KU KLUX KLAN
It is the name of a number of USA fraternal organizations born among white Protestants convinced of their supremacy and founded in Pulasky (Tennessee) by former soldiers of the Confederacy in 1865, immediately after the Civil War. The importance of the Ku Klux Klan greatly increased after a convention held in Nashville in 1867 and chaired by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, selected as "Grand Wizard". It was officially dissolved in 1880. The original members opposed themselves – often very violently - to the forced Federal reform of the Confederacy of the South about the treatment of slaves and, in general, to the Congressional Reconstruction.
The Nashville Convention formalized the organization and a former Confederate brigadier general, George Gordon, wrote the "Prescript" as the KKK’s purposes:
The Prescript also included a list of questions to be asked of applicants for membership, focussing on resisting the Reconstruction and the Republican Party.
The KKK tried to control the social and political status of the freed slaves, in particular by obstructing black education, economic advancement, voting rights and the right to bear arms. Besides their targets were soon extended against Southern Republicans.
In 1915 a second new group which adopted the same name began its activity near Atlanta and to their fame maybe largely contributed President W. Wilson and the film "The Birth of a Nation", by D.W. Griffith, glorifying the original Klan. They started collecting money in order to maintain US traditions menaced – according to them – by the growing number of Catholics, Jews, blacks and immigrants. They openly predicated racism and, in spite of that, they got the number of 4 million followers in the 20s. Many poor whites were soon convinced that their economic problems actually depended on the blacks and the Jews. One of the worst episodes of the second KKK happened in 1915 in Georgia, when a Jewish factory manager, Leo Frank, was accused of raping and murdering Mary Phagan, a girl employed in his factory. Immediately imprisoned, his trial was very questionable and his appeals failed. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the governor. A mob calling itself "The Knights of Mary Phagan" kidnapped L. Frank from the prison and lynched him.
Differently from the first Klan, the second was made up of both Democrats and people coming from the lowest ranks of the Republican Party. During the 20s and 30s a fringe called "Black Legion" became very popular in the Midwest. They wore black tunics and were extremely violent, especially aiming at eliminating communists and socialists. However the KKK’s popularity decreased before and after the Great Depression and it was finally dissolved during World War II.
Nowadays the name is still used by many unrelated organizations and it is the symbol of hatred and intolerance.
The name itself may come from the Greek word "kyklos", meaning "circle", and from the Scottish "clan". According to others the origin is mainly onomatopoetic: the sound of the words reminds the noise produced when reloading a gun.
The members of KKK wear long white hooded tunics representing the ghosts of the soldiers coming back from the world of the dead to revenge on their enemies. The hoods hide the faces. Moreover the meaning of the white hooded tunics may be the "anonyminity of a well-done work", as the members assert their task has been given them by God himself, so those tunic and hood are synonym of humility. Some others say their costumes come from those of Masonry, being most of their leaders masons of Scottish rite.
The first Klan of the XIX century did not have either special flags or symbols, while the second mainly adopted the US flag with a Christian cross. In the 20s the official symbol – and flag – became a black cross on a white field and sometimes there was also a red symbol representing both a flame and a drop of blood.
In the XX cent., from 1900 until about 1940, many thousands WASP (= White Anglo-Saxons Protestants) mainly from the South saw the KKK as a natural part of their beliefs; many millions – even if rejected the KKK’s methods as too violent – considered their members like good Christians and shared the idea of the superiority of the WASP. According to those people, oppressing the blacks, the Jews and the Catholics was but a divine plan to accomplish. During the 70s anti-Catholicism seemed to be excluded from the principles and in the 80s there was a Klan operating in the Queens (New York) with many Catholic members of Irish origin.
The second KKK controlled the governments of Indiana, Oklahoma and Oregon, besides many deputies from the South. President H. Truman was about to become member, if he had not been stopped by the anti-Catholic views of the Klan.
In the 60s the members of the Klan opposed themselves to the Civil Rights Act.
