The Ku Klux Klan (KKK; ), sometimes referred to as the Klan, is an American white supremacist and far-right hate group that is associated with terrorism. Historians widely identify it as one of the earliest terrorist groups in the United States, citing its organized use of violence and intimidation to influence political and social conditions, particularly in the post-Civil War South. Across its three major iterations, the Klan has operated as a secret society made up of multiple affiliated organizations that used threats, assaults, and killings to advance their aims. Over its various eras, its targets included African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants.
The first Klan emerged during Reconstruction, founded by former Confederate soldiers who opposed federal efforts to extend civil and political rights to formerly enslaved people. It carried out widespread violence against black voters, officeholders, and their white allies in an effort to undermine Republican state governments and restore white Democratic control in the South. Federal Enforcement Acts and prosecutions beginning in 1871 significantly weakened this iteration. A second Klan, founded in 1915 and reaching its peak in the 1920s, expanded beyond the South and attracted millions of members from segments of the native-born white Protestant population. It promoted nativism, racial segregation, and "100 percent Americanism," and engaged in intimidation and, at times, mob violence. A third wave arose in the mid-20th century in response to the civil rights movement; although smaller, it included groups that carried out acts of racial terror aimed at resisting desegregation and racial equality.
Despite differences in size and structure, all iterations shared core ideological elements, including white supremacy, racial segregation, and hostility toward perceived outsiders. Over time, Klan groups espoused positions associated with white nationalism, anti-immigration nativism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-atheism, anti-communism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and opposition to civil rights reforms. Some members framed their activities as defending "Americanism" and Christian morality, and certain local chapters sought social respectability through parades, charitable events, and political organizing. Despite being Protestant-led, major Protestant bodies have formally condemned the Klan's ideology and methods as incompatible with Protestant theology.
The Klan is widely viewed as a violent extremist movement that contributed to systematic racial oppression and domestic terrorism. Modern scholarship has documented its extensive use of intimidation, lynching, and political violence, emphasizing its long-term impact on American history. Earlier supporters offered alternative interpretations, portraying the Klan as a patriotic or law-and-order organization responding to social or political upheaval. They cited agreement with its racial policies, approval of its fraternal or charitable activities, and the belief that it upheld "law and public morality." Historians generally contrast these justifications with extensive records of Klan violence and coercion, highlighting the gap between the organization's self‑presentation and its documented actions.
Origins
First Klan
The first Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, on December 24, 1865, by six former officers of the Confederate Army: Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe. It began as a fraternal social club inspired in part by the then largely defunct Sons of Malta. According to The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (1907), the group borrowed elements of its initiation ceremonies from that organization, with the same stated purpose: "ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and amusement for members", in which "in each of these directions it was singularly successful". The manual of rituals was printed by Laps D. McCord of Pulaski. The origins of the hood are uncertain; it may have been adapted from the Spanish capirote hood,Michael K. Jerryson (2020), Religious Violence Today: Faith and Conflict in the Modern World , p. 217 or it may derive from "folk traditions of carnival, circus, minstrelsy, Mardi Gras – or mid-century 'Calico Indians'" associated with the Anti-Rent War in upstate New York.
The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (1907) also stated: "Beginning in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation. ... The members had conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it all—that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to do."
The KKK had no organizational structure above the chapter level. However, similar groups across the South adopted comparable goals. Klan chapters promoted white supremacy and spread throughout the region as an insurgent movement resisting Reconstruction. Confederate veteran John W. Morton founded a Klan chapter in Nashville, Tennessee. As a secret vigilante organization, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies, seeking to restore white supremacy through threats and violence, including murder. According to J. Michael Martinez, the Klan "targeted white Northern leaders, Southern sympathizers and politically active blacks." In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Enforcement Acts, which were designed to prosecute and suppress Klan crimes.
The first Klan had mixed results in achieving its objectives; although it significantly weakened black political leadership through assassinations and threats of violence, driving some individuals out of public life, it also provoked a strong backlash, including the passage of federal legislation that historian Eric Foner describes as successful in "restoring order, reinvigorating the morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling blacks to exercise their rights as citizens". Historian George C. Rable argues that the Klan was ultimately a political failure and was therefore abandoned by Democratic Party leaders in the South. He writes:
After the Klan was suppressed, similar insurgent paramilitary groups emerged that were explicitly dedicated to suppressing Republican voting and removing Republicans from office. These included the White League, founded in Louisiana in 1874, and the Red Shirts, which originated in Mississippi and later developed chapters in the Carolinas. The Red Shirts, for example, are credited with helping elect Wade Hampton as governor in South Carolina, acting as the military arm of the Democratic Party and contributing to the restoration of white Democratic control of state legislatures throughout the South. According to Historian George C. Rable, the Red Shirts "formed a solid line around the ballot boxes and prevented Negros without Democratic tickets from approaching", and even when federal troops attempted to clear a path, "many had gone home".
