Ku Klux Klan Influence

596 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The rise of kkk in the 1920s

The Ku Klux Klan had a large influence on the lives of everyone in the Southern United States in the late 1800s throughout the early 1900s. To Kill A Mockingbird is set in the 1930s which was just after the Ku Klux Klan reached their largest capacity of members. The KKK was just one of the many problems that the very mature protagonist Jean Louise Finch faced as a child in To Kill A Mockingbird. Jean Louise was heavily influenced by many things including the KKK without directly having altercations with these things.

The Ku Klux Klan started in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866 was founded by multiple Confederate veterans. The first official leader of the KKK was Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He was a self taught leader that gained respect from many during his honored time in the Confederate Army. In …show more content…

What they did to candidates that did not agree with the Klan was very similar to what they did to jurors and judges. The KKK used extreme violence and random attacks to run away any competition to their favored candidate. Minorities would most likely end up voting in favor of the KKK supporter because they knew what could happen to them if they did otherwise. No one could or would stop the obvious torment because of the fear of what the Klan would do to anyone that questioned them or their beliefs. The influence of the KKK made the justice system extremely unfair. All black defendants faced a nearly impossible challenge of getting past the courts racism and or fear.

To Kill a Mockingbird helps readers understand that the KKK was a very common thing in the South. The KKK had a very large influence on the youth and their thoughts. To Kill A Mockingbird helps us see how the Ku Klux Klan was not random people from neighboring counties and towns, but the people that you have lived with since you were a child and your very own best

Show More
Related

  • Should To Kill A Mockingbird Be Taught In Schools

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee is a heartbreaking, timeless novel that examines stereotyping and its consequences. The novel shadows Atticus Finch, a small-town lawyer, as he defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white woman in racist Maycomb, Alabama. Frequently, To Kill a Mockingbird has been banned for use in many schools because of the racial content in it. In the novel, racial tension and slurs are used frequently. Although the novel does contain these things, To Kill a Mockingbird should definitely be taught in schools because it represents accurately what it was like before blacks received their civil right, it teaches valuable life lessons, and it shows how novels like To Kill a Mockingbird helped the civil rights movement.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of The Ku Klux Klan

    1264 Words  | 3 Pages

    These actions of white supremacists took place during the time of the presidential election of Ulysses S. Grant. The Ku Klux Klan was the most prominent organization and was established in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee. The original intent, a social club for former confederate soldiers, soon altered and changed to a terrorist organization. After the Klan was transformed into a terrorist organization, they were responsible for thousands of deaths and remarkably weakened the political power in the south of blacks and republicans. (WGBH

    Read More

  • To Kill A Mockingbird and the Little Rock Nine

    1535 Words  | 4 Pages

    When a group of children known as the Little Rock Nine stepped onto the campus of Central High School of Arkansas on September 4th, 1957, they changed history forever. By being the first black students to attend a traditionally white high school, the nine students helped move America toward a more fair and constitutional attitude toward colored people. To Kill a Mockingbird was written during this time period and deals with many of the same cultural issues even though it’s story takes place a few decades earlier. If this were not the case and the novel’s characters had grown up during the same time as the Little Rock Nine, there is no doubt that Scout, Atticus, Bob Ewell, and many other characters would have had strong opinions about and may have even taken action for or against the Little Rock Nine or the Civil Rights movement as a whole.

    Read More

  • South Killed Reconstruction

    685 Words  | 2 Pages

    An example of the KKK using violence was “John W. Stephens, State Senator from Caswell, is dead. He was foully murdered by the Ku-Klux in the Grand Jury room of the Courthouse.” This was making a big impact on Reconstruction because the KKK was killing anybody that supported Reconstruction. Another piece of evidence of the KKK killing reconstruction was, “[the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. They said to me, “Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?” “They said I had voted for Grant and had carried the Negroes against them. About two days before they whipped me they offered me $5,000 to go with them and they said they would pay me $2,500 in cash if I would let another man to go the legislature in my place.” This negatively impacted reconstruction because the KKK were killing and bribing anybody who voted the Radical Ticket. Overall, there’s plenty of reasons the KKK put a negative impact on the Reconstruction of the

    Read More

  • Use of Propaganda to Increase Ku Klux Klan Membership

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    The human mind interprets thought in a manner unique to their species. Each thought is expressed as an emotion, whether it be jubilation, sadness, anger or hate. The latter of these emotions is what I believe to be the strongest feeling that the human being can experience. In the face of hatred each individual reacts in their own peerless fashion. Some run in fear, while many speak out against such injustice; yet others react in a much different way—they embrace the hate. A prime example of a group of individuals that thrived in such an environment would be the second movement of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, reestablished in 1915, was not originally the potent force that they came to be in the middle part of the 1920’s. During the first five years of existence, the Klan only increased by four thousand; but during the next eight years nearly ten million men and women joined the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan. What events transpired that caused such a dramatic increase in Klan membership in such a limited time span? Leading Klan theorists of the 1920’s often pondered this question and it is my intention to examine their findings. Three prominent causes seemed to be found in these findings: the post-war feelings of many Americans, the natural aversion to anything foreign, and the various propaganda spread about and by the Klan.

