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The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan was a very powerful and organized secret society that began in the years directly following the Civil War, and is a society whose influence is still felt today. Although the reasons for the rise of the Klan vary from source to source, there is one common thread, which is that it rose from fear.

The KKK grew as a response to three major changes in the South after the Civil War. Changes to the social, cultural and economic trends put southern whites in fear of being on the same level as their former slaves (Constructing the American Past Pg. 2). They were afraid to be over run by the newly freed black slaves.

Every Klan’s man was to take an oath before entering in which states that the Klan’s purpose was to “To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless, from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers.” (Constructing Pg. 4). The whites were scared of the blacks, and were making it by attempting to bully them into yet another submissive role. This was a time of trouble for the southern whites. They were not used to being placed as equal to any black person.

This is another cause for the formation of the KKK. In a time of hardship the whites needed to ban together and find a scapegoat. In this case, the blacks were being blamed for the dramatic change in the entire south. The change in industry, society, and even the change in the land, was blamed on the poor newly freed blacks. The blacks were blamed for the many deaths that the south had in the Civil War, the many people who were widowed, orphaned, or hit by its tradegy (100 Years, Pg. 37-39).

Interestingly though, the Klan was not made up of only wealthy southern whites. Most of its members were from a lesser class, a class that would most likely be at the same level of the newly freed black slaves. These farmers had always been able to say that at least they were better than the blacks, but after the Civil War,...

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