The Ku Klux Klan (often called by its Initials KKK or also the Klan ), founded the December 24th 1865, is an organization white suprematist Protestant of the the United States of America. Classified with the Extreme-right-hand side on the American political chessboard, it forever be however a party, but rather an defense organization or of Lobbying of the interests and prejudices of the elements xenophobe traditionalists and of the Protestant white citizens, the White Anglo-Saxon Protesting (WASP), community “ethnico-nun” at the base of the settlement and the creation of this country.

In XXIe century, it is especially a nebula of organizations more or less formal and structured, legal or clandestine, often rival between them. Although it remains a strong symbol, it is not competed with of it today by organizations with the image less antiquated, like the groups néonazis, more openly revolutionary, or the private of self-defense, Community Milice S and communalists.

Ku Klux Klan schematically preaches the supremacy of the “white race” on the others “Race S”: Blacks (downward of old the slaves), Yellows (immigrant Chinese and Japan board) and Hispanic (Mexican, Cuba ins, Porto Rican Uruguay ens and ), Eastern Europeans (Russian, Yugoslav Moslems or Christians, Ukraniens etc) like generally the Anti-semitism, the anti Roman Catholicisme (here are especially aimed, at the origin at least, the immigrants of obedience papist: Polish, Italy NS, Irish) and the Homophobie. It is initially preserving and xenophobe. On the whole, he is also very anti-centralist (very hostile so that he regards as encroachments of the federal authorities on the rights of the States and rather isolationist in foreign politics).

Ku Klux Klan is originally resulting from the defeat and the occupation of the eleven states secessionists of the Union in 1860-1861 and members from the States confederated of America (SCUMS), territory familiarly called Dixieland by the federal troops and of the spontaneous reaction of the most active elements of the population in front of the excesses made by those and especially by their civil collaborators.

It reappears much later at the time of the First World War, but this time in the form of a legal and cultural association, opened in all the WASP, North like South, eager to defend the values which they regard as fundamental “white Nation” American.

Etymology

The name " Ku Klux Klan" from the Greek word kuklos comes, which means circle . It is one of the founder, James R. Crowe which with the idea to separate the word into two and to change the end, which gives Ku Klux . As the founders have all of the ancestors Scottish, another founder, John C. To ballast, proposes to add the word clan at the end, by replacing the C by a K , so as to standardize the first letter of the three words.

Beginnings

The creation of Ku Klux Klan is in the beginning a direct consequence of the defeat of the confederated troops Southerners against the Unionistes northerners at the end of the American Civil War. In the beginning, it was only one association without political goal. Its main objective was to make perdurer the bonds which were created during the war between the confederated soldiers.

Ku Klux Klan was founded in the night from December 24th to 25th 1865, by six young officers Southerners (J. Calvin Jones, Frank O. McCord, Richard R. Reed, John B. Kennedy, John C. To ballast, James R. Crowe) living the town of Pulasky, in the Tennessee.

Association is inspired in the beginning fraternities students, American tradition arrival of the continent and in particular of the British and German universities, from where the use of Greek terms and a more or less parodic ritual of the maconnic Loges and whose some of the founders was perhaps members. An interpretation of the triple K , taken again later by the dignitaries of Klan, often members of the high ranks of Scottish masonry Southerner (the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction, said Charleston) will be the term Kadosh (avenger in maconnic mythology) multiplied by the number crowned three.

Some specialists authors like Walter Lynwood Fleming and Susan Lawrence Davis tried to trace a bond between Klan and freemasonry. Indeed, the chief maconnic Albert Pike would have occupied a row raised within the KKK. Moreover, the term Kadosch is clearly borrowed from the language of the esotericism, of the occultism of the secret societies.

Quickly, the small firm spontaneously makes followers in all the occupied territories and the idea will quickly come to the most active Southerners to use it like symbol and organization of resistance against the occupation of federal with the support or the benevolence of a population exceeded by the exactions of the northerners and their collaborators, politicians and racketeers véreux, in a country completely ruined by the civil war.

The physical attacks often reach also the blacks which seek to be informed and especially their white teachers, of the radical idealists come from North, members of the companies Abolitionnistes. The handing-over with the step of the blacks, brutally émancipés and often encouraged to collaborate with the northerners or to be even avenged for their former Masters, will become even one of the priorities of the organization. The instruction of the Blacks is indeed perceived by the members of the KKK in the long term as a danger by the Southerners because it could let emerge an elite able to compete with them, however still largely majority, except in the territories of the old large plantations. The methods of Ku Klux Klan go from the simple intimidation, often sufficient, with the spectacular execution, voluntarily exemplary, generally unpunished because of the reprisals on the informers or their families.

