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Whereas the original KKK was a violent, racist organization born in the post Civil War South, the modern Klan was driven by somewhat different concerns. Many white, lower middle-class, Protestant Americans in the North and Midwest were fearful that immigrants were changing traditional American culture, and they responded with anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism.
The revival of the Klan was inspired by Birth of a Nation , director D. The movie was one of the most controversial films ever made and was based on the novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Simmons and a few friends burned a cross on Stone Mountain near Atlanta to signal the revival of the Klan as one of many fraternal groups, but it harkened to an earlier Ku Klux Klan that often fought violently against rights for freed African Americans in the post-Civil War Reconstruction South. In a scene from the film Birth of a Nation , Klansmen capture Gus, played by a white actor in blackface.
The film is considered one of the most controversial of all time and is credited with igniting the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan during the s and s. As KKK membership grew into the millions by the early s, the money poured in. It supported the recently enacted national prohibition on alcoholic beverages and opposed labor unions, immigration, and foreign entanglements such as the League of Nations. Klan members and leadership disliked Wall Street and big business in general, and chain stores in particular.
Unlike the early Klan or the Klan of the s , the s Klan, although founded in the South, was not exclusively southern. It boasted support nationwide, primarily in the Midwest. In , more than 40 percent of all Klan membership could be found in just three states Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois , but the Klan also secured significant support in Maine, Colorado, and Oregon where it helped ban Catholic schools. It enjoyed a small-town base but also appealed to big-city Protestants, with large chapters in such cities as Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Indianapolis.
In the South, most members were Democrats. In the North such as in Indiana , most were Republicans, though Milwaukee had a fairly large Socialist membership. Today the Klan is only one small outfit among white nationalists, but for a century and a half it was the leading voice of bigotry in the US. Thus its history, particularly that of its s avatar, can offer some insight into the current resurgence of the Klan and its kindred organisations.
They all grow out of a long American tradition. The KKK first arose in the southern states immediately after the Civil War —5 — a secret, masked society dedicated to maintaining white supremacy, which entailed ensuring that newly emancipated African Americans would never be able to access political, civil or economic rights.
By , the federal government had abdicated its responsibility to guarantee the rights of the freedpeople, which meant the Klan faced no effective opposition. The Klan of this era was a terrorist group in the precise meaning of that term: it used torture and murder especially lynching , as well as economic coercion, not only to punish individuals who seemed to challenge white power but also to terrorise the whole black population. Much of its success rested on constructing fear.
This was accomplished through a repetitive chorus of false allegations, typically about black male sexual aggression toward white women; these accusations drew white women into a fearfulness that then further legitimated white terrorism. That excuse was bogus: police and sheriffs colluded with and often joined the Klan, ensuring that it could operate with impunity. Those who justified inaction also claimed that the Klan robes, hoods, and masks made it impossible to identify Klan members. This too was not actually true: in most communities the identities of Klansmen were well known.
The KKK remained confined to the South until the s, when it exploded into a mass movement in the northern states. Spurred by the film The Birth of a Nation , which depicted savage, bestial African Americans intent on raping white women who were rescued by the heroic KKK, it amassed somewhere between 3 and 6 million members. The KKK was a very loosely organized group, and hierarchical structures beyond the county level probably were more symbolic than operational.
Each congressional district had a Grand Titan and under him were Grand Giants for each county. Former Klansman John C. In each militia district of his county Reed organized dens of ten or so men, most Confederate veterans with a good horse and a gun. Thus, Reed as a county leader had at his disposal more than armed and mounted men.
Most Klan action was designed to intimidate Black voters and white supporters of the Republican Party. Klansmen might parade on horseback at night dressed in outlandish costumes, or they might threaten specific Republican leaders with violence. Increasingly during these actions became violent, ranging from whippings of Black women perceived as insolent to the assassination of Republican leaders. It is impossible to untangle local vigilante violence from political terrorism by the organized Klan, but it is clear that attacks on Blacks became common during The political terrorism was effective.
While Republican gubernatorial candidate Rufus Bullock carried the state in April elections, by November Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour was in the lead. In some counties the contrast was incredible. In Columbia County armed Klansmen not only intimidated voters but even cowed federal soldiers sent to guard the polling place. In , Republican governor Edmund J. Davis called on the legislature to form a State Police and a militia, and the measures were passed in June and July.
The following year the legislature passed another law making it illegal to be armed and disguised. The Texas Klan began to wane in In March of that year, the chief executive, or "grand wizard," proclaimed a disbanding of the group.
Many of the local chapters followed the lead of the statewide organization, but isolated pockets of Klan activity were still observable in the early s. On June 8, , the Daily State Journal , a Radical Republican newspaper, reported that a Klan parade had been held in McKinney, and in July the same paper reported that masked men had beaten a White teacher of a Black school in Bastrop.
Such incidents, however, became less common after mid, and the organization in general ceased to exist after Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act of April , which permitted the president of the United States to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in cases of secret conspiracy. The resurgent group began in Georgia, where William J. Simmons dedicated it at a cross-burning on Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving eve, The success of D.
Griffith's epic film of the same year, Birth of a Nation , based on Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman , with its vivid portrayals of Radical Republican excesses, had helped to fan the flames of racial animosity, which had smoldered since Reconstruction. Also fueling the fire was a growing American nativist movement with its concomitant distrust of Catholics, Jews, African Americans , and other "foreign" elements. At first the new Klan grew slowly, but in the aftermath of World War I, the organization spread rapidly, not only in the South and Southwest, but also through the Midwest and to both coasts.
At its height in the early s the new Klan boasted some two million members. As before, its members or those posing as Klansmen perpetrated acts of violence, and although atrocities were committed across the nation, they were generally concentrated in the South. Some Texans were receptive to the Klan's angry and insular message, and by the early s membership in the state organization numbered in the tens of thousands.
Hooded legions paraded in Texas cities and towns, and cross-burnings, intended to show the power of the "invisible empire," became all too common. The revived Klan's main public appeal was as a fraternal lodge, a refuge for White, Protestant America.
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