The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist group that was infamous in the United States for acting violently against its colored victims. The Ku Klux Klan has lynched many people since its founding, and was known for dressing up as ghosts wearing bed sheets with eyeholes and saying they were the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers. In addition to the many recorded deaths that we have at the hands of the Klan, it is believed that they have killed many times as many people.
Many of the roles in the Klan were earned, and they had very honorable titles. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the original founder of the Klan, was called the Grand Wizard of the Empire. The Empire was the highest level of the Klan which related to all Klan activities. Below the Empire were the Realms, which were smaller groups of the Klan that acted on a state level. Leading these were the Grand Dragons of the Realm, and all other officers were appointed by him. After this you had Dominions, headed by the Great Titan of Dominion. There were no more than three Dominions in each Congressional Region. Even smaller than this were provinces, which were active in counties and headed by a Grand Giant of the Province. The Dens were the basic level of organization for the original Klan, which were organized by the Grand Cyclops of the Den, who appointed other officers. The basic members of the Klan were Ghouls, and they performed racist activities. The rest of the administration served many different roles, but every stage of the Empire was lead by somebody of a different role, with actual racist activities performed by ghouls.
Following Lincoln’s presidency and the Civil War, many people were not happy with the decisions he had made to support black people. After Lincoln’s assassination, when Andrew Johnson took over as president, many laws were passed to both support and cripple the black population, but for the most part segregation still occurred and colored people were certainly not equal to white men. During this reformation a man named Nathan Bedford Forrest took it into his own hands to control the black population, and he formed the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan would attack black citizens off of simple accusations such as looking at white woman, and they never let anybody argue against them. They acted violently, often killing black people while dressed in bedsheets, claiming to be the ghosts of dead Confederates who had lost the Civil War. Since many people agreed with the ideas enforced by the Klan, however, the Klan could act with near immunity early on as nobody wanted to fight against them. Soon after the Klan started, Congress passed the Ku Klux and Enforcement Acts which made it illegal for two or more people to meet in costume and deprive somebody from any civil rights. Following these acts, the Klan started to slowly fade away. In 1871 the Force Bill was passed, and it gave the president legal permission to act against the Klan. This successfully shut them down for about 40 years.
The Second Klan era was from 1915 to 1944. In 1870 the Supreme Court ordered that the Ku Klux Klan was a terrorist group and made it illegal to one or more people to gather and take away any civil rights of another person, and also gave the president permission to act against the Klan. In 1915 the Klan was reborn when the film “The Birth of a Nation” was released and the film basically glorified the Klan. With this film William J. Simmons took full advantage of the positive reinforcement the Klan was given and he organized about 15 men as recruiters and told them to recruit people. The new people in the Klan had to pay membership fees and also fees for their costumes. William organized small rallies and cross burnings, it was kept a small group until 1920, when the Klans size expanded immensely. The Klan had changed its targets from just black people and started to include Jewish, Catholic, and Communist parties as well.
The new Klan policy was 100% Americanism, and members could not be anything except white American citizens. This change made the Klan grow. By 1922, 3,000,000 white americans had joined. With the increase in people also came an increase in power, mostly political power. To help get more power the Klan would endorse any political officer that supported the Klan’s goals. The Indiana Klan was the most powerful division in the nation at the time, and it would only accept american born whites. D.C Stephenson was a man from this division who quickly rose to prominence as one of the Klan’s best recruiters. Stephenson eventually became so important that he was receiving $4 out of every $10 fee payed by a Klansman, and after this he became very rich. Following this, somebody threatened to turn Stephenson in on charges of murder. Stephenson responded with his famous quote, “I am the law in Indiana,” which was pretty much true since members of the Klan dominated politically during the 20th century, holding many political offices, which gave them an opportunity to continue growing. The Klan finally started to decline during the Great Depression, when many members were unable to afford to pay the Klan fees and stopped participating. D.C. Stephenson finally got convicted of second degree murder, and the Klan went back into the dark until the Civil Rights Movement.
The original founder of the Klan was a man named Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a lieutenant general for the Confederates during the Civil War. Forrest was not a well educated person, but he was very rich at the time of the war, earning his fortune from slave trading. He enlisted in the war as a private, and was one of the few people promoted all the way from the private rank to a division commander, as Forrest was a natural leader. After the war ended, he was not tolerant of the reformation at all and he did everything in his power to act against it. Sometime in the late 1860’s, Forrest founded the Ku Klux Klan, a terror group that strictly favored white supremacy and acted violently against colored people. He called himself the national Klan leader and was given the title of “Grand Wizard.” The Klan members began wearing white masks and robes to hide their identity and add drama to their night rides. In an interview in 1868, Forrest claimed that the Klan had 40,000 members in Tennessee and 550,000 total members throughout the Southern states. In his words he agreed with their actions, but Forrest denied any formal connection. In an interview with Congress in 1871, Forrest switched from saying that he was not an important member of the Klan to saying that he was not involved in the Klan at all. After responses from people saying they saw him in full Klan attire in 1867, Forrest declared that the Klan’s goals were merely political, and shared that he attempted to shut down the Klan in 1869 after Ulysses S. Grant was elected president, arguing that the Klan was incredibly malformed from the patriotic goals it was meant to achieve. Many loyal members of the Klan continued operating in dens for a few years, but these died out about 10 years later.
In November of the year 2014, the Ku Klux Klan had their official Twitter account and many smaller accounts hacked by the activist group called Anonymous. They started by posting a youtube video in which an anonymous voice says tells them "Due to your actions, we have started operation KKK. The aim of our operation is nothing more than cyber warfare. Anything you upload will be taken down. Anything you use to promote the KKK will be shut down." They then tweeted a message on the KKK Twitter account, saying that the Ku Klux Klan is a terror group and that they are being attacked because they threatened to use lethal force against peaceful protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. A few minutes later a picture of a unicorn was posted on the official Klan Twitter account, with the description “And finally, here’s a unicorn :).” The public reacted very positively to this picture, with most people commenting about how much they laughed at the silly picture that they posted. Anonymous started hacking personal Twitter accounts of Klan members a few hours later, revealing their identity to the public, using their new “Operation KKK.” They are making posts on people’s personal Twitter accounts with their identities, followed by #HoodsOff. While the Ku Klux Klan is not acting nearly as much now as they had been in 20th century, Anonymous has taken as many actions as they can to stop the Klan’s influence.