The Ku Klux Klan
1st- Matt Galea, Allan Wallander, Phillip Sowders
The Start of the KKK
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), informally known as the Klan or the "Hooded Order", is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy,white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism.After the civil war, Confederate General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest formed the group, directing most efforts at terrorizing the newly freed slaves. Although a new form of the group arouse in the 1920s. This group was anti everything, attacking Jews, Catholics, African Americans, and immigrants mainly.
The Klan during the 1920s
In the early 1920s, Klan participation rose. This was heavily spurred by a change made by Bessie Tyler and Edward Clark that gave part of an initiates entrance fee to the person who recruited them. The Klan was made up of many normal citizens such as farmers and skills men. The klan was very open in its activities, and held strong political influence in the 1920s. At one point in 1924 the klan claimed half of the state legislatures and held strong swing in the presidential election. At the height of the Klan, it had more than 4 million members throughout the entire nation. By the time the Klan's fall, its members dwindled to around 5,000.
The Fall of the Klan
The Great Depression in the 1930s depleted the Klan’s membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward. In the early 1990s, the Klan was estimated to have between 6,000 and 10,000 active members, mostly in the Deep South.