A History of the KKK

A few years back, one forgettable Hollywood movie made an attempt at making an original joke by throwing a white man in a gathering of black people. As the white man proceeds to get on with the groove, he accidentally puts on a large, pointed white hood and gets thrown out by a group of incensed black men.

While the scene might elicit an instinctive laugh, the joke really implies something quite serious; a century after the American Civil War, the shadow of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) is still present, still remembered. For many, the Klan and their reign of terror is anything but funny.

Ku Klux Klan has become the name associated with and assumed by groups then and now who vehemently advocate racism. Traditionally, the KKK has been connected to the nationwide discrimination and violence against blacks in the late 19^th century.

Contrary to what some might believe, the KKK has not been in existence as one continuous organization. Confederate veterans in Tennessee organized the first Ku Klux Klan in December of 1866. What was once intended to be a mere social club quickly became a vehicle for vitriolic resistance to the Reconstruction and to black emancipation. The KKK sought to restore white supremacy and suppress the growing political and social freedom of the once former black slave race. Although the power and influence of the first KKK lasted for only a little over a year, with the following years regarded as a period of decline for their group, the atrocities they committed against blacks and their white sympathizers within those two years have etched them permanently on the historical records of infamy. Dressed in sheets and robes to intimidate their victims and mask their identities, Klansman rode into the night to wage their reign of terror

In the 1870s, President Ulysses Grant permanently outlawed the first KKK through the Civil Rights Act of 1971. Even after this legal action however, the more violent among the KKK continued to carry on acts of racial violence. The most chilling of which was the massacre at Colfax in 1873 which found 280 blacks dead at sunset on an Easter Sunday. Even with the government's move to suppress Klan activities, the Klan continued to sow its message of violence and hatred.

In 1915, inspired by the film The Birth of a Nation which exalted the first Klan, the second formal Ku Klux Klan was born. In contrast with the first Klan, the second Klan was more organized, with provisions for the organization of local chapters. This Klan continued the first Klan's attempts to curtail the freedom of the blacks especially in such areas as education, business and suffrage. Aside from this, the second clan included in its agenda anti-Semitism, racism and anti-Catholicism.

When the second Klan eventually disbanded, some smaller autonomous groups reorganized themselves, took up the mission of the KKK and began using the name of the Klan. To date, there a few thousand whites still profess to be members of the KKK. Although the influence of the KKK has long been considered dead, its oppressive shadow is still very much present, if only to remind us that racism and bigotry are still very much a part of our modern lives.