Ku Klux Klan

"KKK" redirects here. For other uses, see KKK (disambiguation).
"Klansman" redirects here. For the movie, see The Klansman.

Members of the second Ku Klux Klan at a rally in 1923.Part of a series of articles on
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Ku Klux Klan (KKK) (pronounced "koo klux klann" or "kyoo klux klann") is the name of organizations in the United States that have advocated white supremacy, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, anti-Communism and nativism. These organizations have used terrorism, violence, and acts of intimidation, such as cross burning and lynching, to oppress African Americans and other social or ethnic groups.

The Klan's first incarnation was in 1866. Founded in Tennessee by veterans of the Confederate Army, its main purpose was to resist changes in power that came with the end of the war and Reconstruction, especially suffrage and equal rights of citizenship for African Americans. The insurgents, a variety of disaffected men, carried on war by other means. Members focused on intimidating "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" as well as terrorizing and attacking freedmen. A rapid reaction to the murders set in, and the Klan's leaders officially disowned violence. Declining from 1868 to 1870, the Klan was destroyed in the early 1870s by President Ulysses S. Grant's vigorous action under the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act). Periodic community violence erupted against African Americans and white Republicans.

In 1915, a second group was founded in Atlanta, Georgia using the same name. Inspired by power of the modern mass media, including sensational newspaper and film, it attracted recruits, mostly in cities, because of anxieties and tensions aroused over the massive social changes of rapid urbanization, migration of rural whites and African Americans to cities, as well as massive immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century by mostly rural peoples from Southern and Eastern Europe, and the postwar climate of returning veterans after WWI. These different groups met in the cities, and confronted each other in competition for jobs, housing and social place.[1]

The movement of the 1910s and 1920s gained the most membership, but also diminished sharply in power by the late 1920s. The second KKK was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure, that paid thousands of men to organize local chapters all over the country. At its peak in the early 1920s, the organization was active in numerous cities of the Midwest and far west as well as the South, such as Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, Portland, Denver, Atlanta, Memphis and Knoxville, and Dallas.[2]

Estimates varied as to membership, from 2-5 million men.[3] Higher estimates of 4-5 million represented about 15% of the nation's eligible population.[4]Some local groups took part in lynchings and other violent activities. Its popularity fell rapidly in the late 1920s. Membership fell further during World War II because of scandals resulting from prominent members' crimes and support of the Nazis.

A third movement arose in Atlanta, in 1946. It has been fragmented and the name "Ku Klux Klan" taken by many unrelated groups. In the 1950s and 1960s, their fears led to violent resistance to the struggle for equal legal and civil rights for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Members of Klan groups were convicted of murder and manslaughter in the deaths of civil rights workers and children (such as in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama, the assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers, and the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi). While observers estimate there may be as many as 179 Klan chapters nationwide, they have limited membership, estimated at 5,000 - 8,000 people. [5] [6] Law enforcement officials have classified these as hate groups. Political, religious leaders, and mainstream media have all repudiated the Klan.

Contents [hide]
1 First Klan 1865-1874
1.1 Creation
1.2 Activities
1.3 Decline and suppression
2 Second Klan 1915-1944
2.1 Creation
2.2 Membership
2.3 Activities
2.4 Political influence
2.5 Decline
3 Later Klans
4 Present
5 Vocabulary
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links



First Klan 1865-1874

Creation

A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch carpetbaggers, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, 1868
A political cartoon depicting the KKK and the Democratic Party as continuations of the Confederacy
Nathan Bedford ForrestThe original Ku Klux Klan was created after the end of the American Civil War on December 24, 1865, by six educated, middle-class Confederate veterans[7] from Pulaski, Tennessee, who were bored by inaction and resented the power shifts of the war. The name was constructed by combining the Greek "kyklos" (κυκλος,circle) with "clan"[8]

The Ku Klux Klan soon spread into nearly every southern state, and launched a "reign of terror" against Republican leaders both black and white. Those assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who had served in constitutional conventions."[9]

In an 1867 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, organizers tried to create a hierarchical organization. George Gordon, a former Confederate brigadier general, wrote much of the proposals.[citation needed] The "Prescript" included the goals of the Klan and questions to be asked of applicants for membership. These confirmed its intention to resist Reconstruction and efforts to give freedmen legal rights. An applicant could not be a Republican, Union Army veteran, or member of the Loyal League; he had to "oppose to Negro equality both social and political;" and be in favor of "a white man's government," to "maintain the constitutional rights of the South," to support "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights." [10] Obviously this excluded the legal rights of four million African American Southern people. Local units did not accept the Prescript or hierarchical organization.


Activities
The Klan used violence and intimidation to control the political and social status of the freed slaves. Specifically, it attempted to curb black education, economic advancement, voting rights, and the right to bear arms. Although the Klan's focus was mainly African Americans, they also targeted Southern white Republicans for intimidation. The violence often was successful in making people afraid to act. For example, in the April 1868 Georgia gubernatorial election, Columbia County voters cast 1,222 votes for Republican Rufus Bullock. By the November presidential election, voting declined drastically. Only one voter in the county dared to vote for the Republican candidate Ulysses S. Grant.[11]

Klan intimidation was often targeted at schoolteachers and operatives of the Federal Freedmen's Bureau. Black members of the Loyal Leagues were also the frequent targets of Klan raids. In a typical episode in Mississippi, according to the Congressional inquiry[12]

“ One of those teachers, (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in Monroe County, was visited ... between one and two o'clock in the morning on March, 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her "gentlemanly and quietly" but complained of the heavy school-tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county. ”

In other violence, Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in a single county in Florida, and hundreds more in other counties.[13]

In 1868 former general George Gordon tried to improve the Klan's image in a public statement.[14]