    Read More

  • What Is Mob Mentality In To Kill A Mockingbird

    856 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first influence on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws are laws that took place in between 1877 to the mid 1960s (Pilgrim). These laws are of segregation between blacks and whites to give blacks fewer rights. Christians and Ministers believed that Whites were the chosen people; Blacks were lesser people and only suppose to be servants, and that God Supported Ra

    Read More

  • To Kill a Mockingbird and How it is Relevant Today

    507 Words  | 2 Pages

    An important reason why To Kill a Mockingbird is relevant today is the ever growing resurgence of racism throughout the country. Events such as the ones in Jena, Louisiana seem to become more common each day. Recently, a black professor at Columbia University had a noose placed on her door. The novel, which was an attempt to spread knowledge of the racism in the south, was trying to stop the very things that happen everyday now. As racism becomes more and more prevalent, this novel will be a good tool to help teach the next generation about racism, and about how it is wrong.

    Read More

  • Ku Klux Klan Cause And Effect

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the first courses of action would be consequences that would be paid if anyone tried to hinder with the right of a citizen being able to vote. The other course of action was to have all of the federal elections watched over by supervisors and marshals to keep out any type of political terrorism that could occur. The last course of action became the Ku Klux Klan Act that prohibited any of the acts that were conducted by the Klansmen, which included, not taking orders, pretending to be law officials, and also forming conspiracies. Around 1871, the federal government ended up showcasing 9 counties within South Carolina, as the Klansmen continued on the rise and ended up putting multiple hundreds of individuals into jail. Sadly, the Enforcement Acts that were put into play, did not help one bit and the violence continued to erupt, especially within the

    Read More

  • How Is The Klu Klux Klan Justified

    597 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Klu Klux Klan was known for many things, one among them torture. They were an extreme terrorist group that did many things just to make the lives of different races terrible. Also, they held cross burnings and lynchings of black people. They justified their cruelty with passages from the Bible, and with their tainted ideas of morality. The KKK demonstrated that they thought they were superior over other races by terrorizing blacks and justified it through the Bible.

    Read More

  • Essay On Ku Klux Klan

    1247 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Ku Klux Klan was founded in May of 1866, in Pulaski, Tennessee by six veterans of the Confederate Army. The early years of the Klan's existence were focused mainly on restoring white power in the government. The Klan often spoke against Radical Republicans, the political party that most supported the rights of former slaves. At first the Klan seemed relatively harmless. But as time went on, the so called white supremacists showed how far they were willing to go to fulfill their craving for America to go back to its former ways.

    Read More

  • The Ku Klux Klan

    820 Words  | 2 Pages

    and to maintain white supremacy. After the Civil War, when locals were able to government in the South was weak or nonexistent and there were fears of black outrages, informal armed patrols were formed in almost all. communities. The KKK was organized in Pulaski, Tenn., in May 1866. Its strange disguises, silent parades, midnight rides, mysterious language.

    Read More

  • The Ku Klux Klan

    1407 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1869 the Klan was disbanded by Forrest, this was the height of their membership with 500,00 members, because laws were created in the 1870’s to slow down their activities, such as the KKK Act and the Enforcement Acts, limiting their power in the south. Even though they were no longer active their threat was still lingering. They left a legacy in the United States of torture, havoc, white supremacy and black oppression that lasted for a century. The KKK were successful at achieving their goals of abolishing the Republicans ideas in the South and scaring many African Americans during the late

    Read More

  • Lees Philosophy To Kill A Mock

    713 Words  | 2 Pages

    The 1930’s were a time in which blacks faced many hardships. It was a time in which the Ku Klux Klan had its peak. However, most importantly, it was the time when Nelle Harper Lee, the writer of To Kill A Mockingbird, was being raised. She was raised in a world where “niggers'; were the bottom class in one of the most powerful countries in the world. She was also being raised during the Great Depression, a time when the attacks on blacks were intensified, as they were the scapegoats of the immense downfall of the US economy. However, she was only a small, innocent child who believed in equality for all. Thus, Harper Lee expressed her disapproval over the treatment of blacks in her Award-Winning novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, through the eyes of a fictional character called Jean Louise Finch, better known as “Scout';.

    Read More

  • The Ku Klux Klan

    580 Words  | 2 Pages

    At the end of the American civil war in 1866 the Ku Klux Klan formed.

    Read More

  • Essay To Kill A Mockingbird Letter To The Editor

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    To Kill A Mockingbird has allowed me as a reader to look back and realize how history really was. For example, many Maycomb citizens were racist towards colored people and many readers should feel how to live in a segregated neighborhood. The scene was when Scout was describing the courthouse and all the African Americans had to sit on top: “ The colored balcony ran along 3 walls..” (219) Also this scene impacted my feeling towards colored people when Scout became aware that all the courthouse members were white. Like many high school students who are reader this book, many of them think the word racism is a joke and don’t use it as it’s

    Read More

More about Ku Klux Klan Influence

Open Document