First Klan or " Klan primitif"

Gradually, Ku Klux Klan becomes increasingly important and seeks to be structured with the more or less open assistance of notable civilians or soldiers of the old confederation Southerner.

Thus the young person and effective ex-general confederated Nathan Bedford Forrest are selected as chief and organizer in 1867. Forrest then takes the control of the organization by proclaiming a Constitution, which fixes the goals and the operation of Ku Klux Klan. Although being defined as one chivalrous , humanitarian, miséricordieuse and patriotic institution , it is fixed like crowned goal maintenance of the supremacy of the white race in this republic , and this by methods often contradicting these values. A flow chart is created, with at its head the first “Large Wizard of Ku Klux Klan”. This role returns in 1867 in Forrest itself which wants to make KKK an influential force on the political scene.

Skilfully, Forrest takes note of the victory of the northerners and its consequences: the maintenance of the confederated ex-states of 1860 in the Union, the abolition of slavery and implicitly the ruin of the rural economy of the South to the profit the industrial policy of North. However, the principles of Klan are incompatible with the recent laws which make Noir quasi-equal Blanc. But especially it is a question of forcing the federal ones to give again with the inhabitants of the south the control of their country. It thus will continue the clandestine action, in other words from the legal point of view, the terrorist activity, but with realistic objectives: initially physical liquidation or intimidation of the collaborators, the liquidation of the advisers while avoiding directly facing the soldiers federal, unable of an effective action on such a vast territory and surrounded by a population if not accomplice, at least sympathizer, then the resumption in hand of the institutions by the base.

Forrest then will do everything so that Ku Klux Klan has an impact on the result of the elections. It will influence by all kinds of means; intimidation, blackmail and corruption to impose its candidates within the democratic party, then to make triumph those with the inevitable elections become again with the re-establishment over the institutions of the states secessionists and the end of the consecutive northerner military occupation. The vote of the White largely being acquired in advance, it does not act any more whereas to encourage the Noirs, moreover minority in the majority of the states to vote democratic (the Républicains are then associated with the Nordistes) or to abstain from.

For that, Forrest will furrow the country to hold to with it of the meetings. Each one of its appearances will be followed of a wave of violence against the Blacks. The members of the KKK burn crosses in front of the houses of the Blacks, on their premises make irruption to whip them or even to kill them in during with the trees. Certain expectant mothers are broken and of the castrated men. The violence of the members of the KKK does not have limits, the more so as those are from now on certain impunity because of lassitude of the northerner soldiers in front of the many excesses made by the northerner adventurers corrupted and their auxiliaries, often elected by Blacks ignoramuses and easily easy to handle.

Gradually, these actions bear their fruits and some Noirs defer their voices on the lists supported by the KKK.

The White radical and abolitionists who inform or côtoient the Blacks are also aimed by Ku Klux Klan. “The Blacks” must remain in bottom of the social scale, and all the people who help them take of it de facto with the supremacy of the “race Blanche”, thing unacceptable for Ku Klux Klan.

Anticipating an official reaction although late authorities of Washington, Forrest dissolves officially Klan in 1869.

Following the assassination the May 18th 1870, of the Republican senator John Stephens in full court and with the increasing violence of the klanists, the federal government must react officially. Also the April 20th 1871, the law Ku Klux ( The Klan Act ) is voted with the Congrès of the United States. The great ways are used, the President of the United States of the time, the general Ulysses Simpson Grant, instigator of the law Ku Klux, declares the martial Loi in 9 counties of South Carolina. Several thousands of members of the KKK are stopped. The majority are released, for lack of evidence. But Ku Klux Klan as an active organization disappears quickly.

It had achieved its goals in any case and did not have any more reasons to constitute a formal organization, the majority of the institutions of the old confederated states having passed by again with the hands of the white Southerners and the principle of the racial segregation being imposed including in the states of North confronted with an important emigration of the former slaves from now on without work towards the great industrial centers.

Other organizations like the White League or Shot Gun were then created by former members of Klan. They continued to conduct campaigns of lynching and terror, but they did not have the importance and the influence of Ku Klux Klan original.