He claimed the Klan had to confiscate firearms from freedmen for protection. As veterans of the Union Army, the freedmen who were armed intended to keep their weapons for protection. Gordon warned that the Klan had been "fired into three times," and would seek retribution.
Gordon claimed the Klan was a peaceful organization. This was disproved by its actions, but the Klan attempted to avoid prosecution.
Gordon suggested people who were not members had carried out violence. The Klan's masquerade allowed people to hide their identities when committing violence. It was convenient, however, for the higher levels of the organization to disclaim responsibility for such acts. The secretive, decentralized nature of the Klan made membership difficult to prove.
The Klan acted as what we in the 21st century would recognize as an insurgent, quasi-military force. It served the interests of the planter class and disaffected whites who desired the restoration of white supremacy and political control.[15] In 1869 a Federal grand jury determined that the Klan was a "terrorist organization." It issued hundreds of indictments for crimes of violence and terrorism. Klan members were prosecuted. Many fled jurisdictions, particularly in South Carolina.[16]


Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family.Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Interview with Nathan Bedford ForrestBy 1868, only two years after the Klan's creation, its activity began to decrease[17]. Gordon's campaign showed it trying to become less political and to avoid prosecution. Influential southern Democrats began to consider the Klan a liability, an excuse for the Federal government to retain power over the South.[18] Georgian B.H. Hill made the exaggerated claim "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain."[19]

In an 1868 newspaper interview,[20] Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest nonetheless boasted that the Klan had 550,000 members in the South. Although he denied membership, Forrest said he was "in sympathy". He further claimed the Klan did not consider freedmen the enemy so much as the Loyal Leagues, Republican state governments like Tennessee governor Brownlow's, and other carpetbaggers and scalawags.

The Klan targeted these white groups because they were allies of the freedmen. The Klan also terrorized schoolteachers brought south by the Freedmen's Bureau. Many white southerners believed, for example, that freedmen voted for the Republican Party only because they had been hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues. Black members of the Loyal Leagues were also the frequent targets of Klan raids.


Decline and suppression
The first Klan was never centrally organized. As a secret or "invisible" group, it had no membership rosters, no dues, no newspapers, no spokesmen, no chapters, no local officers, no state or national officials. It grew because of white people's fears about the future and resistance to changes brought about by their defeat in the Civil War.

As historian Elaine Frantz Parsons discovered:[21]

“ Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of antiblack vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, bored young men, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen. ”

Gov. William Holden of North Carolina attempted to use the state militia against the Klan and was removed from office.One Klan official complained that his own "so-called 'Chief'-ship was purely nominal, I having not the least authority over the reckless young country boys who were most active in 'night-riding,' whipping, etc., all of which was outside of the intent and constitution of the Klan..." Forrest ordered the Klan to disband in 1869, stating that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace."[22] Because of the organization's lack of control, this statement was more a symptom of the Klan's decline than a cause of it. Historian Stanley Horn wrote in 1939 that "generally speaking, the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment."[23]

Although the Klan was used as a mask for nonpolitical crimes, Republican state and local governments did not know how to counter it. Leaders were hesitant to use black militia against the Klan because of fears of heightening tensions. [24] When Republican Governor of North Carolina William Woods Holden called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, the result was a white backlash. It contributed to the shift which led to a Democratic takeover of the legislature, and to Holden's impeachment and removal from office.[25]

Despite the Klan's power, there was resistance. "Occasionally, organized groups successfully confronted the Klan. White Union Army veterans in mountainous Blount County, Alabama, organized 'the anti-Ku Klux,' which put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning black churches and schools. Armed blacks patrolled the streets of Bennettsville, South Carolina, to prevent Klan assaults."[26]

Although Democrats at the national level liked to question the existence of the Klan, Congress and some states took action to reduce the Klan's hold.[27] In January 1871, Pennsylvania Republican Senator John Scott convened a committee that heard testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan atrocities. By then many southern states had already passed anti-Klan legislation. In February Congressman (and former Union General) Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts introduced Federal legislation modeled on southern examples.[28] The tide turned in favor of the bill when Congress received reports of the Governor of South Carolina's appeal for Federal troops, followed by reports of a riot and massacre in a Meridian, Mississippi, courthouse. [29]


Benjamin Franklin Butler wrote the 1871 Klan Act.In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act, Butler's legislation. Together with the 1870 Force Act, it was used to enforce civil rights provisions of the constitution. Federal troops were used rather than state militias, and Klansmen were prosecuted in Federal court. There freedmen had a chance to be selected for the juries.[24] Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned. Habeas corpus was suspended in nine counties in South Carolina. These efforts were so successful that the Klan was destroyed in South Carolina[30] and decimated throughout the South, where it was already in decline. Attorney General Amos Tappan Akerman led the prosecutions.

The federal government reduced its actions under the Klan Act, ca. 1871–74, as the Klan ended. [31] In some areas local groups such as the White League, Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs continued intimidation and murder of black voters, and similar activities. [32] The Klan had disrupted the early years of freedmen's suffrage.

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 on Wikisource
It took several more years for all Klan elements to be destroyed. On Easter Sunday, 1873, the bloodiest single instance of racial violence in the Reconstruction era happened during the Colfax massacre in Louisiana. The massacre began when black citizens fought back against the Klan and its allies in the White League. As Louisiana black teacher and legislator John G. Lewis later remarked, "They attempted (armed self-defense) in Colfax. The result was that on Easter Sunday of 1873, when the sun went down that night, it went down on the corpses of two hundred and eighty negroes."[33]

In 1882, long after the end of the first Klan, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Harris that the Klan Act was partially unconstitutional, saying that Congress's power under the Fourteenth Amendment did not extend to private conspiracies.[34]

In the mid-20th century, the Force Act and the Klan Act were invoked during the Civil Rights Movement, including the first prosecution of the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner;[35] the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo;[36] and Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic in 1991.


