3
The Founding of the KKK
After the death of President Lincoln in 1865, Andrew Jackson had to face challenges in the Southern part of the United States which endangered the leading party’s reconstruction plans. Although the Union Army won the Civil War against the Confederate states abolishing slavery and promoting civil rights to black Americans were facing difficulties by the Southern states. Members of the former Confederate Army were still boycotting the actions of the reconstruction groups to integrate former slaves in the American society. The Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave equal civil rights to black people, were continuously contested in the South (Bond 23).
From one of these resilient groups came to exist the Ku Klux Klan or the Hooded Order in 1866. According to Bond the Klan was born because six Confederate veterans were bored in the small town of Pulaski, Tennessee not far from Alabama. The group did not intend to take serious actions or spread their views among the Southern states, but many previous army members who were trying to protect slavery later joined the group and began their actions against the Reconstruction governments.Every member of the Klan was given a name which indicated their status in the group. For example, the leader of the KKK was the Grand Cyclops and his assistant was the Grand Magi. The Grand Turk’s task was to greet those who were willing to join the Klan. There was the Grand Scribe as a secretary and Night Hawks as messengers. The new members who were originally not part of the Klan were called the Ghouls (10).