KU KLUX KLAN
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a white supremacist
organization that was founded in 1866. Through-
out its notorious history, factions of the secret
fraternal organization have used acts of terror-
ism—including murder, LYNCHING,ARSON,rape,
and bombing—to oppose the granting of CIVIL
RIGHTS to African Americans. Deriving its mem-
bership from native-born, white Protestant U.S.
citizens, the KKK has also been anti-Semitic and
anti-Catholic, and has opposed the immigration
of all those it does not view as “racially pure.”
Other names for the group have been White
Brotherhood, Heroes of America, Constitutional
Union Guards, and Invisible Empire.
Origins and Initial Growth
Ex-Confederate soldiers established the Ku
Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866. They
developed the first two words of the group’s
name from the Greek word kuklos, meaning
“group or band,” and took the third as a variant
of the word clan. Starting as a largely recre-
ational group, the Klan soon turned to intimi-
dating newly freed African Americans. Riding at
night, the Klan terrorized and sometimes mur-
dered those it opposed. Members adopted a
hooded white costume—a guise intended to
represent the ghosts of the Confederate dead—
to avoid identification and to frighten victims
during nighttime raids.
The Klan fed off the post-Civil War resent-
ments of white southerners—resentment that
centered on the Reconstruction programs
imposed on the South by a Republican Con-
gress. Under Reconstruction, the North sought
to restructure southern society on the basis of