Second Klan 1915-1944
In the four and a half decades after the suppression of the first Ku Klux Klan, whites in the South continued to act against African Americans. Jim Crow laws reduced their freedom of movement, labor and civil rights. They were segregated from whites in public life. Their public schools and social welfare institutions were chronically underfunded. By the turn of the century most Southern states had passed legislation to disfranchise African Americans. Race relations in the United States remained very bad—the nadir of American race relations is often placed in this era. According to Tuskegee Institute, the 1890s was the peak decade for lynchings, before disfranchisement utterly removed their chance to exercise suffrage and basic rights as taxpaying citizens.


Creation

Movie poster for The Birth of a NationThe founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915 in Atlanta followed events that demonstrated the power of modern mass media. The chief reasons for the growth of the second Ku Klux Klan, however, were the dislocations and rapid changes in society. Essentially people joined the Klan because of fears: fears and anxieties related to the dramatic social changes resulting from rapid urbanization, migration of southern whites and African Americans to cities in the South and North, and new urban immigrants to the Midwest and North from Southern and Eastern Europe. Populations of different groups met in the cities and competed for jobs (livelihood), overcrowded housing, and social place. Often the competition was most severe among people in the lowest social classes, who used violence to try to maintain diminishing power and hold back change.

Two closely related events sparked the resurgence in Atlanta:

The film The Birth of a Nation glorified the first Klan and was released nationally.
The trial and lynching of Leo Frank, told by sensational local media accounts. He was a Jewish man accused of rape and murder of a young white factory worker Mary Phagan.
Most of the first local Atlanta Klan founders came from a group organized to lynch Leo Frank. They called themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan. The new Klan organization borrowed elements from the fictionalized version of The Birth of a Nation.


An illustration from The Clansman: "Take dat f'um yo equal—"(See The Birth of a Nation)

D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation glorified the original Klan, by then a fading memory. His film was based on the book and play The Clansman and the book The Leopard's Spots, all by Thomas Dixon. Dixon stated his purpose was "to revolutionize northern sentiment by a presentation of history that would transform every man in my audience into a good Democrat!" At a preview in Los Angeles, the studio hired actors dressed as Klansmen were hired to ride by as a promotional stunt. At the film's later official premiere in Atlanta, members of the newly reorganized Klan rode up and down the street. In some cases, enthusiastic southern audiences fired their guns into the screen.[37]

The modern Klan borrowed its iconography, including the standardized white costume and the burning cross, from imitating the film. The film's imagery was based on Dixon's romanticized concept of old Scotland. This was what he understood from novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott, rather than on facts about the Reconstruction Klan.[citation needed]


A quote from former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson used in the filmThe Birth of a Nation included quotes from Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People,[38] for example, "The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation ... until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country." When Wilson saw the film in a special White House screening on February 18, 1915, he was reported to exclaim, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."[39]As Southerners, Wilson's family sympathized with the Confederacy during the Civil War and cared for wounded Confederate soldiers at a church. When he was a young man, his party had vigorously opposed Reconstruction. As President, Wilson marred his reputation by segregating Federal government offices and positions for the first time since Reconstruction.

Given the film's strong Democratic partisan message, Wilson's statement appeared to support the Klan. His "regret" seemed to refer to Reconstruction. Wilson confirmed his enthusiasm for the film in correspondence with Griffith. Widely reported, Wilson's remarks ignited controversy. Wilson tried to remain aloof, but finally, on April 30, he issued a non-denial denial.[40] His endorsement of the film helped Griffith to defend it against legal attack by the NAACP.


The lynching of Leo Frank(See Leo Frank)

The murder of Mary Phagan, a factory girl employed near Atlanta, prompted sensational newspaper coverage when Leo Frank, the Jewish factory manager, was brought to trial. The exaggerated accounts heightened social tensions and led to Frank's conviction and lynching. Frank was convicted of murder after what was nationally considered a flawed trial in Georgia. His appeals failed in the Supreme Court. In his dissent, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes condemned the intimidation of the jury as failing to provide due process of law. After the Georgia governor commuted Frank's sentence to life imprisonment, a mob calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan kidnapped Frank from the prison farm where he was being held and lynched him.


Thomas E. WatsonGeorgia politician and publisher Thomas E. Watson, the editor for The Jeffersonian magazine used the Leo Frank trial to build his own political power. He led the revival of the Klan and was later elected to the U.S. Senate.

William J. Simmons led a meeting to inaugurate the "new" Klan on top of Stone Mountain near Atlanta. A few aging members of the first Klan and the Knights of Mary Phagan comprised the first members.

Simmons went back to the "Prescripts," by George Gordon, in an attempt to create a national organization.[41] The Prescript stated the Klan's purposes:[42]

First: To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs and outrages of the lawless, the violent and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of the Confederate soldiers.
Second: To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States ...
Third: To aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional laws, and to protect the people from unlawful seizure, and from trial except by their peers in conformity with the laws of the land.
"The Klan's resurgence in the 1920s partially stemmed from their role as the extreme militant wing of the temperance movement. In Arkansas, as elsewhere, the newly formed Ku Klux Klan marked bootleggers as one of the groups that needed to be purged from a morally upright community. In 1922, 200 Klansmen torched saloons that had sprung up in Union County in the wake of the oil discovery boom. The national Klan office ended up in Dallas, Texas, but Little Rock was the home of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan. The first head of this female auxiliary was a former president of the Arkansas WCTU." [43]

