Ku Klux Klan: History of Terrorist Organization

 
The White Hoods terrorized the whole of America some 50 years ago until the U.S. authorities managed to turn the tide in their favor. The clandestine association, which had common traits with the Masons, was founded by immigrants from the Southern United States after the Civil War of 1861-1865. In one version, the title of the organization originates from the Greek term ?????? – circle, wheel. The society’s name was first known as the “Knights of Cyclos”, but then it was changed due to an association with a comparable name at that time, such as the “Knights of the Golden Ring”. Initially, the Ku Klux Klan did not impose any extremely revolutionary ideals. For instance, they wrapped themselves in white sheets and terrified individuals by riding horses. However, later the Ku Klux Klan transformed into an organization that held all of America in awe.


This occurred principally due to the fact that many racist Union associations and Confederate veterans’ organizations had coalesced around the Southerners. Poor economic conditions in the then U.S also preceded the emergence of the Klan. South. From 1861 to 1865, the global context in the United States of America was defined by the American Civil War between the Northern Unionists and the eleven Southern Confederates. This war was preceded by a compound political and economic conflict between the present industrialized Northern states and the rural South, which relied on Northern manufacturing. For the South, slaveholding had been a matter of course and a guarantee of workable land, which was a controversial opinion for the more innovative Northerners. After some time of latent congressional tension, the crisis rose to its highest point when the Confederacy announced its departure from the Union in March 1861 with the establishment of the Confederate States of America. A month later, the U.S. Civil War began. The first Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, a rural town in Tennessee.

In the pre-war years, slavery was typical in this region. When the 13th Amendment said that all enslaved people were to be freed, it caused a considerable change. For Southerners, it meant the creation of a new social order that included about 50 percent African Americans. The dark-skinned portion of the population was now freed from their former owners, who were not thrilled with this unfamiliar situation. The end of the Civil War also acquired other intense difficulties for Southerners: farmland was devastated, commerce and the economy were destroyed, and, consequently, there were no jobs for the people left behind. After the war, returning former Confederate soldiers often had no prospects. The founders of the Klan did not want to accept a poor and unpromising life and created a club for themselves in which they could distract themselves. The hardships of impoverished life led the six Klan founders to create a society that would, in the future, strike fear into the entire black population.