"Topaz" hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:pltos3pflck9dkjdl6k8h1lb4t6gbf8gom@4ax.com...

Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the name of several past and present organizations in
the United States that have advocated white supremacy, anti-Semitism,
anti-Catholicism, racism, homophobia, anti-Communism and nativism. These
organizations have often used terrorism, violence, and acts of intimidation,
such as cross burning and lynching, to oppress African Americans and other
social or ethnic groups.

The Klan's first incarnation was in 1866. Founded by veterans of the
Confederate Army, its main purpose was to resist Reconstruction. It focused
as much on intimidating "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" as on putting down
the freed slaves. Southern elites saw the Klan as an excuse for federal
troops to continue their activities in the South. The organization declined
from 1868 to 1870 and was destroyed in the early 1870s by President Ulysses
S. Grant's vigorous action under the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as
the Ku Klux Klan Act).

In 1915, a second distinct group was founded using the same name. It grew
against social fears aroused by rapid changes in many major cities as they
absorbed immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Southern blacks of the
Great Migration and whites from rural areas. Mass media sensationalized
events that helped spark the Klan, such as the film The Birth of a Nation
and inflammatory newspaper coverage of the trial, conviction and lynching of
Leo Frank in Atlanta. The second KKK was a formal fraternal organization,
with a national and state structure, that paid thousands of men to organize
local chapters all over the country. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the
organization included about 15%% of the nation's eligible population,
approximately 4-5 million men.[1] The second KKK typically preached racism,
anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and anti-Semitism. Some local
groups took part in lynchings and other violent activities. Violence
occurred mostly in the South, which already had a tradition of lawlessness.
[2]Its popularity fell during the Great Depression, and membership fell
further during World War II because of scandals resulting from prominent
members' crimes and its support of the Nazis.

The name "Ku Klux Klan" has since been used by many independent groups. Many
of them opposed the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation in the 1950s and
1960s. During that period, they often acted with impunity by alliances with
Southern police departments, as during the reign of Bull Connor in
Birmingham, Alabama; or even governor's offices, as with George Wallace of
Alabama.[3] Several members of KKK-affiliated groups were eventually
convicted of murder and manslaughter in the deaths of civil rights workers
and children in Alabama and Mississippi (as in the bombing of the 16th
Street Baptist Church in Alabama, the assassination of NAACP organizer
Medgar Evers, and the murders of three civil rights workers). Today,
researchers estimate that there are as many as 150 Klan chapters with up to
8,000 members nationwide.[4] The US government classifies these groups, with
operations in separated small local units, as extreme hate groups. The
modern KKK has been repudiated by all mainstream media, political and
religious leaders.