Page 230 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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208———Ku Klux Klan

the KKK soon began to terrorize local freed slaves. Within a decade, the Klan reached the height of its
Klansmen would don white flowing robes and pointed power, rapidly spreading nationwide. The Klan in its
hats, sometimes cloaking their horses in white sheets second incarnation opposed immigration, mostly of
as well to affect the appearance of Confederate sol- Jews and Catholics, and benefited from a growing
diers risen from the dead, and would raid the homes of Protestant fundamentalism and the patriotic fervor
blacks in the middle of the night. generated by World War I. By the mid-1920s, mem-
Scholars believe that the Klan formed initially bership had developed from approximately 10,000
in response to white anxiety over the weak Recon- to between 4 and 5 million, and Klan leaders attained
struction Era governments in the South and the possi- high political offices—governors, senators, and
bility of insurrection on the part of newly freed slaves. representatives.
Klansmen attacked black freedmen and their white Scandal soon rocked the organization. After David
Republican supporters alike, as well as assailing “car- C. Stephenson, a Klan leader in the Midwest, was con-
petbaggers” from the North. Their intimidation was victed for the rape and mutilation of a woman, evidence
intended to keep black men and Republicans from emerged that led to the indictments of the governor of
voting, thus maintaining white political power in the Indiana and the mayor of Indianapolis, both Klan sup-
South. In short, the Klan hoped to uphold Southern porters. Once again, upper-class and more mainstream
culture and politics as it existed before the Civil War Klansmen distanced themselves from such violence.
and was willing to take violent measures to succeed. During the Great Depression (1929–1941), the Klan
In 1867, the disparate chapters of the Klan, which also lost its core dues-paying members, mostly from
had taken root throughout Tennessee, Mississippi, and the lower and middle classes, to poverty.
Alabama, held their first national convention in The Klan reemerged in the 1950s, fighting racial
Nashville and elected as their national leader, or Grand desegregation and terrorizing blacks and civil rights
Wizard, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former workers with cross burnings, beatings, bombings, death
Confederate cavalry leader. This convention estab- threats, and murder. In 1963, Klan members Robert
lished the elaborately named organizational hierarchy, Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash,
including Grand Cyclops, Magi, and Night Hawks and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr. bombed the Sixteenth
who governed over dominions and dens, and the con- Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in
cept of the Klan as an “invisible empire” was born. which four girls were killed—an incident widely con-
As the Klan grew, it was plagued by infighting— sidered to be the lowest point of the civil rights strug-
always part of the group’s turbulent history. By 1869, gle. Klan members were also behind the murders of
Forrest officially disbanded the organization. Even the civil rights activists: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman,
individual KKK chapters had nearly died off by the and Michael Schwerner in June 1964; Viola Liuzzo in
1870s from a confluence of several factors, including March 1965; and Medgar Evers in June 1963.
national anti-Klan legislation in 1870 and 1871, By the mid-1960s, the federal government had
Southern “Jim Crow” laws that neatly reestablished begun to intervene. The FBI added the KKK to the
segregation, and internal dissension over the use of organizations targeted by the FBI’s Cointelpro coun-
violence. terintelligence program. This federal program aimed
to “disrupt and neutralize” both left- and right-wing
extremist groups. The House Un-American Activities
THE MODERN KLAN
Committee also investigated the Klan. This govern-
After lying dormant for more than 40 years, the Klan’s ment involvement and the KKK’s persistent factional-
“second era” began in 1915, when William J. Simmons, ism caused a membership decline in the 1970s.
a former minister, resurrected the Klan at Stone
Mountain, Georgia—an event marked by a cross burn- VIOLENCE REEMERGES
ing, soon to become the Klan’s calling card. Scholars
attribute the renewed interest in the Klan to the release Significant violence occurred in 1979, when
and popularity of D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Klansmen killed five anti-Klan demonstrators in
Nation, which was based on a book by Thomas Dixon Greensboro, North Carolina, and again in 1981, when
called The Clansman (1905) and credited the Klan with Klansmen lynched Michael Donald, a black teenager,
the preservation of the Southern way of life. in Mobile, Alabama. The 1980s and 1990s, however,