The KKK’s "support for Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation" (emphasis in original) [44]. There was much interaction and overlap in membership between the Klan and other prohibition supporters. For example, a top leader of the Klan, Edward Young Clarke, raised funds for both the Klan and the Anti-Saloon League. [45]


Membership

William Joseph Simmons founded the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915.Historians in recent years have obtained membership rosters of some local units and matched the names against city directory and local records to create statistical profiles of the membership. Big city newspapers often ridiculed the Klansmen as ignorant farmers. Detailed analysis from Indiana[46] shows the stereotype was false:


The Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, site of the founding of the second Klan; work was begun in 1923 and was completed in 1970.“ Indiana's Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society: they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen were Protestants, of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as fundamentalists. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church. ”

In most states where the Klan achieved the highest numbers, however, most of its members were urban, reflecting the nature of contemporary tensions. In Michigan, for instance, it was estimated that fully half the state's members lived in Detroit. Cities were the places where new members were recruited because they were the most volatile areas, with rapid growth, limited housing, and competition, tension and conflicts among white and African American migrants from the South, as well as immigrants from Europe. In the 1920s the Klan had high visibility in Atlanta, Memphis, Knoxville, and Dallas in the South; as well as Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and other cities in the Midwest; and Denver, Colorado and Portland, Oregon in the West.[47]

While the Klan was successful in recruiting, membership turned over rapidly. At its peak in the 1920s the organization included about 2-5 million people, about 15% of the nation's eligible population[48] and had chapters across the United States. There were also Klans founded in Canada, most notably in Saskatchewan, with a large Klan movement against Catholic immigrants.[49]

The Klan operated as a profit-making venture. It participated in the boom in fraternal organizations at the time. Organizers signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and bought KKK costumes. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with an area, he organized a huge rally, often with burning crosses and perhaps a ceremonial presentation of a Bible to a local Protestant minister. He left town with all the money. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations, occasionally bringing in speakers. The state and national officials had little or no control over the locals and rarely attempted to forge them into political activist groups.


Activities

The burning cross is a symbol used by the Klan to create terror. Cross burning is said to have been introduced by William J. Simmons, the founder of the second Klan in 1915.In keeping with tensions aroused by massive numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, labor unrest and related social tensions, the reorganized Klan was anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-Communist and anti-immigrant, as well as racist. These attitudes represented anxieties of the U.S. as cities rapidly developed, leading to fierce competition for housing and jobs among both white and African American migrants from rural areas, waves of new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, and labor tensions in new industries. The new Klan had higher membership in Midwest than in the South. Recruiters claimed America's problems were caused by blacks or by Jewish bankers, or by other such groups.

The new Klan had influence outside the South and at first attracted some leading politicians in several states. It also was strong in numerous cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis and Knoxville, but also Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Denver, and Portland, Oregon. The new Klan was active even in some parts of New England, where it torched an African American school in Scituate, Rhode Island.[50]

In the 1920s and 1930s a faction of the Klan called the Black Legion was active in the Midwestern U.S. Rather than wearing white robes, the Legion wore black uniforms reminiscent of pirates. The Black Legion was the most violent and zealous faction of the Klan. It was notable for targeting and assassinating communists and socialists.

Klan groups also took part in lynchings, including the murder of black WWI veterans still in their military uniforms.[51] The Klan warned African Americans to respect the white race "in whose country they are permitted to reside."[52]


Political influence

Sheet music to "We Are All Loyal Klansmen," 1923The second Ku Klux Klan rose to great prominence and spread from the South into the Midwest and Northern states and even into Canada. At its peak, Klan membership exceeded 4 million and comprised 20% of the adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, as high as 40% in some areas. Most of the membership resided in Midwestern states.

Through sympathetic elected officials, the KKK controlled the governments of Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon, in addition to some of the Southern legislatures. Klan influence was particularly strong in Indiana, where Republican Klansman Edward Jackson was elected governor in 1924, and the entire apparatus of state government was riddled with Klansmen. In another well-known example from the same year, the Klan decided to make Anaheim, California, into a model Klan city; it secretly took over the city council but was voted out in a special recall election.[53]

Klan delegates played a significant role at the pathsetting 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City, often called the "Klanbake Convention" as a result. The convention initially pitted Klan-backed candidate William Gibbs McAdoo against New York Governor Al Smith, who drew the opposition of the group because of his Catholic faith. After days of stalemates and rioting, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise. Klan delegates defeated a Democratic Party platform plank that would have condemned their organization. On July 4, 1924, thousands of Klansmen converged on a nearby field in New Jersey where they participated in cross burnings, burned effigies of Smith, and celebrated their defeat of the platform plank.

There is also evidence that in certain states, such as Alabama, the KKK was not a mere hate group and showed a genuine desire for political and social reform.[54] Because of the elite conservative political structure in Alabama, the state's Klansmen were among the foremost advocates of better public schools, effective prohibition enforcement, expanded road construction, and other "progressive" political measures. In many ways these progressive political goals, which benefited ordinary and lower class white people in the state, were the result of the Klan offering these same people their first chance to install their own political champions into office.[55] By 1925, the Klan was a powerful political force in the state, as powerful figures like J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo Black manipulated the KKK membership against the power of the "Big Mule" industrialists and Black Belt planters who had long dominated the state. Black was elected senator in 1926 and became a leading supporter of the New Deal. When he was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1937, the revelation that he was a former Klansman shocked the country, but he stayed on the court. In 1926, Bibb Graves, a former chapter head, won the governor's office with KKK members' support. He led one of the most progressive administrations in the state's history, pushing for increased education funding, better public health, new highway construction, and pro-labor legislation.

