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First Era ( 1866 - 1877 )
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The end of the War Between the States in April of 1865 marked the beginning of a terrible time of trouble for the White citizens who remained loyal to the southern states. This chapter of American History is known as the Reconstruction period. The war had been terrible and thousands of people died. There were many more people in the North than in the South.
Abraham Lincoln felt that the South should be treated well. But many powerful men in Congress hated the South and thought that it should be treated as a conquered country. They saw that there was a profit to be made in the beaten land. Abraham Lincoln wanted all Americans reunited and wanted them to have good times. He decided to create a new type of money and had a plan to help the newly freed slaves to go home to Africa. Bankers who secretly controlled politicians in Washington didn\'t want that new money because they wouldn\'t be able to keep control. So they hired a man named John Wilkes Booth to kill the president. When he was killed everything was changed and it was terrible for everyone. The crooked men got their way and the South was treated awfully. White people had to salute black people in the street. Whisky sellers came and sold liquor to blacks who excited about no longer having a curfew would roam the countryside hurting men, women and children. The people suffered horribly. They kept getting away with rape, murder, robbery, and drunkness because those who wanted to take advantage of the South for profit knew it would be easier if all white people spent all their time fighting for their lives. Troops of armed men working for the crooked politicians would not allow the white people to defend themselves.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded after the Civil war had ended.
The KKK was started in Pulaski, Tennesse on Christmas Eve, 1865 in a lawyers office. The office is still there. In the 1920\'s there was a big celebration and people came from all over the countries to dedicate a bronze plaque to Nathan Bedford Forrest. It was placed on the outside of the office. Today, the owner of the building has turned the plaque around because he doesn\'t like the KKK or the idea of white Christian America. Six men who had once been Confederate soldiers decided to start a club. It was out of these dismal conditions that just and decent men of honour came together forming the Ku Klux Klan. A Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was the Klan\'s first leader, whose title was the Grand Wizard. It was a secret club, with secret code words, and costumes. The club was around for several months and they would meet in different places. Forrest founded the original Ku Klux Klan to protect the widows and orphans. The Kuklos was not started because of racial animosity nor did members have any political motivation, they just dressed in white sheets and pillow covers and played pranks during the night.
Led by Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee, by 1877 these courageous men had driven the federal troops back north. For a time they saved the white south from the tyranny of the federal government, the extortion of the carpetbaggers, the treason of the scalawags and the negroes. It was very dangerous though. Bands of violent negroes travelled around at night terrorizing families. One night when the club was meeting they accidentally came across an outlaw band of negroes. But, this time instead of getting murdered, the negroes ran away screaming. They thought the men in their costumes were the ghosts of dead soldiers who had died in the Civil war.
Soon a new idea was growing. These deeply religious men felt that God had given them a great gift - a peaceful way to defend themselves. The plan worked. Mothers, grandmas and sisters made the flowing white robes for their male family members. The men would ride through the countryside at night. Where the negroes would see them they would immediately run home and stop stealing, raping, or murdering. Soon thousands upon thousands of people joined the Ku Klux Klan. After some years the white people were free again. The negroes began respecting law and order once again. When the white people in the South refused to give up God blessed them and the crooked politicians sent the federal armies home. Times were good once again.
In 1867, the Kuklos began to focus on racism. It was Nathan Bedford Forest who was responsible for all that and he was named the first Imperial Wizard. Under his leadership, the Klan began terrorizing the South, their targets were African Americans, black supporters, and also white Southern Republicans and the school teachers who worked with African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan became known as the Invisible Empire as it grew and spread rapidly.
In 1869, unable to control the increasing violence Forest formally disbanded the Klan. There were also threats of governmental punishment. The organization itself was disbanded,but several Klansmen refused to give up. These men kept blacks from the election polls and protested at black universities. The federal government crushed the residual chapters by 1871 and the Force Bill was passed by Congress. This act gave the President the authority to use federal troops against the Ku Klux Klan if he deemed the action necessary. Soon after this bill was passed, the Klan disappeared.The Supreme Court declared the KKK unconstitutional.
