Ku Klux Klan Pros And Cons

Ku Klux Klan: Basics

The Ku Klux Klan is a United states based white supremacy group. It was originally conceived in the Reconstruction Era (1867) by former confederates. After being disbanded for their numerous murders, the group was revived decades later in the 20’s. The KKK would go on to be disbanded and revived one last major time in the 50’s-60’s. These major periods of historic Klan activity will be addressed in waves based on time period; first, second and third, respectively.

Ku Klux Klan: Philosophy

From their conception, through their various revivals, and into the present day the Klu Klux Klan has always had this in common: they are a white supremacist group. Their actions as an organization reflect that they believe white

According to the pamphlet Southern Horrors the Klan’s acts actually garnered support, rather than disgust, from many African American’s due to the Klan’s justification of protecting against and avenging the rape of white women, which was the reason for 1/3 of lynchings. The black community at the time saw rape as abhorrent enough to justify the vigilante justice of the KKK, but the violence quickly became enough of a problem to be quelled by Ulysses S. Grant under the Ku Klux Klan Act. The 20’s revival of the Klan, heavily promoted and widely profitable to its leaders, spurred enough terrorist acts to prompt a congressional hearing on the subject. This investigation in October of 1921 was inconclusive. As discussed in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, In a case of Klan violence before it disbanded again in 1944, Malcolm X’s father was murdered in what was ruled as a suicide. This was despite the fact the victim’s head was all but entirely severed and crushed. The murder and resulting troubles tore the family of the Malcolm apart early in his early life. Social workers pitted the family against each other, the suicide ruling mooted the life insurance policy of the father, and Malcolm was removed from his home prompting the mental breakdown of his mother thereafter. Later in 1965, during the third wave of the Ku Klux Klan, president Lyndon Johnson condemned the Klan and their hand in the murder of a civil rights worker. In this particular case the victim was a white woman, although other such civil rights activists were murdered during this period. The most well known case of Klan murder from the Civil Rights Era is the murder of three men; the white Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, and the jewish Michael