However, as a result of these political victories, KKK vigilantes, thinking they enjoyed governmental protection, launched a wave of physical terror across Alabama in 1927, targeting both blacks and whites. The Klan not only targeted people for violating racial norms but also for perceived moral lapses. In Birmingham, the Klan raided local brothels and roadhouses. In Troy, Alabama, the Klan reported to parents the names of teenagers they caught making out in cars. One local Klan group also "kidnapped a white divorcee and stripped her to her waist, tied her to a tree, and whipped her savagely."[56] The conservative elite counterattacked. Grover C. Hall, Sr., editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, began a series of editorials and articles attacking the Klan for their "racial and religious intolerance." Hall won a Pulitzer Prize for his crusade.[57] Other newspapers also kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan as violent and "un-American." Sheriffs cracked down on Klan violence. The counterattack worked; the state voted for Catholic Al Smith for president in the 1928 election, and the Klan's official membership in Alabama plunged to under six thousand by 1930.

At the peak of the Klan's political power, several highly notable political figures in the U.S. and Canada joined the Klan or flirted with membership. The list includes two Supreme Court justices and, according to evidence which is in some cases contested, possibly two presidents.


Decline
The second Klan collapsed partly as a result of the backlash against their actions and partly as a result of a scandal involving David Stephenson. He was Grand Dragon of Indiana and fourteen other states, and was convicted of the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer in a sensational trial. According to historian Leonard Moore, at the heart of the backlash to the Klan's actions and the resulting scandals was a leadership failure:[58]

“ Stephenson and the other salesmen and office seekers who maneuvered for control of Indiana's Invisible Empire lacked both the ability and the desire to use the political system to carry out the Klan's stated goals. They were disinterested in, or perhaps even unaware of, grass roots concerns within the movement. For them, the Klan had been nothing more than a means for gaining wealth and power. These marginal men had risen to the top of the hooded order because, until it became a political force, the Klan had never required strong, dedicated leadership. More established and experienced politicians who endorsed the Klan, or who pursued some of the interests of their Klan constituents, also accomplished little. Factionalism created one barrier, but many politicians had supported the Klan simply out of expedience. When charges of crime and corruption began to taint the movement, those concerned about their political futures had even less reason to work on the Klan's behalf. ”

As a result of these scandals, the Klan fell out of public favor in the 1930s and withdrew from political activity. Grand Wizard Hiram Evans sold the organization in 1939 to James Colescott, an Indiana veterinarian, and Samuel Green, an Atlanta obstetrician. They were unable to staunch the exodus of members. The Klan's image was further damaged by Colescott's association with Nazi-sympathizer organizations, the Klan's link to the 1943 Detroit Race Riot, and Klan efforts to disrupt the American war effort during World War II. In 1944, the IRS filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan, and Colescott dissolved the organization.


Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1928.Folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan after World War II and provided information on the Klan to media and law enforcement agencies. He also gave Klan material, including secret code words, to the writers of the Superman radio program. They created four episodes in which Superman took on the KKK. Kennedy's intention to strip away the Klan's mystique and trivialize the Klan's rituals and code words likely did have a negative impact on Klan recruiting and membership.[59] Kennedy eventually wrote a book based on his experiences, which became a bestseller during the 1950s and further damaged the Klan.[60]


Later Klans
After the breakup of the second Klan, the name "Ku Klux Klan" began to be used by several independent groups. The following table shows the change in the Klan's estimated membership over time.[61] (The years given in the table represent approximate time periods.)

year membership
1920 4,000,000
1924 5,000,000
1930 30,000
1970 2,000
2006 5,000

Beginning in the 1950s, individual Klan groups began to resist the civil rights movement. Predictably, Klan members committed numerous acts of violence, intimidation, and murders, including those of women and children. Among the more notorious events of this time period were:


Anthony and Viola Liuzzo, 1949The 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in Mississippi. In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of Evers' murder.
The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama, which killed four children. Four Klansmen were named as suspects. They were not prosecuted until years later. The Klan members were Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977; and Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted of murder in 2001 and 2002, respectively. The fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died before he was indicted.
The 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter in the murders.[62]
The 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo, a Southern-raised white mother of five who was visiting the South from her home in Detroit to attend a civil rights march. Liuzzo was killed while transporting Civil Rights marchers.
The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., 58, also in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Sam Bowers was convicted of Dahmer's murder. Two other Klan members were indicted with Bowers, but one died before trial, and the other's indictment was dismissed.[63]
In August 2007, James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted of the 1964 murder of two black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, based on the confession of Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards. Seale was sentenced to serve three life sentences.[64] Seale was a former Mississippi policeman and sheriff's deputy.[65]
Klan groups also killed several other people during this period. Many crimes went unreported or could not be prosecuted. For example, in 1951 Harry T. Moore, a school teacher and state director of the NAACP, died with his wife, Harriette, when their house was bombed. Even though an FBI investigation turned up several suspects, no one was prosecuted in the case. "Forty years later, a former Marine and Ku Klux Klansman told NAACP officials that he and other Klansmen had conspired with law enforcement officials to plan and carry out the murder.... According to a subsequent report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of forty black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some, like Harry Moore, were social activists whose work exposed them to danger. Most were either people who had refused to bow to racist convention or were innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random white terrorism."[66] Similarly, in 1957 Willie Edwards, Jr. was forced by Klansmen to jump from a bridge to his death in the Alabama River.[67]

While the post-war Klan groups were extremely violent, it was also a period when there was successful resistance with people pushing back against the Klan. For example, in a 1958 North Carolina incident, the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two Lumbee Native Americans who had associated with white people. When the Klan held a nighttime rally nearby, they found themselves surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbees. Gunfire was exchanged, and the Klan was routed.[68]


Violence at a Klan march in Mobile, Alabama, 1977In 1964, the FBI's COINTELPRO program began to infiltrate and disrupt the Klan. Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the Klan in 1979, reported that COINTELPRO's efforts had been highly successful in disrupting the Klan. Rival Klan factions accused each other's leaders of being FBI informants. One leader, Bill Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was later revealed to have been working for the FBI.[69]

Once the century-long struggle to achieve black voting rights in the South was won, the Klans shifted their focus to other issues. These included opposing affirmative action, immigration, and especially busing ordered by the courts in order to desegregate schools. In 1971, Klansmen used bombs to destroy ten school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. Charismatic Klansman David Duke was active in South Boston during the school busing crisis of 1974. Duke also made efforts to update the group's image, urging Klansmen to "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms." Duke was leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 until he resigned in 1978. He ran for the Louisiana State Senate in 1975 while he was a Klan member.