Second Klan
In 1915, the second Klan was founded atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, by William Joseph Simmons. While Simmons relied on documents from the original Klan and on the recollections of surviving members, the revived organization drew significant inspiration from the film The Birth of a Nation. The earlier Klan had not worn white costumes or burned crosses; these elements were introduced in Thomas Dixon's 1905 fictional novel The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, on which the film was based. When the film was shown in Atlanta in December of that year, Simmons and his new Klansmen paraded to the theater in robes and pointed hoods—many on robed horses—mirroring the imagery depicted in the film. These mass parades became a hallmark of the new Klan that had not existed in the first iteration.
Beginning in 1921, the second Klan adopted a modern business system that relied on full-time, paid recruiters, and it appealed to prospective members as a fraternal organization similar to many others flourishing at the time. The national headquarters profited from a monopoly on costume sales, while organizers retained initiation fees. The organization grew rapidly nationwide during a period of economic prosperity.Chris Rhomberg, "Class, Race, and Urban Politics: the 1920s Ku Klux Klan Movement in the United States." in Political power and social theory ed. by Diane E. Davis, (Elsevier, 2005) pp.3–34. online
Writer W. J. Cash, in his 1941 book The Mind of the South, characterized the second Klan as "anti-Negro, anti-Alien, anti-Red, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Darwin, anti-Modern, anti-Liberal, Fundamentalist, vastly Moral, [and] militantly Protestant. And summing up these fears, it brought them into focus with the tradition of the past, and above all with the ancient Southern pattern of high romantic histrionics, violence and mass coercion of the scapegoat and the heretic." The organization preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and called for the purification of politics, advocating strict morality and stronger enforcement of Prohibition. Its official rhetoric emphasized the perceived threat of the Catholic Church, drawing on anti-Catholicism and nativism. Its appeal was directed exclusively toward white Protestants, and it opposed Jews, black people, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern and Eastern European immigrants, many of whom were Jewish or Catholic.
Some local Klan groups threatened violence against rum-runners and individuals they considered "notorious sinners"; the relatively few violent incidents associated with the second Klan occurred primarily in the South. The Red Knights, a militant group formed in opposition to the Klan, responded violently to Klan provocations on several occasions.
The Second Klan was a formal fraternal organization with national and state structures. During its peak years, its publicity was managed by the Southern Publicity Association, owned and operated by Edward Young Clarke and Mary Elizabeth Tyler, who created a Propagation Department to "publicize and recruit for the Klan in exchange for a percentage of the Klan's $10 initiation fee". During the first six months of Clarke and Tyler's campaign, "an additional 85,000 members (representing $850,000 in dues) joined" with further claims by Simmons in a 1922 New York Times interview that "the Klan was accepting 3,500 new members a day and had a total of five million members in all forty‑eight states plus Alaska and the Canal Zone". Even with claims of exaggeration, there was no doubt that "the Klan had undergone a dramatic reversal of fortune". At its height in the mid-1920s, the organization's membership was estimated at between three and eight million people.
In 1923, Simmons was ousted as leader of the KKK by Hiram Wesley Evans. From September 1923 onward, two national Ku Klux Klan organizations existed: the original group founded by Simmons and led by Evans, whose strength lay primarily in the southern United States, and a breakaway organization led by Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson based in Evansville, Indiana, with membership concentrated in the Midwest.
Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders—especially Stephenson's conviction for the abduction, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer—and external opposition contributed to a sharp decline in membership in both national Klan groups. By the 1930s, the main group's membership had fallen to about 30,000 by 1930, and it ultimately faded away in the 1940s.
Klan organizers also operated in Canada, particularly in Saskatchewan in 1926 and 1928, where Klansmen denounced immigrants from Eastern Europe as a threat to Canada's "Anglo-Saxon" heritage.
Third Klan