The Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan (Also known as the "KKK", the "Klan", and the "Hooded Order".) is the name of three very distinct past and present organizations revolving around advocating extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration.

The "First" KKK
The KKK was created in Pulanski, Tennesee in the year 1865 by three Civil War Confederacy veterans. Klan groups spread throughout the south, however there was little organization beyond the local levels. (Understandable, as it was the 19th century and there wasn't a whole lot of technology that would allow such organization) As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freed slaves and their allies. They wished for the restoration of white supremacy and did so with threats and violence including murder against Black and White Republicans.

In 1870 and 1871 the government passed the Force Acts, which were designed to combat the actions of the Klan. The prosecution of Klan crimes and the enforcement of the Force Acts supressed the activity of the Klan.

The "Second" KKK
In 1915, the second coming of the KKK was founded in Atlanta, Georgia. Starting in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of recruiting (which paid most of the initiation fee and costume charges as commissions to the organizers) and grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions of urban industrialization and vastly increased immigration, its membership grew most rapidly in cities, and spread out of the South to the   Midwest  and   West. The second KKK preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of   prohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the   Catholic Church, using anti-Catholicism  and   nativism.   Its appeal was directed exclusively at white Protestants. <span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:22.399999618530273px;">  <span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:22.399999618530273px;">Some local groups took part in attacks on private houses and carried out other violent activities. The violent episodes were generally in the South.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded away in the 1940s.

The "Third" KKK
<p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The "Ku Klux Klan" name was used by a numerous independent local groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. <h2 style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Horrible things the KKK did during the Civil Rights movements


 * Lynching
 * Cross Burnings
 * Destroyed any property of African Americans that they could
 * Actively attempted to stop African Americans from voting