In 1980, Duke formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People, a white nationalist political organization. He was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989 as a Republican, even though the party threw its support to a different Republican candidate, John Treen, a brother of former Governor David C. Treen. Duke served less than one term in the legislature because he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1991. He was not the first former Klansman to run for governor of Louisiana. A. Roswell Thompson, a Klan wizard who operated a taxi stand in New Orleans, ran in both the 1959 and 1963 Democratic gubernatorial primaries but received few votes.


An inflammatory cartoon that was used as evidence in the civil trial resulting from Michael Donald's murderIn this period, resistance to the Klan became more common. Thompson reported that in his brief membership in the Klan, his truck was shot at, he was yelled at by black children, and a Klan rally which he attended turned into a riot when black soldiers on an adjacent military base taunted the Klansmen. Attempts by the Klan to march were often met with counterprotests, and violence sometimes ensued.


The lynching of Michael Donald, 1981Vulnerability to lawsuits has encouraged the trend away from central organization. For example, the lynching of Michael Donald in 1981 led to a civil suit that bankrupted one Klan group, the United Klans of America.[70] Thompson related how many Klan leaders who appeared indifferent to the threat of arrest showed great concern about a series of multimillion-dollar lawsuits brought against them as individuals by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a result of a shootout between Klansmen and a group of African Americans. They curtailed their activities to conserve money for defense against the suits. Lawsuits were also used as tools by the Klan, however. The paperback publication of Thompson's book was canceled because of a libel suit brought by the Klan.


Present

KKK members displaying the Nazi salute and advocating Holocaust denial.Although often still discussed in contemporary American politics as representing the quintessential "fringe" end of the far-right spectrum, today the group only exists in the form of isolated, scattered groups with a total membership numbering no more than a few thousand.[71] In a 2002 report on "Extremism in America", the Jewish Anti-Defamation League wrote "Today, there is no such thing as the Ku Klux Klan. Fragmentation, decentralization and decline have continued unabated." However, they also noted that the "need for justification runs deep in the disaffected and is unlikely to disappear, regardless of how low the Klan's fortunes eventually sink."[72] Since late 2006 the Anti-Defamation League has revised its assessment of the Ku Klux Klan, claiming that "The Ku Klux Klan, which just a few years ago seemed static or even moribund [...], has experienced a surprising and troubling resurgence due to the successful exploitation of hot-button issues including immigration, gay marriage and urban crime".[73]

Today the only known former member of the Klan to hold a federal office in the United States is Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who says he "deeply regrets" joining the Klan over half a century ago, when he was about 24 years old.

Some of the larger KKK organizations currently operating include:

Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, prevalent in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and other areas of the Southeastern U.S.
Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan[74]
Imperial Klans of America
Knights of the White Kamelia
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by National Director Pastor Thom Robb, and based in Zinc, Arkansas. Claims to be biggest Klan organization in America today.
There are also numerous smaller organizations using the Klan name.[75] As of 2005, there were an estimated 3,000 Klan members, divided between estimates of 100[76] and 158 chapters of a variety of splinter organizations, about two-thirds of which were in former Confederate states. The other third are primarily in the Midwest.[77][78][79] Despite the large number of rival KKKs, the media and popular discourse generally speaks of the Ku Klux Klan, as if there was only one organization.

The ACLU has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their rights to free speech under First Amendment: to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, and their right to field political candidates.

In a July 2005 incident, a Hispanic man's house was burned down in Hamilton, Ohio, after accusations that he sexually assaulted a nine-year-old white girl. Klan members in Klan robes showed up afterward to distribute pamphlets. In May 2006, a Ku Klux Klan group led an anti-immigration march in Russellville, Alabama.[80]


Vocabulary
Membership in the Klan is secret, and the Klan, like many fraternal organizations, has signs members can use to recognize one another. A member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) in conversation to surreptitiously identify himself to another potential member. The response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the greeting.[81]

Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many words[82] beginning with "KL" including:

Klabee: treasurers
Kleagle: recruiter
Klecktoken: initiation fee
Kligrapp: secretary
Klonvocation: gathering
Kloran: ritual book
Kloreroe: delegate
Kludd: chaplain
All of the above terminology was created by William Simmons, as part of his 1915 revival of the Klan. The Reconstruction-era Klan used different titles; the only titles to carry over were "Wizard" (or Imperial Wizard) for the overall leader of the Klan, "Night Hawk" for the official in charge of security, and a few others, mostly for regional officers of the organization.


