2
This act led to the shrinking of the Klan because members saw that the government was powerful enough to act against terrorism and therefore fascism in the South (Wormser).
Reconstructing the Klan
It was pointed out earlier that the Klan was reconstructed several times, but the different waves of the KKK had only one attribute in common, which was hatred. After the 1870s the Hooded Order was re-established when the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men were feeling hatred towards something. It cannot be stated that the members felt hatred towards certain segment(s) of the society because there were times when they were rebelling against an ideology which was at their time in contrast with the original notions of the Founding Fathers. The Fathers believed in slavery, and they were Protestants who left Europe to find a new land for their religious believes. Ideologies or people who were supporting opposing views were enemies of the KKK (McVeigh 35).
The first revival of the Ku Klux Klan started in 1915 when immigrants from all over the world arrived to the United States. The Klan this time had a leader called Colonel William Joseph Simmons, who was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. He wrote a book, the Kloran, which summarized the basic notions of the KKK. The Klan was fighting not only against African Americans, but also against immigrants and those politicians who gave admission to refugees from Europe due to the First World War. These immigrants were viewed as intruders who were stealing workplaces from white men. This period was surprisingly more successful than the original Klan and the number of its members exceeded four million. Another feature of the group was that there was not one, but several smaller groups in every part of the United States, and they all had their own rules and costumes. Moreover, new members – now women were also allowed to enter the Klan – were only allowed to be active participants if they paid a certain amount of money to the head of the Klan. The second wave was never stopped by the government and it found additional ideologies to fight against. For example, in the 1950s and 1970s when the civil rights movement was at its peak the membership increased and terror attack against African Americans were common (McVeigh 40-45).
Useful sources about the KKK are difficult to find today. However, I used a photo documentary on Business Insider to collect data in order to draw conclusions and compare today’s Klan with the original 1867 version. According to this article the Hooded Order still has the same costume as their ancestors during the Reconstruction Era, and the main motif of the members is to maintain the white power in the United States.