Second Era (1915-1944)
William J. Simmons, an Alabama native, minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church reorganized the Klan. He was also a practicing physician. Simmons formed a new Klan in Stone Mountain, Georgia in 1915.It is a patriotic, Protestant fraternal society and became a lodge dedicated to the advancement of white native Americans. Simmons also organized two other white groups in 1915. These two groups were called the Knights of the Flaming Sword and the Caucasian Crusade. These groups, unlike the Ku Klux Klan, died out within a matter of years.
The Ku Klux Klan grew rapidly and they had more than 2 million members in the USA in the mid-1920\'s. In 1924 they had most members they had ever had before This new Klan had a different focus than the earlier Klan. They were against, not only blacks, but also against groups considered to be un-American (like any immigrants, Jews, and Roman Catholics). Although the Klan still sometimes reverted to violence of previous years,- burning crosses, torturing and murdering those who they opposed,- most of the Klan acted through peaceful means. The KKK instead became a more powerful political force as it elected many public officials.They only marched in parades, paid fee or took part in rallies where crosses were burned. However, eventually the organization became weakened by disagreements among the leadership and because of public criticism of Klan violence.Imperial Wizard James A. Colescott ordered the second disbandment and in 1944 the Ku Klux Klan had faded out again, it ceased to exist as a national organization.
Third Era (1946-1974)
The Klan was revived again in 1946 by an Atlanta physician, Samuel Green, having no national organization. However, shortly after Green\'s death in 1949, the Klan split into many smaller groups. In the USA the United Nations, the television media, and a radical government policy of forced integration under the guise of the Civil Rights movement were created. During the 1960\'s, the Civil Rights movement started and a new wave of violence by the Ku Klux Klan was brought about. In Mississippi, three civil rights leaders were killed; in Birmingham, Alabama a church was bombed, killing four black girls. President Lyndon B. Johnson used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to probe the Ku Klux Klan and put some Klan members to prison. Accordingly Klan membership fell to about 5,000 by the early 1970\'s.
Elements of the Unified Conspiracy Theory, which have been rediscovered by the \"Patriot-Militia\" movement of the 1990s, had been originally compiled during the Third Era by the Ku Klux Klan.
Fourth Era (1974-1980)
Beginning in the mid-1970\'s, Ku Klux Klan groups started to get a more respectable image. Some accepted women as members and set up youth groups. The KKK regarded to whites who resented both special programs designed to help blacks and job competition from blacks and recent immigrants. There are about 15 separate organizations, as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, and the National Klan.
As forced desegregation programs gave way to \"Affirmative Action\" and the advancement of blacks and minorities over whites, David Duke coming from Louisiana created a new and positive image for the Klan. He presented the statement of equal rights for whites,and that the Ku Klux had to promote the interests, ideals and
culture of white native Americans. The media and public promotion were promoted, and did quite a lot to destroy the image of respectability, repeating its shibboleth that the Ku Klux were nothing but bigots and terrorists.
Fifth Era (1981-PRESENT)
By 1980, Klan membership rose to about 10,000 members. In 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, Klan members killed five anti-Klan demonstrators. In Mobile, Alabama, there was an incident where Klan members murdered a black youth. Former Green Beret Glenn Miller organized the White Patriot Party in North Carolina, and was prosecuted by Morris Dees in 1986 on bogus weapons charges. With the emergence of gun-control under the Clinton Administration, the Christian-Patriot movement swapped across America, as mostly-rural whites began to realize that the USA had been betrayed. The Patriots denied any connection with the Klan, and proved they were not \"racist\", they are, in fact, a rebirth of the Ku Klux spirit.
Because of this violent activity, interest in the Ku Klux Klan has declined. The KKK membership in the South. reduced to about 6,000 by the late 1980\'s.
The Ku Klux Klan in the Fifth Era of the Klan uses the title the Invisible Empire. Their name is no longer known just as the Ku Klux Klan, they call themselves Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Some of the views of the Klan of today are
Assure new America\'s White Christian heritage.
Return prayer to school.
Stop all non-white immigration.
Drug testing for all welfare recipients.
Isolate all AIDS carriers.
No free trade that harms the American worker and employ a policy of protectionism.
Workfare, not welfare.
Troops on our southern border to stop the entry of illegals.
Stop reverse discrimination
Declare all laws attempting to enforce gun control as unconstitutional.
Thinking about these facts we can say that the Ku Klux Klan is still alive today.
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