See also
American Protective Association
History of the United States (1865–1918)
Johnny Lee Clary
Jim Crow laws
Knights of the Golden Circle
Ku Klux Klan regalia and insignia
Silent Brotherhood
Terrorism
Wide Awakes
Notable alleged Ku Klux Klan members in national politics
Hugo Black
WKKK, KKK auxiliaries
The Birth of a Nation
The Clansman
The Leopard's Spots
The Five Orange Pips
Christian Terrorism
Timeline of Racial Tension in Omaha, Nebraska

Notes
^ Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967;reprint Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1992
^ Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967; reprint, Chicago: Elephant Paperback, 1992.
^ Jackson, Ibid.,vii
^ According to the 1920 census, the population of white males 18 years and older was about 31 million. Many of these men would have been ineligible for membership, however, because they were immigrants, Jews, or Roman Catholics. Klan membership peaked in the mid-1920s at about 4–5 million: The Ku Klux Klan, a brief biography!, accessed February 19, 2007.
^ ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES
^ Anti-immigrant sentiments fuel Ku Klux Klan resurgence
^ Horn, 1939, p. 9. The founders were John C. Lester, John B. Kennedy, James R. Crowe, Frank O. McCord, Richard R. Reed, and J. Calvin Jones
^ Horn, 1939, p. 11, states that Reed proposed "κύκλος" ("kyklos") and Kennedy added "clan." Wade, 1987, p. 33 says Kennedy came up with both words, but Crowe suggested transforming "κύκλος" into "kuklux."
^ Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 by Eric Foner, Perennial (HarperCollins), March 1989, p. 342.
^ Ku Klux Klan, Organization and Principles, 1868
^ Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era, accessed February 19, 2007.
^ History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. Volume: 7. by James Ford Rhodes, 1920, pages 157–158
^ The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida by Michael Newton, pp.1–30. Newton quotes from the Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Enquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States. Vol. 13. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1872. Among historians of the Klan, this volume is also known as "The KKK testimony."
^ Horn, 1939.
^ Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 by Eric Foner, Perennial (HarperCollins), March 1989, p. 426.
^ White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction by Allen W. Trelease, Louisiana State University Press (Reprint edition) April 1995.
^ Horn, 1939, p. 375.
^ Wade, 1987, p. 102.
^ Horn, 1939, p. 375.
^ Cincinnati 'Commercial', August 28, 1868, quoted in Wade, 1987. Full text of the interview on wikisource.
^ Parsons, Elaine Frantz, "Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan." The Journal of American History 92.3, 2005, page 816
^ quotes from Wade, 1987.
^ Horn, 1939, p. 360.
^ a b The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow — The enforcement acts (1870–1871), accessed February 19, 2006.
^ Wade, 1987, p. 85.
^ Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 by Eric Foner, Perennial (HarperCollins), March 1989, p. 435.
^ Wade, 1987.
^ Horn, 1939, p. 373.
^ Wade, 1987, p. 88.
^ Wade, 1987, p. 102.
^ Wade, 1987, p. 109, writes that by ca. 1871–1874, "For many, the lapse of the enforcement acts was justified since their reason for being — the Ku-Klux Klan — had been effectively smashed as a result of the dramatic showdown in South Carolina." Klan "costumes or regalia" had disappeared by the early 1870s (Wade, p. 109). That the Klan was entirely nonexistent for a period of decades is shown by the fact that in 1915, Simmons's refounding of the Klan was attended by only two aging "former Reconstruction Klansmen" (Wade, p. 144). Horn, a Southern historian sympathetic to the first Klan, was careful in an oral interview to distinguish it from the later "spurious Ku Klux organization which was in ill-repute — and, of course, had no connection whatsoever with the Klan of Reconstruction days." An Annotated Guide to Oral History Interviews of the Forest History Society, accessed February 19, 2006. Later historians would not agree that the Klan during Reconstruction merited sympathy. A PBS web page (accessed February 19, 2006) states that "By 1872, the Klan as an organization was broken."
^ Wade, 1987, pp. 109–110.
^ Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, p. 437, and KKK Hearings, 46th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report 693, and Joe G. Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863–1877 (Baton Rouge, 1974), p. 268–270.
^ History Lesson, Jack M. BalkinPDF (56.5 KiB), accessed February 19, 2007.
^ The Civil Rights Movement, 1964–1968, accessed February 19, 2007.
^ [1], accessed February 19, 2007.
^ Dray, 2002.
^ [2], accessed February 19, 2007.
^ Dray, 2002, p. 198. Griffith relayed the President's comments to the press, who widely reported it.
^ Wade, 1987, p. 137.
^ The Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Antisemitic Organizations: A History and Analysis by Chester L Quarles, Page 219. T
^ The quote is from the 1868 Revised Precept, from Horn, 1939.
^ Lender, Mark E. and Martin, James K. Drinking in America. New York: Free Press, 1982, p. 33
^ Prendergast, Michael L. A History of Alcohol Problem Prevention Efforts in the United States. In: Holder, Harold D. (Ed.) Control Issues in Alcohol Abuse Prevention: Strategies for States and Communities. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1987. Pp. 25-52. P. 27
^ Barr, A. Drink: A Social History of America. New York: Carroll & Graf,1999, p. 370
^ Moore, Leonard J. Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928 (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1991)
^ Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City,1915-1930
^ According to the 1920 census, the population of white males 18 years and older was about 31 million, but many of these men would have been ineligible for membership because they were immigrants, Jews, or Roman Catholics. The Ku Klux Klan, a brief biography!, accessed February 19, 2007.
^ When the KKK rode high across the Prairies by Kevin Weedmark, World Spectator, accessed February 19, 2007.
^ Robert Smith, In The 1920s the Klan Ruled the Countryside, The Rhode Island Century, The Providence Journal, 4/26/1999
^ Race and History: Selected Essays 1938–1988 by John Hope Franklin, Louisiana State University Press (reprint edition), February 1992, p. 145
^ Race and History: Selected Essays 1938–1988 by John Hope Franklin, Louisiana State University Press (reprint edition), February 1992, p. 145
^ It's been 70 years since Anaheim booted the Klan, reprinted from the Los Angeles Times
^ Feldman, Glenn. Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915–1949. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1999.
^ Rogers, William; Ward, Robert; Atkins, Leah; and Flynt, Wayne. Alabama: The History of a Deep South State. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1994. Pages 437 and 442.
^ Rogers et al. Pages 432–433.
^ Rogers et al. Page 433.
^ Moore, Leonard J. Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991, p. 186.
^ Richard von Busack, Superman Versus the KKK on the MetroActive site, accessed April 11, 2006
^ The Klan Unmasked by Stetson Kennedy, University Press of Florida, 1990.
^ . [http://www.alabamamoments.state.al.us/sec46qs.html The 20th Century Ku Klux Klan in Alabama], The Ku Klux Klan, a brief biography!, History of the Ku Klux Klan, What is the KKK?, Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century, all retrieved August 26, 2005.
^ Mississippi verdict greeted by a generation gap by Kris Axtman. The Christian Science Monitor, June 23, 2005.
^ A Primer on Civil Rights. Accessed June 26, 2006.
^ "Seale gets 3 life terms for '64 murders" USA Today, Aug. 24, 2007
^ [http://news.findlaw.com/usatoday/docs/crights/usseale12407ind.html "Reputed Klansman, Ex-Cop, and Sheriff's Deputy Indicted For The 1964 Murders of Two Young African-American Men in Mississippi,"] U.S. v. James Ford Seale, January 24, 2007, accessed Sept 9, 2007.
^ Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South by John Egerton, Alfred a Knopf Inc, 1994, p. 562–563.
^ Justice Still Absent in Bridge Death by Major W. Cox. Accessed June 26, 2006.
^ Ingalls, 1979; January 1958 — The Lumbees face the Klan, accessed February 19, 2007.
^ Thompson, 1982.
^ [3], accessed February 19, 2007.
^ Extremism in America, Jewish Anti-Defamation League, 2002, accessed Sept. 4, 2006. According to the report, the KKK's estimated size at the moment is "No more than a few thousand, organized into slightly more than 100 units.
^ Extremism in America, Jewish Anti-Defamation League, 2002, accessed Sept. 4, 2006.
^ The Ku Klux Klan Rebounds, Anti-Defamation League.
^ Church of the American Knights of the KKK, accessed February 19, 2007.
^ [4], retrieved June 26, 2005.
^ Extremism in America, Jewish Anti-Defamation League, 2002, accessed Sept. 4, 2006.
^ Southern Poverty Law Center. Active U.S. Hate Groups in 2004. Intelligence Report. Retrieved April 5, 2005 from Active U.S. Hate Groups in 2005.
^ Church of the American Knights of the KKK, retrieved June 26, 2005.
^ What is the KKK?, retrieved August 26, 2005.
^ Klan raises anti-immigrant clamor The Montgomery Advertiser, June 5, 2006, accessed June 5, 2006.
^ A Visual Database of Extremist Symbols, Logos and Tattoos
^ Axelrod, 1997, p. 160

