Ku Klux Klan

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

gave President Ulysses S. Grant authority to use national troops to restore order in affected districts. Faced with trained soldiers empowered to arrest suspects and hold them without trial, the Klan collapsed with surprising swiftness. Although Southern whites resorted to violence to regain control of their states from 1874 to 1877, the Klan as an organization disappeared by the end of 1872. However, at the turn of the century the story of the Klan was popularized in Thomas B. Dixon's The Clansman (1905) and D. W. Griffith's powerful movie The Birth of a Nation (1915). This led to the revival of , which spread throughout the nation preaching anti-Catholic, antiblack, anti-Jewish, anti-immigrant, antisocialist, and anti-labor-union themes under the slogan "100 Percent Americanism." Often taking the law into their own hands, mobs of white-robed, white-hooded Klansmen punished "immorality" and terrorized "un-American" elements. At its height in the early 1920s, the Klan had ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

CITE THIS PAGE: