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Ku Klux Klan - Online Paper

Ku Klux Klan

Founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tenn., by former Confederate Army officers, the was one of the most powerful groups to emerge in the Reconstruction era in an effort to prevent newly enfranchised black Southerners from putting Republicans in power in the Southern states. Led by former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest from 1867 to 1889, the Klan terrorized local white and black Republican leaders and blacks whose behavior violated old ideas of black subordination. Its members, who were sworn to secrecy, wore white robes and masks and adopted the burning cross as their symbol. They were most active during elections, when their nighttime rides to murder, rape, beat, and warn were ...

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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 ...

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Ku Klux Klan. (2005, June 11). Retrieved January 15, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Ku-Klux-Klan/28344

"Ku Klux Klan." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 11 Jun. 2005. Web. 15 Jan. 2026. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Ku-Klux-Klan/28344>

"Ku Klux Klan." Essayworld.com. June 11, 2005. Accessed January 15, 2026. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Ku-Klux-Klan/28344.

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 6/11/2005 08:46:29 PM
Category: American History
Type: Free Paper
Words: 461
Pages: 2

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