Ku Klux Klan  "Home Rule For White Democrats"

The name Ku Klux Klan reportedly was derived from the Greek word for circle, kyklos, with Klan added for its alliterative value. Soon after its 1866 organization in Pulaski, TN, by a small group of Confederate veterans, the Ku Klux Klan emerged as the principal organization for underground resistance to Radical Reconstruction. Klan members sought the return of home rule to white Democrats, and they utilized violent terrorism to intimidate black freedmen and their white Republican supporters.

A convention of delegates from the former Confederate states met in Nashville, TN, in 1867 and organized the Klan into the "Invisible Empire of the South" with former Confederate Gen. Nathan B. Forrest as the group's leader, or Grand Wizard. A descending hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans, and grand cyclopses ruled the local organizations that rapidly sprang up throughout the southern states. Eerie robes and hoods were worn by Klansmen to frighten superstitious blacks and to hide the identity of the members of the secret organization.

The activities of the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations were largely responsible for returning the states of Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina to white rule. But the violent methods utilized by the Klan were considered excessive by Forrest, and he ordered the organization to be disbanded in 1869.

Local branches continued their terrorist activities, prompted Congress to pass the Force Act in 1870 and the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871. These bills authorized the president to suppress terrorist organizations by force and to impose harsh penalties on them. President Ulysses S. Grant seldom used the authority before the Supreme Court, in 1882, declared the Ku Klux Klan Act to be unconstitutional. By that time, in any event, the Klan had virtually disappeared; the goal of restoration to home rule had been achieved throughout the South in the late 1870s.

Fascinating Fact:  A new Ku Klux Klan, a secret terrorist organization distinct from the original, arose in the Midwest as well as the South shortly after an organizational meeting near Atlanta, GA, in 1915. The revised organization peaked in the 1920s with a membership of over four million Klansmen.


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