True origins of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-71

The original history of the Ku Klux Klan is difficult to pin down with certainty. Some of the confusion for a non-American like myself comes from the KKK being a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies. These policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks.

The Congress did pass legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism! But in time the Klan saw its primary goal, the re-establishment of white supremacy, fulfilled through Demo­cratic victories in states across the South in the 1870s. Intuitively I would have guessed that Republicans would have been anti-black and Democrats would have been pro-Reconstruction. Wrongly guessed, I must add.

The ADL noted that six college students had founded the Ku Klux Klan by mid 1866 in the town of Pulaski, Tennessee. Former Confederate officers, the six young men organised it as a social club and spent their time in laddish horseplay of various types. They were surprised to learn that their nightly appearances were causing fear, particularly among former slaves in the area; thus the group began a rapid expansion almost accidentally.

Eyewitness to History agreed that only 8 months after the South’s surrender, the Tennessee boys held meetings that were secret and devoted to elab­orate ceremonies. Members would disguise themselves with a costume made up of a sheet to cover their bodies, fanciful masks to hide their faces and pointed headgear that heightened their stature. The appearance of these white-sheeted, horse-mounted apparitions on the town’s murky streets naturally and purposefully created terror amongst the community’s recently freed slaves. This version of history proposed that the KKK was a ruthless vigilance organisation almost from the beginning, whose role was to restore white supremacy at any cost. Nothing was accidental.

Spartacus Educational firmly located the creation of the KKK in a broader political commitment to keep blacks out of mainstream society. In Feb and March 1866 the President himself, Andrew Johnson (in office 1865–69), vetoed the civil rights bills that were designed to protect freed slaves from racist Southern Black Codes. This theory suggests that the KKK might have been young and boisterous, but they were not thinking of anything more extremist than the President’s own rather extremist views. The timing is persuasive – the KKK was emerging in the first six months of 1866!

Factions formed in different towns, which led to a meeting in April 1867 to codify rules and organisational structure. Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was elected Grand Wizard of all the Klan. The organisation was divided into a number of realms, dominions, provinces and dens, which were in turn led by leaders at a lower level.

Reconstruction DID try to extend the rights of Southern blacks but it actually pushed many resentful and anxious white ex-soldiers into the Klan. So the Klan quickly began instituting a systematic policy of violence in opposition to the new social order. Former slaves were the obvious target of this terror­ism, but the Klan also intimidated and killed Northern teachers, judges and politicians. By late 1867, the movement had spread throughout the small towns of the South, though it flourished mostly in rural regions. Some called it the Invisible Empire of the South.

Klansmen began waging guerilla warfare against what they perceived as a corrupt system that was depriving them of rights. This feeling of grievance, which began during the time of the first Klan, characterised Klan sensibility and ideology throughout the 20th century.

By 1869, internal strife led Klansmen to fight against each other as competing factions struggled for control. The Klan's increasing reputation for violence led the more prominent citizens to drop out, and more louts began to fill the ranks. Local branches proved very diff­icult to monitor and direct. Forrest angrily formally disbanded the organisation in 1869 and the vast majority of local groups followed his lead. Some number of local units continued to operate, but were eventually disbanded or sent into hiding by federal troops.

In 1871 Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act authorising the use of federal troops in the Klan’s suppression and for the trial of its members in federal court. But I still cannot tell from the histories if white KKK members were ever gaoled for lynching blacks and their supporters.

Thomas Nast created a number of memorable and serious works in caricature during the Civil War-Reconstruction era, which were published in Harper's Weekly. Nast strongly opposed President Andrew Johnson and his Reconstruction policy, and showed how groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League used every form of terror, violence and intimidation to restore a White Man’s Government and redeem the noble Lost Cause.

Cartoon ridiculing both freed black men voting for the first time, and resentful, disenfranchised former Confederates, 
by Thomas Nast
Harpers Weekly, 1867.

One Vote Less. An African-American killed by the Ku Klux Klan. 
Drawn by Nast in Harper's Weekly, August 1868.

The First Klan Revival did not occur until 1915 when William J Sim mons adopted a mythic vision of a noble and pristine antebellum South, with a deep hatred of blacks. His timing, near Atlanta Georgia, was perfect. The United States was struggling to meet the challenges imposed by a massive influx of non-Protestant immigrants, many of whom were Catholic or Jewish and few of whom spoke English as their native language. Appealing to the middle class and claiming to be a purely benevolent club, the Klan drew members immediately. Again!

By 1921, the Klan numbered c100,000 members and money flooded its bank accounts. At its peak in 1924, 40,000 uniformed Klansmen paraded through Washington DC during the Democratic National Convention. Like a modern political lobby, the group was so influential that many politicians felt com pelled to court it or even to join, particularly in the Midwestern states. As the Klan grew, so did the number and intensity of barbarous acts committed by its members.

The KKK became well known for its anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and anti-labour philosophies. But I have not discussed this other ugly side of Klan practices because they weren't so prevalent in the 1866-71 era. Certainly the boycotts of local businesses owned by Catholics and Jews really got going only after World War One.