References
Axelrod, Alan. The International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies & Fraternal Orders, New York: Facts On File, 1997.
Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, New York: Random House, 2002.
Feldman, Glenn. Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915–1949. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1999.
Horn, Stanley F. Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871, Patterson Smith Publishing Corporation: Montclair, NJ, 1939.
Horn, born in 1889, was a Southern historian who was sympathetic to the first Klan, which, in a 1976 oral interview [5], he was careful to distinguish from the later "spurious Ku Klux organization which was in ill-repute—and, of course, had no connection whatsoever with the Klan of Reconstruction days."
Ingalls, Robert P. Hoods: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1979.
Levitt, Stephen D. and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William Morrow (2005).
Moore, Leonard J. Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928 Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Newton, Michael, and Judy Ann Newton. The Ku Klux Klan: An Encyclopedia. New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1991.
Parsons, Elaine Frantz, "Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan." The Journal of American History 92.3 (2005): 811–836.
Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. Volume: 7. (1920)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Rogers, William; Ward, Robert; Atkins, Leah; and Flynt, Wayne. Alabama: The History of a Deep South State. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1994.
Steinberg. Man From Missouri. New York: Van Rees Press, 1962.
Thompson, Jerry. My Life in the Klan, Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville. Originally published in 1982 by G.P. Putnam's Sons, ISBN 0-399-12695-3.
Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (Louisiana State University Press: 1995).
First published in 1971 and based on massive research in primary sources, this is the most comprehensive treatment of the Klan and its relationship to post-Civil War Reconstruction. Includes narrative research on other night-riding groups. Details close link between Klan and late 19th century and early 20th century Democratic Party.
Wade, Wyn Craig. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon and Schuster (1987).
An unsympathetic account of both Klans, with a dedication to "my Kentucky grandmother ... a fierce and steadfast Radical Republican from the wane of Reconstruction until her death nearly a century later."

Further reading
Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan, University of California Press, 1992, ISBN 0-520-07876-4
The Growth of White Supremacist gangs in the USA. Gainesville.

External links
Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History, a TV documentary on the KKK.
The History of the Original Ku Klux Klan — by an anonymous author sympathetic to the original Klan.
The Southern Poverty Law Center Report
The ADL on the KKK
Spartacus Education about the KKK
MIPT Terrorist Knowledge Base for the KKK
Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvocation (1924)
In 1999, South Carolina town defines the KKK as terrorist
A long interview with Stanley F. Horn, author of Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871.
Full text of the Klan Act of 1871 (simplified version)
Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era (New Georgia Encyclopedia)
Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century (New Georgia Encyclopedia)
The Protestant "Kluxing" of Cañyon City, Colorado — (Cañyon City Public Library)
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Alcohol, and Prohibition
The Ku Klux Klan website