Imagine living in constant fear knowing that, at any moment many innocent people or even loved ones could die and there was nothing anyone could do about it. During the 1930’s, it was very common for blacks or other minorities, that lived in the south, to feel this way. They were treated very poorly, “Colored Only” or “White Only” signs could be seen everywhere. Everything was segregated. People hated African Americans for just being black. The Ku Klux Klan (also known as the KKK) especially hated blacks and often killed, beat, and harrassed them due to what they looked like or even what they believed in. The worst part was that the KKK was mostly made up of high political figures or policeman, so those affected by the KKK didn’t have anyone …show more content…
The name, Ku Klux Klan, is assumed to have come from the greek word “kuklos”, which means circle. Klan is just an alternative for clan. So this means that The Ku Klux Klan was meant to be a band, or circle of brothers. The group grew very quickly into a terrorist organization. It soon had reached every single state in the south and at its peak included 6 million members, many including, mayors, policeman, judges, and other high political figures. Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was picked as the first leader, or “grand wizard,” of the Klan. He was one of the many “famed… soldiers(who) murdered captured black troops at Fort Pillow”(Wormser). Fort Pillow is one of the most well known war crimes, a massacre of roughly 150 African American Union soldiers. After the Civil War Forrest was best known for being prominent figure in the foundation of the KKK . “At first, the Ku Klux Klan focused its anger and violence on African-Americans” (About the KKK), but soon turned on anyone who supported African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan negatively affected society in the south by having high political figures … no one to turn to or
The stories that the author told were very insightful to what life was like for an African American living in the south during this time period. First the author pointed out how differently blacks and whites lived. She stated “They owned the whole damn town. The majority of whites had it made in the shade. Living on easy street, they inhabited grand houses ranging from turn-of-the-century clapboards to historics”(pg 35). The blacks in the town didn’t live in these grand homes, they worked in them. Even in today’s time I can drive around, and look at the differences between the living conditions in the areas that are dominated by whites, and the areas that are dominated by blacks. Racial inequalities are still very prevalent In today’s society.
When Jane and a few others decided to leave the plantation patrollers spotted them and killed many of them. Jane says, “Them and the soldiers from the Secesh Army were the ones who made up the Ku Klux Klans later on” (Gaines 21). Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan terrorized black people in the South during the Reconstructi...
They hated anyone who was not a white Christian, and would go as far as to kill anyone who was not. This group is the Ku Klux Klan. This group of people were known primarily for their very Nazi-based ideologies, which in turn, they ended up murdering many who were not white, or even burning down the homes and business’ of those who weren’t. They were strongly against the progressive movement of the American Government toward the African American people. Although today this group has lost many in numbers, there are still a surprisingly large amount of people who are part of
A few years ago, my mother told me something thought provoking: we had once lived on the same block as the leader of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter. That had been in Charlotte, North Carolina, around 1994. The Ku Klux Klan, according to Blaine Varney in Lynching in the 1890’s, used to “…set out on nightly ‘terror rides’ to harass ‘uppity Negroes’….” They are far more infamous, however, for their “lynching”—nightly “terror rides” that included murder—of African Americans. Varney tells us lynching levels reached their pinnacle in 1892, with 161 recorded murders that year. In modern times, most Americans would agree that the Klan, along with any form of white supremacy, has no place in society—and pointing out its survival is a good way to imply that we, as a people, are still not perfect.
The population of African Americans from 1865 to 1900 had limited social freedom. Social limitations are limitations that relate “…to society and the way people interact with each other,” as defined by the lesson. One example of a social limitation African Americans experienced at the time is the white supremacy terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. The KKK started as a social club formed by former confederate soldiers, which rapidly became a domestic terrorist organization. The KKK members were white supremacists who’s objective was to ward off African Americans from using their new political power. In an attempts to achieve their objective, Klansmen would burn African American schools, scare and threaten voters, destroy the homes of African Americans and also the homes of whites who supported African American rights. The greatest terror the KKK imposed was that of lynching. Lynching may be defined via the lesson as, “…public hanging for an alleged offense without benefit of trial.” As one can imagine these tactics struck fear into African Americans and the KKK was achiev...
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
The Klansmen were murderers as they assaulted Republicans for fighting for the rights of everyone which included African Americans. In South Carolina, the Klansmen were really out and about within this area with their protesting and making sure that they were
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.
Times were looking up for African Americans, their new freedom gave them the option to go down a road of either criminal actions or to make something out of themselves. But the presence of racism and hatred was still very much so alive, Klu Klux Klan, although not as strong as they were after the Civil War was still present. Laws like Jim Crow laws and “separate but equal” came into play and continued to show how racism was alive. Besides these actors of racism, blacks still started gaining a major roll in American society.
...dation and violence, including lynching, were an ever-present danger. Northern African Americans were not unaffected and suffered the same widespread discrimination and school and residential segregation.
The KKK is a movement that has been very controversial since the Civil War. The Klan as they call themselves was created as a result of the occupation of Federal troops in the South. The KKK's purpose at the time was to provide the people of the south with the leadership to bring back the values of Western Civilization that was taken from them. In the 1920's the Klan had its most popular era. At this time the KKK was the most active politically then it has ever been in history. The KKK still exists today as a brotherhood and a new White racial community that lives and functions by the ideals it promotes. Today the Klan is in its 5th era and continues to be America's oldest and most effective White Christian Fraternal organization.
White Southerners who hated blacks started the Ku Klux Klan in 1866. It was also called the KKK. They tried to stop black people from voting and having other civil rights. They would wear white sheets and masks with pointed hoods. They would beat up blacks and public officials. They would burn crosses by the houses of people they wanted to scare. The KKK was declared illegal in 1...
To wrap it up, African Americans lived an unfair past in the south, such as Alabama, during the 1930s because of discrimination and the misleading thoughts towards them. The Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow Laws and the way they were generally treated in southern states all exemplify this merciless time period of the behavior towards them. They were not given the same respect, impression, and prospect as the rest of the citizens of America, and instead they were tortured. Therefore, one group should never be singled out and should be given the same first intuition as the rest of the people, and should never be judged by color, but instead by character.
Then the men erected a sixteen-foot high cross and lit it on fire. William Joseph Simmons was the leader of the new Klan. William, son of an ex Klan member, heard his dad speak of Klan stories and wanted to “Frighten the Dark People” himself. In the early 1920’s, the Klan traveled on a wave of terror in the south and southwest. As the violence spread, a pattern appeared.
They wanted to form a brotherhood after their loss in the war. Their leader Forrest was a Confederate General during the Civil War. The name, Ku Klux Klan, was a mix of Greek words specifically the word Kuklos meaning circle, or cycle. The first chapter was created in Tennessee, but the Klan quickly spread to Alabama, Mississippi, the Carolinas, and many other Southern States. The Klan developed in a South devastated by war and threatened with Social upheaval. It offered whites an opportunity to regain political and social control. Originally the KKK were mostly harmless. They became more violent as the abolishment of slavery became real and the idea of reconstructing the South surfaced. They rode around the streets of Pulaski at night in their cloaks scaring anyone who caught sight of them. They wore the white cloaks and hats, made of sheets, to scare the un-educated African Americans into thinking they were ghosts, and it worked. They also wore them to intimidate and scare anyone who supported what they were against. As they were becoming more and more violent they realized their real potential for power and control that they could have over their targets, and they took advantage of it. They began to severely injure or even kill mainly African Americans, Republicans, minorities, and anyone else who crossed them. They terrified