Second Ku Klux Klan or " Klan moderne"

It is the book The Clansman (the Man of the Clan) of Thomas Dixon published in 1906, but especially its adaptation to the cinema by David Wark Griffith in his film The Birth off has Nation ('' Birth of a nation '') left in 1915, which marks the rebirth of the KKK. This one is mainly the work of William J. Simmons. This last makes use of the popularity of film and its party taken for Klan and the Southerners to bring together some people and to start again Klan. It will inaugurate the rebirth of Klan at the top of the Stone Mountain, in Georgia.

At that time and whereas they engage in the First World War under the direction of a president progressist, but Southerner and in favor of recognition of free-determination of people by public law international (thesis who justifies the secession a posteriori and thus paradoxically condemns Abraham Lincoln and invalid the stop of the Supreme court on the perpetuity of the Union), white American of all the states has the feeling for the first time to constitute a true nation centered around the values of the founding fathers: self-determination, freedom of company, individualism and absolute respect of the property.

For Woodrow Wilson and the democrats of the south, it is undoubtedly all the more a revenge which they are the old supports of the northerners, Russian and Prussians who will make the expenses of the world war against the British and the French, sympathizers of confederated at the time of the civil war.

Second Ku Klux Klan will be thus very different from the first, although it also fights for the “supremacy of the white race”. But like the white do not feel any more threatened in this direction, it adds from now on with these problems the rejection of the new immigration not " north-européenne" and not Protestant woman and the safeguarding of the values which he regards as those that the Founding fathers incarnated. New Ku Klux Klan is not only any more one organization born of the defeat Southerner, it perfectly legal, is opened with all American white, Protestant and preserving, transcends old cleavages in favor and regionalistic and seeks to gather all American " authentiques" who see like permissive influences endogenous or come from abroad the new tendencies of the company (Communisme, revolutionary Syndicalisme, Socialisme, Féminisme, Athéisme, Catholicisme, Organized crime, Libéralisation of manners…).

Discreetly owner by president Wilson, then its successors, the movement becomes considerable extensive in a few years and does not relate to only any more the Old South. It seems a fraternity of mass, and in being member is regarded as a mark of Patriotisme. As of the Years 1920, the members of second Ku Klux Klan are estimated at five million. Quickly, it becomes an influential political clout which the politicians must take into account. The general headquarter of second Ku Klux Klan settled with Washington, several parades gigantic were even organized in the capital.

In 1924, eleven governors, many senators like the future president Truman like several members of the Supreme court, are members or close. The president Coolidge is probably member and the president Harding would have been established inside even of the White House according to the legend.

But the success of Ku Klux Klan brings back it to its through originals. The will of its founders to make an organization of mass of it brings them, often for financial reasons because of the contributions, to recruit all kinds of individuals and adventurers violent ones and corrupted, well far from corresponding to the romantic and patriotic ideal of the " Blanc" knight; whose the founders of new Ku Klux Klan claimed themselves.

Its members continue to pursue the Blacks, the immigrants, the Jews and all those which côtoient them and which help them. Some are marked with the iron of the three letters of Ku Klux Klan, others are whitewashed of ebullient tar then covered with feathers such of chickens and the campaigns lynching to the branches of the trees continue. All these violent actions make lose the support of certain political officials. The Louisiana goes even until voting a law prohibiting to mask the face apart from certain festivals, like the fatty Tuesday. Other States will follow the action of Louisiana. The president Harding itself sees himself obliged to make prevail against lynchings and to authorize FBI to intervene in certain cases of abuses too much shouting.

More serious still, a certain number of criminal cases reveal the corruption of the leaders, small or large, of an organization which extremely of its territorial anchoring behaves like the Mafia Wasp. All these reasons as well as the crisis of 1929 weaken the organization which does not control of it less one certain number of voices necessary to obtaining the democratic nomination. Thus, the rumor wanted that Franklin Roosevelt and its supports had to pay very a large sum with Dr. Hiram Evans, the imperator of Klan, for its re-election in 1937. The same year was created a Commission of the antiaméricaines activities of the Room of the Representatives, in order to fight against Klu Klux Klan.

Dissensions within Klan burst with the approach of the war. The rise of the Nazisme in Germany attracts the sympathy of certain members. Some bonds will be even created, but very crumbles after the Attaque on Pearl Harbor by Japanese aviation. Many members of Klan commit themselves leaving in war against the Japan. The Nazi Germany, allied of Japan, is designated as an enemy, the bonds which certain members wove break.

The choice of Harry Truman, former sympathizer of Klan, as vice-president by Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 was often interpreted like a call of the foot with the voters of the south. Although democratic conservative, Truman was however always one of the firmest supports of the industrial relations policy of Roosevelt as a representative of the Missouri, very strongly affected by the economic crisis.

