Brief History of the Waxing and Waning of the KKK
"The Klan didn’t start as a political force, but as a lark. Shortly after the Civil War ended, some Confederate veterans got together and played around with hoods and robes, wearing them while riding horses through town in Pulaski, Tennessee. They formed a secret group with outlandish names for its officials, like “Grand Cyclops” for the leader. When they saw how their costumed rides scared blacks, the group turned to vigilantism.
As blacks were being freed and the country began extending civil rights—including voting rights—Klan groups called “Klaverns” formed around the South to keep blacks subordinate. The group capitalized on the Southern tradition of “night riders,” who intimidated slaves to control them. “From 1866 through 1871, men calling themselves ‘Ku-Klux’ killed hundreds of black Southerners and their white supporters, sexually molested hundreds of black women and men, drove thousands of black families from their homes and thousands of black men and women from their employment, and appropriated land, crops, guns, livestock, and food from black Southerners on a massive scale,” writes the historian Elaine Frantz Parsons in Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction."
From this point, the Klan was slowly dying out until the movie BIRTH OF A NATION revived it .. 1920s Klan (became) a “great fraternal lodge” with “nationwide political power.” The Illinois Klan newspaper, Dawn: A Journal for True American Patriots, encouraged members to recommend and become candidates for office to accomplish their aims.
"According to a 1976 report by the Illinois Legislative Investigating Commission, “governors in 10 states and 13 senators in nine states were elected with Klan help. At least one senator, Hugo Black, who was destined to become a United States Supreme Court Justice, had been a Klansman.”"
But then in-fighting and scandals drove the membership down to almost non-existence until the Civil Rights movement again breathed life into it.
The Klan’s violence, along with a federal investigation into its activities, brought those numbers down to fewer than than 6,000 after the 1960s.
"But white supremacists didn’t disappear. Today, they are splintered into different organizations and have been joined by new hate groups, including Neo-Nazis, the Center for Security Policy (anti-Muslim), and Black Hebrew Israelites (black separatists). As of 2015, their numbers are increasing.
More detail at:
https://daily.jstor.org/history-kkk-american-politics/
