Ku Klux KlanA secret terrorist organization that originated in the southern states during the period of Reconstruction following the American Civil War and was reactivated in the 20th century. The Ku Klux Klan believed in the innate inferiorityof black so therefore mistrusted adn resented the rise of former slaves to a status of civil equality and often to positions of political power. The lan became an illegal organization committed to destroying the Reconstruction governments from the Carolinas to Arkansas. Attired in robes or sheets and wearing masks topped with pointed hoods, the Klansmen terrorized public officials in effort to drive them from office and blacks in general to prevent them from voting, holding office, and otherwise exercising their newly acquird political rights. It was customary for them to burn crosses on hillsides and near the homes of who they wished to frighten. When such tactics failed to produce the affect they wanted, the victim would be flogged, mutilated, or murdered.
These activities were justified by the klan as necessary measures in defense of white supremacy and the inviolability of white womanhoodA secret convention of Klansmen, held in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1867, adopted a declaration of principles expressing loyalty to the U. S. Constitution and its government and declaring the determination of the Klan to “ protect the weak, the innocent and the defenseless..
.: to relieve the injured and oppressed: and to succur suffering…” The convention designated the Klan as an invisible Empire and provided for a supreme official, called Grand Wizard of the Empire, who wielded virtually autocratic power and who was assisted by ten Genii. From 1868 to 1870, while federal occupation troops were being withdrawn from the southern staes and radical regimes replaced with the Democratic administrations, the Klan was increasingly dominated by the rougher elements in the poulation. The local organizations, called Klaverns, became so uncontrollable abd violent the Grand Wizard, former Confederate general Nathan B. Forrest, officially dibanded the Klan in 1869.
Klaverns continued to operate on their own. In 1871, Congress passed the Force Bill to Implement the 14th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution guaranteeing the rights of all citizens.
In the same year Ulysses S. Grant issued a proclamation calling on members of illegal organizations to disarm and disband: thereafter hundreds of Klansmen were arrested. With those that were left they adopted a new fraternal organization incorporated in Georgia in 1915. the official name of the society, Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Membership was open to native-born, white, Protestant males, 16 years or older: blacks Roman Catholics and Jews were excluded and were increasingly male targets of defamation and persecution by the Klan. After WWI the Klan expanded rapidly in urban areas and became active in many states like, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Even though the Klan preached white supremacy, it focused its attacks on what it considered to be alien outsiders, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, which it believed was threatening traditional American ways and values.
All non-Protestants, aliens, liberals, trade unionists, abd striking workers were denouned and subversives. After 1921, it experienced a rapid growth of membership and became politicallyinfluential throughout the nation. One estimate of its membership, made in 1924, when the Klan was at the peak of its strength, was as high as 3 million. In that year a resolution denouncing the klan, introduced at the national convention of the Democratic party, precipitated a bittercontraversy and was defeated. In 1944 it dibanded formally when it was unable to pay back axes wed to the federal government. With the death of its strongest postwar leader, it broke down into numerous, independant, competing units, which often didn’t last long enough to be placed on the list of sebversive organizations issued by the U. S. attorney general.
The Klan is still in existance today in the year 2001, but it is not s strong as before. Hopefully we will be able to get rid of the hate in that group for good. Nazi PartyNazi Party was alson known as National Socialism. It’s roots were peculiarly German rounded.
The theorists and planners of the National Socialists included General Karl Ernst Haushofer, a German geographer who exercised much influebce in
