The First Ku Klux Klan - Essay Example

In April of 1867, the Klan was further organized and it established a hierarchy. It was said that the Klan’s first leader is the famous general N.B. Forrest, the Calvary Confederate leader. He is called the ‘Grand Wizard’ or the ‘Imperial Wizard’. This is the title given to the Klan’s highest leader and was assisted by lower-ranking officials of the group. The whole southern country was mapped, organized, and subdivided into several sectors down to the lowest ranks and individual members.     Later in 1869, the group became perpetrators of lawless violence and recklessness throughout the continent. Ku Klux Klan members were seen mostly at night, covered in white. They hold silent parades and covered their horses with the same white robes. People regarded the Klan as Confederate soldiers returning from the dead. The Ku Klux Klan spread terror all over the entire land. Their main targets are the blacks, the carpetbaggers, and the scalawags. They effectively kept black men from voting and from joining the electoral process, to control the polls, its results, and politics in particular. They promote terror through whipping and lynching. And because the Klan became so powerful and uncontrollable, its leaders, headed by General Forrest, ordered and sought to disband the group. He resigned from his position as the Grand Wizard. But then, a lot of its off-shoots still functioned, and it continued for the next few years.    The Birth of the Second Ku Klux Klan It was 1915 when the Klan was revived, thus giving birth to the second Ku Klux Klan faction. This group was formed by William J. Simmons, who is a former minister and a popular fraternal order promoter. In October of the same year, he had prepared to reveal the campaign to form the group, together with friends of the same mindset. The second Klan is still focused on restoring the supremacy of the white race. It is promoting fundamentalism as a religion and had a hand in controlling politics during those times, although it professed that it is not a political group. Some of the Klan’s noted members were elected as government officials, mostly congressmen and mayors. The Klan continued performing extreme measures to counter its assumed enemies, and most of these cases were unauthorized by their central leaders.      The most noted and remembered extreme activity undertaken by the second Ku Klux Klan is the murder of three civil rights workers in the summer of 1964, in Mississippi. It was the most horrible crime they committed in the entire regime of the second Klan – it was an execution, not merely an assassination. But in 1930, Ku Klux Klan experience a decline in its members, especially when state laws prohibited the use of masks and the propagation of secret societies. This decline of interest in its members is mainly due to the massive corruption, the wrongdoings, and the amassing of wealth for personal gains by its leaders through the influence group.    The Klan as a Hate Group  The major example of hate groups working with leaders of several or subsequent affiliations and at the same time working under a common name but covering a lot of distinct factions is none other than the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was a hate group that did one too many illegal acts of intimidation and violence. The Klan was known to be responsible for the arson of the Black South Caroline Group of Churches, which is a predominantly black institution. The Klan also overtly aired it's being an anti-Jew and anti-Black organization by publishing a newsletter called the Keystone American. Aside from these, the Klan is linked to incidents of harassment and racial terrorization all over the land. They were known to be behind the threat of blowing up a certain all-white housing unit in Texas, just to stop its plans of integrating with the black race. There is also an instance when the Klan members even conspired with white children and offered them about $50 each just to beat up African-American kids.     The Ku Klux Klan and Its Effects Today Today, the Klan is still moving and is still influencing politics. Factions of the Ku Klux Klan are still seen at work defending the white race against suppression and maintaining its domination. Klan members, although not as discreet and as powerful as it was before, held rallies, did some marches, and carried out parades to defend their rights as a group. They also kept and utilized these rights they maintained to support the candidacy of their commissioned political nominees and to field them in the polls. Because of this, there still exists an unspoken air of racism in some parts of the continent. The Klan still denotes the feeling that whites are better people in society. And the political government is still ruled by a majority of white people, and it seems to be kept and maintained that way.     Even with the whole country’s efforts to stop racism, it is still an entity that is not entirely abolished. Despite the modern laws and the modern representations of it, there are still a lot of loopholes that were covertly used by people, either powerful or not, to be utilized against the blacks, the Jews, and even the Catholics. Racism hasn’t stopped as it should be. Read More