Today the Ku Klux Klan has between three and five thousand members in the U.S.A., a country of 320 million people. It’s a tiny group with the very ugly idea that only white people should live in America, but it wasn’t always like this. It has a long and murderous history and we all know its name, its ‘uniform’ and its symbols.
The Ku Klux Klan
Today the Ku Klux Klan has between
three and five thousand members in the U.S.A., a country of 320
million people. It’s a tiny group with the very ugly idea that only
white people should live in America, but it wasn’t always like this. It
has a long and murderous history and we all know its name,
its ‘uniform’ and its symbols.
The Ku Klux Klan started in Tennessee
in 1866, after the southern states of America lost the Civil War. Six men
– two of them ex-Army officers – began the organisation and designed the infamous costume we
have all seen on television. The mask was there to hide people’s faces because
the KKK was most active in the countryside where there were not many people,
black or white, and so everybody knew everybody else. The mask meant
they could hang and burn freed slaves but nobody
could identify the killers. However, there was another reason for
the costume: that was to frighten people.
The KKK burnt houses and left dead
black bodies at the side of the road because they wanted to make
other freed slaves afraid. They especially did not want them
to vote. In this way, the KKK could keep the southern states like they
were before the Civil War: black men could have no power. However, in
1870, the government in Washington D.C. started to catch
KKK members and, a few years later, the organisation
was finished.
The second KKK was started in Georgia,
another southern state, in 1915. The group only wanted white, Protestant men
to join. They kept the same uniform but also started to burn crosses.
The organisation was different from before. In the 1860s, the KKK was groups of
people in towns across America. They were not really a national organisation.
In the 1920s, all that changed. Four or five million white
men joined the KKK and fought for a white Protestant America. They
attacked black people, Jews and Catholics. This was the
beginning of the end for the group though. Many, many white men wanted a white
America but they were sickened by the killings. In 1930, the
five million members of the mid-1920s numbered only 30,000 in America and
very few in Canada, where white Protestant members killed Eastern
European immigrants.
The third KKK began after the Second
World War to stop Afro-Americans getting civil rights. In many southern
states, black students could not go to the same schools and universities as
white students; they could not eat in some restaurants; they could not be
pilots in the Second World War or become Army officers; Afro-American boys
could not sit next to white girls at the cinema or concerts.
This was the time when Martin
Luther King told America that he had a dream, a dream that his children
could live in an America where their characters were more important than the
colour of their skin. Sadly, many people did not feel the same way. Between
1955 and 1965, there were two hundred bombings by the Ku Klux Klan and forty
murders of civil rights workers. There were forty
thousand members too. Some KKK groups were friendly with
their local police forces, judges or even state governors –
like George Wallace in Alabama who wanted to become President of the United
States – so that white men attacked, killed and burnt black people and nothing
happened to them. Sometimes the police were even KKK members. Once again,
however, as the KKK became more violent, people started to leave the
group. By 1973, there were only 1500 members all over the country.
These days, there are small groups here
and there, especially in the southern states. But there is no national
organisation that’s popular all over the country. The KKK is now open to women
and Catholics to try to make it more popular. And, of course,
the election of Barack Obama as President increased numbers
as a very few white Americans did not want a person of colour in the White House.
Maybe, these days, there is no national danger from the KKK but we can never be
sure: they have a history of returning. After all, look at Donald Trump!
If you want to watch some videos on this topic, you can click on the links to YouTube videos below.
If you want to answer questions on this article to test how much you understand, you can click on the green box: Finished Reading?
Videos :
2. A Brief History of the KKK – BBC (1:07)
4. Statement on the Arrest of 4 KKK Members, 3/26/65 (5:05)
5. Ideology of White Supremacy (2:12)
6. "Ku Klux Klan: the Invisible Empire" (1965) (2:48)
7. The Heinous 1961 KKK Attack on the Freedom Riders (3:27)
8. A History of Hate: the Ku Klux Klan (5:34)
9. I Have a Dream Speech by Martin Luther King .Jr (6:47)
10. Is the KKK on the Rise in America? (3:48)