Second Ku Klux Klan disappears officially in 1944. This year, the Service of the direct taxation claims 685  to him; 000 Dollar S the unpaid ones since 1920. Ku Klux Klan which cannot pay this sum, Evans places it in Compulsory liquidation.

Bunches

After the Second world war, many people will try to make reappear third once Ku Klux Klan, but nothing will make there. It will arrive from time at other a renewal of activity of certain bunches at the time of events such as the law against the segregation in the Années 1950 and 1960. Certain groups will test even with the Anticommunisme, but anything made there; Ku Klux Klan such as it was before, does not exist more. In 1978, one counted approximately 10  000 members, but manpower are in strong reduction since this date.

Ku Klux Klan is also associated with other movements of the American extreme-right-hand side such as Aryan Nations, WASP, The Order, or Posse Comitatus.

Ku Klux Klan exists today in many always active organizations in the United States, distributed through various States or answering particular doctrines, some contain only one ten members while others are true organizations.

In the Years 1990, one estimated at 3  000 the members number of a group referring to Ku Klux Klan, but a national report/ratio of the Anti-Defamation League published in February 2007 estimates that this number increased since 2000. It would currently count 5  000 with 8  000 members divided in 179 sections, and organizes themselves with various movements Skinhead S in militant actions (organization of gatherings, recruitment campaigns, propaganda brochure distributions and lampoons racist).

The most important bunches are:

  • Bayou Knights off the Ku Klux Klan, acting in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and other zones of the south of the United States
  • Church off the American Knights off the Ku Klux Klan
  • Imperial Klans off America
  • Knights off the White Kamelia
  • Knights off the Ku Klux Klan, directed by the national director Pasteur Thom Robb, and based in Zinc in Arkansas. Regarded as the largest organization bearing the name Ku Klux Klan in the United States. She regards itself as the “sixth zone of Klan” and continues to be a racist group.

Culture

A whole Folklore is created around: the members carry a pointed white hood on their head and a large dress matched on the body; even their horses are disguised in this way. The purpose of their first “rides” are to terrorize the Blacks. They make accept the latter, then stripped of instruction and very superstitious, which they are the Fantôme S of the soldiers confederated died with the combat come to be avenged. These costumes are copied from those of the S, the processionary Spanish. The celebrity of Klan having become much higher than that of Capirotes, the costumes of the latter are sometimes badly perceived.

A urban Légende affirms that the cigarettier Marlboro belongs to Ku Klux Klan. In spite of the resemblance of the logo of Marlboro to one K, the rumor is probably false.

Attempt at analysis socio-history

If the national organization voluntarily dissolves, completely discredited after the war, perhaps besides at the instigation of Truman itself which while sharing its ideas, was quickly dissociated from an organization of which he especially disapproved the illegal and inappropriate actions after excesses of the Nazism, the structures of bases remain and it is with them that will deal the Mouvement of the civic rights of the Années 1960.

Klan truth is not fascistic or Nazi, even if it can maintain the bonds with parties claiming these doctrines, the socializing, centralist and autocratic tendencies these movements would be even antagonistic for him by principle. On the other hand, it is near ideologically to the Milice S, committees of vigilance, groups anti federalistic, anti fiscalists or Conspiration nists.

Moreover, it is not a party but rather a kind of " syndicat" composed of a multitude of cells almost independent from/to each other since the offensives of FBI in the years 1960 - 1970 which pushed it with discretion, the bulk-heading, the deactivation " officielle" , the recourse to the abstract small structures with restricted recruitment, in short with a kind of return at the origins and to clandestiné, the structures official and the members declared and indexed being often only one folding screen voluntarily " bruyant".

Klan represents the bottom even racist and provincial line American, its roots plunge to some extent in the heart of the heart of the country, its history and its company. It is much today a tradition, a legend or a cultural reference that a true organization. It can for this reason being fought institutionnellement only surfaces some, being always ready to re-appear with often of the new men if the roots which brought its appearance in the history did not disappear or re-appear or if the circumstances become again to him again favorable.

Klan is preserving and racist. He does not want the Révolution, but the return to the constitutional order of the Années 1950 founded on the segregation, because it was at the price of this segregation that the Southerners had accepted their defeat, the end of slavery and the loss of their economic influence to the profit of North.

Its program is summarized in the sentence lent to the Forrest general: You must ensure the supremacy of the white race in this Republic .

See too

References

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