KKK, Part 1

Since 9/11, the word terrorism has been all the rage. You can’t watch an hour of television without hearing the term, but it might be instructive to consider America’s very first terrorist organization. Most folks would recognize its name, even though it’s been officially disbanded since 1987: the Ku Klux Klan- America’s very first terrorist organization.


The Ku Klux Klan, or KKK sometimes described as the “Invisible Empire”, was instrumental in the murder and intimidation of hundreds of thousands of afro Americans. And later, after its second incarnation, the intimidation of Jews, Catholics and immigrants throughout the nation.

The first Klan was founded in 1866 by veterans of the Confederate Army in Pulaski, Tennessee, as quasi-fraternal organization. They established whimisical names for their organization roles, like the Grand Cyclops or Grand Magi and held initiation ceremonies and ritual pledges. One of their fun activities taken up initially as a distraction was riding their horses in the middle of the night, outfitted in white sheets and ridiculously spiked pyramid type hats; presumably representing the ghost of the confederate dead.
But soon their “night riding” turned into hazing and frightening blacks and northern business men. Whippings were used first, but within months there were bloody clashes between Klansmen and blacks, Northerners who had come South, or Southern unionists.
In 1870 a Grand Jury reported that: " The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering them."
As the Klan’s reputation spread, so did calls for their removal. Their Imperial Wizard, an ex-Confederate General, Nathan Forrest officially disbanded the Klan in January of 1869
But, as the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, “their terror had proven very effective at keeping black voters away from the polls. Some black officeholders were hanged and many more were brutally beaten. The result was a system of segregation which was the law of the land for more than 80 years afterwards:” Jim Crowe.
The Klan had done its work well.
Tune in for our next Hidden History about the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s thanks to DW Griffith’s film, Birth of a Nation-- when America’s first terrorist organization rides again.