or affiliate themselves with violence. After a passionate testimony by Simmons, Congress decided to not pursue any further investigation. Many Americans outside the South were only vaguely aware of the movement’s existence until the New York World brought it to their attention. With free publicity from the congressional hearing and newspapers across the nation, more than 200 additional local chapters were founded and the Klan’s participation began to peak as membership rose to
During the war up to 6 million African Americans moved from the rural Southern United States to cities of the north in the “Great Migration.” The northerners had never before had a great amount of exposure to blacks and racial diversity, which eventually led to racial tension. Because they were attracted by job opportunities due to Industrialization, blacks posed as a threat to working-class whites; many northerners joined groups such as the KKK who opposed African Americans. The Klan was able to alienate not only blacks as it had previously, but also Jews, immigrants, and Catholics. Within a few years after World War I, millions of foreigners arrived in the US. With more immigrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were often Catholic and Jewish, white Protestants felt threatened in employment and social status and often accused the new immigrants for bringing radical communist ideas into America. The Ku Klux Klan provided an outlet for the militant patriotism of white Americans aroused by World War I. The nationalism that led to the war did not stop when the Treaty of Versailles was signed. This nationalism soon turned to nativism as people began to look at European immigrants as inferior and as the enemy. The Klan was not just white supremacist, but also nativist, which helped