Ku Klux Klan Facts
Ku Klux Klan Facts
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Interesting Ku Klux Klan Facts: |
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The world "Ku Klux Klan" is believed to have been derived from the Greek word for circle, kyklos. |
The Klan was born on December 24, 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee. Confederate veteran Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Klan organizer and leader was elected the first "Grand Wizard" or leader. With that said, the first era of the Klan was highly decentralized, which was one of the reasons why it was effective. |
The Civil Rights Act of 1871 allowed the president to suspend habeas corpus and round up many Klansmen. |
The second Klan was founded by William Joseph Simmons in an elaborate ceremony in Stone Mountain, Georgia. It wasn't until the second era of the Klan that the Klan began doing cross lightings/burnings. |
The silent film Birth of a Nation by director D.W. Griffith was a sympathetic treatment of the first era of the Klan and was basically a recruiting tool for the second era of the Klan. |
In addition to being anti-Jewish, the second Klan was pro-prohibition and anti-Catholic. |
The second Klan was much more centrally controlled, which meant that when Indiana Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson was convicted of drugging and murdering a woman it led to a sharp decline in membership. |
Floggings were a common method of intimidation used by the Klan in its second era. |
The third era of the Klan was marked by regional and state Klan groups that were autonomous of each other. The largest of these groups was the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Mississippi. Led by Samuel Bowers, the White Knights had thousands of members in Mississippi and were responsible for numerous acts of violence, most notably the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner in 1964. |
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