Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Ku Klux Klan is a group of terrorist that we are all aware of. We heard about how they tortured and killed African Americans and anyone else who stood in their way. When it comes to the topic about the Ku Klux Klan I tend to keep my distance due to the huge amount of anger that fills through my mind for all the wrong that they have done. Thinking about the all the innocent people that have died just frustrates me. But when it came down to it I decided to write about this topic because I came to the conclusion that I don’t know too much about the Ku Klux Klan. All I know is what the media and the history textbooks wanted me to know. After reading “Mightier Than The Sword” and researching the topic I learned more information about the group that I didn’t know.
Did you know that the Ku Klux Klan was recreated three times? The first Ku Klux Klan was discovered on December 24, 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee by confederate veterans. They named the group after a Greek word which was called Kuklos. Kuklos means circle and with that the group stood for Circle of Bothers. The group dressed in masks and robes to both frighten people and to hide their identities. The groups’ intentions were to stop African Americans from voting. They wanted to regain white supremacy. They believed that in order to achieve this they had to threaten people with violence. The Klan attacked freedman and their allies. Their plan was to prevent slaves from gaining the rights that they had recently gained. The Klan grew during the Reconstruction era in the United States. In 1870 and 1871 the Force Acts was passed by the Congress of the United States so that it could protect African Americans so that they could have the right to vote. The Klan didn’t want African Americans voting or having rights that were equal to those of white people. The Force Acts helped to prosecute the Klan for the crimes that they were committing which in result helped to control them.
The next Klan was revived in 1915 in Georgia by Simmons. This Klan collected initiation fees from the members which was ten dollars per person. Edward Young Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler persuaded Simmons to give them a fourth of the profit that was being made from the Klan. They ended up receiving thirty- thousand dollars a week which meant that the Klan had a huge number of members. By 1924 the Klans population grew to four million people. The Klan had many phrases that they expressed publically. One of them being “100 percent Americans”. I know what you’re thinking. How did the Klan gain so many supporters and how did it become so popular? The Klan promised to “provide better schools, improve law enforcement, and hold fast to the traditional values being threatened by the socially permissive Roaring Twenties”. The Klan promised to improve the lives of the white people. They convinced people that everyone that wasn’t white was out to get them and to take away their rights.The Klan was populated by the Medias newspapers like the Boston Globe, St. Louis Post –Dispatch, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and the most popular The New World. The New World was dedicated to taking the Klan down because it saw past the ignorance that it was trying to spread. What the paper failed to realize was in the effort to put a stop to the spread of discrimination it ended up increasing the population of the Klan. In order to keep the attention of the readers the paper included cartoon artwork that portrayed the Klan in a negative way. Another newspaper, called the Commercial Appeal, attacked the Klan by announcing that it was a money making scam. In an attempt to put a stop to the papers writing negatively about the Klan, and after a rejection from Mayor Rowlett Paine to join the Klan, the Klan nominated W. Joe Wood, a Klan member, for mayor. The Klan tried to intimidate the mayor so that he would drop out of the race but they failed. The Klan members didn’t win the election and that disappointed them. The paper continued to attack the Klan in the media as they showed the world who they really were. They released the Klans’ application that was required for people to fill out in order to be a member. One of the questions that they asked was “Are you a Jew?” What the paper didn’t see coming were people started to cut out the application and mail it in as an attempt to become a member. In the 1920’s the Klan’s continued to attack the public with physical violence. They attacked people who they didn’t agree with them. People who gambled or had drinking habits were attacked frequently. Other people also were attacked because of their color and religion.
The third Ku Klux Klan was created when local groups wanted to go against the civil rights movement and desegregation in the 1950’s and the 1960’s. In this time the Klan would form alliances with Southern Police Departments or with the Governor’ Office. Many of the Klans’ members were punished for crimes ranging from robbery to murder. The Klan still exists today in many parts of the world. Researchers have guessed that there may be one hundred and fifty Klan Chapters and five thousand members. Today the Klan is seen as a group of terrorists. A law was passed, by the city council, in Charleston, South Carolina labeling the Klan as a terrorist organization in 1999. In 2004, at the University of Louisville, a professor started a campaign to ban the Klan from the campus by trying to label them as terrorist. On July 19, in 2002, in Johnston County, North Carolina, law enforcement arrested Charles Robert Barefoot Jr. Charles who is a local Ku Klux Klan leader was arrested because he was plotting to blow up the sheriff, his office, and the county jail. Law officers say that he has been organizing meeting to plan the attack. At these meeting there was bomb making material, guns, rifles, Uzi, ak-47, and four- thousand five hundred rounds of ammunition. He pleaded guilty in court in June 2003 and received twenty- seven months in prison. Pleading guilty to attempted murder is enough to keep someone behinds bars for a long time. Instead he received twenty-seven months. The Ku Klux Klan is that same as it was long ago. Their motives are that same and their way of life is to. The only difference from todays’ Klan and the old Klan is there’s a lot more laws that are stopping the Klan from harming others. They’re not as public about their activities and their numbers are decreasing as time goes by. But their motives have stayed the same. They don’t like anyone that’s not white and who disagrees with them. The one question I have in mind is, Will the Klan ever become extinct? Hopefully one day the world will spin in a full circle. Racism and discrimination will decrease and eventually become instinct.
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