It started as a social club. Six bored Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, sitting around in late 1865, decided they needed a distraction from the wreck of the post-war South. They stole some bedsheets. They made up weird titles like "Grand Cyclops." They rode horses through the night to scare people. But what began as a juvenile prank quickly mutated into a paramilitary insurgency that fundamentally altered American history. When we talk about the rise of the kkk, we aren't just talking about one single event, but three distinct waves of radicalization that prove how easily resentment can turn into a movement.
History isn't a straight line. It's messy.
The first iteration of the Klan wasn't some organized national shadow government. It was a chaotic, localized reaction to Reconstruction. White Southerners felt their world was upside down because formerly enslaved people were suddenly voting, holding office, and owning land. To the veterans who started the group, this was an existential threat. They didn't just want their "old way of life" back; they wanted to ensure the new way of life failed before it could even breathe.
How the first rise of the kkk actually functioned
You've probably seen the movies where they look like a disciplined army. They weren't. In the 1860s, the Klan was a loose collection of independent dens. There was no central headquarters, no real "leader" who could control every member, though Nathan Bedford Forrest—a former Confederate general—was named the first Grand Wizard. Forrest was a man known for his tactical brilliance and his brutal reputation at the Fort Pillow Massacre. Under his nominal leadership, the group’s goal shifted from "scaring people" to systematic political terrorism.
They targeted the ballot box.
Violence was the primary tool. If a Black man tried to vote, he might find his house burned. If a white "carpetbagger" from the North tried to open a school for freedmen, he might be whipped or worse. The violence got so bad that by 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant had to step in. He didn't mess around. Grant pushed the Enforcement Acts through Congress, which basically let the federal government use the military to crush the Klan. It worked. By 1872, the first version of the Klan was effectively dead. It was gone.
Or so people thought.
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For several decades, the organization was a ghost. A memory. But then, culture happened. In 1915, a director named D.W. Griffith released The Birth of a Nation. This wasn't just a movie; it was a three-hour propaganda epic that portrayed the Klan as heroic saviors of white womanhood. It was the first "blockbuster." President Woodrow Wilson even had it screened at the White House. This film, more than anything else, sparked the second, much larger rise of the kkk.
The 1920s: When the Klan went mainstream
This second wave was different. It wasn't just a Southern thing anymore. This time, the Klan was a national powerhouse with millions of members in places like Indiana, Oregon, and Ohio. They didn't hide in the woods. They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. with their faces uncovered. It was basically a giant, hateful fraternity.
They marketed themselves as "100% Americanism."
They didn't just hate Black people this time around. They added Catholics, Jews, and immigrants to their list. To a middle-class white Protestant in 1924, the Klan looked like a civic organization. They had baseball teams. They had women’s auxiliaries. They had junior leagues for kids. They even sold their own brand of insurance. It was a multi-level marketing scheme built on a foundation of bigotry. William Joseph Simmons, a former preacher, was the one who restarted it on Stone Mountain, Georgia, but it was two public relations experts—Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke—who turned it into a money-making machine.
They charged for everything.
$10 for membership (the "Klecktoken").
$6.50 for the robe.
More for the horse trappings.
By the mid-1920s, membership estimates ranged from 3 million to 5 million people. Think about that for a second. That's a massive percentage of the adult population at the time. They controlled state legislatures. In Indiana, the Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson was essentially the most powerful man in the state. He famously said, "I am the law in Indiana."
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But his ego was his undoing. Stephenson was convicted of a brutal kidnapping and murder of a woman named Madge Oberholtzer. When the Governor refused to pardon him, Stephenson "spilled the beans." He opened his ledgers. He showed exactly which politicians were on the Klan payroll. The scandal shattered the image of the Klan as a "moral" organization. Between the scandals and the onset of the Great Depression—where nobody had $10 to spare for a hate-group membership—the second rise of the kkk collapsed nearly as fast as it began.
Civil Rights and the Third Wave
The third version of the Klan popped up in the 1950s and 60s as a direct response to the Civil Rights Movement. This wasn't the massive, "civic" Klan of the 20s. It was smaller, more fractured, and incredibly violent. These were the people behind the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham. They were the ones who murdered Medgar Evers and the three civil rights workers in Mississippi during Freedom Summer.
They were fragmented.
Independent chapters like the "White Knights" or the "United Klans of America" fought each other as much as they fought their "enemies."
Unlike the 1920s, the federal government—eventually—stopped looking the other way. The FBI’s COINTELPRO operation infiltrated these groups. They sowed paranoia. They turned members against each other. By the time the 1970s rolled around, the Klan was largely marginalized, replaced by even more radical "Aryan" or neo-Nazi groups that didn't bother with the bedsheets.
Why it keeps coming back
People often ask why the rise of the kkk happens in cycles. It's usually tied to economic anxiety or rapid social change. Whenever a large group of people feels like they are "losing" their country or their status, extremist rhetoric starts to sound like common sense to them. Historians like Linda Gordon, who wrote The Second Coming of the KKK, point out that the 1920s Klan wasn't made up of "monsters" in the eyes of their neighbors—they were the doctors, lawyers, and shopkeepers. That's the scariest part.
It wasn't a fringe movement of outcasts.
It was a mainstream movement of the "concerned."
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Today, the Klan is a shadow of its former self. Estimates suggest there are fewer than 3,000 members nationwide across dozens of tiny, bickering groups. They spend more time suing each other over the rights to the name than they do doing much else. But the ideology—that's a different story. The tactics of the Klan have been absorbed into the broader "alt-right" and white nationalist movements that use the internet instead of pamphlets.
Navigating the Legacy
Understanding the rise of the kkk requires looking at the gaps in our education. Most people think of the Klan only in the context of the South, but their influence in the Midwest was arguably more significant in terms of actual lawmaking. They weren't just "protestors"; they were the police chiefs and the judges.
If you're looking to dive deeper into this, don't just stick to general history books. Look at the primary sources. Read the newspaper archives from 1920s Indianapolis or 1960s Alabama. Look at the way the media at the time either fought them—like the Chicago Defender or the New York World—or how some local papers basically acted as their PR department.
Steps for further understanding
To truly grasp the impact of these movements on modern society, consider these concrete actions:
- Audit Local History: Research whether your own town or city had a Klan presence in the 1920s. You might be surprised to find how many "Klan Days" were held at local county fairs in the North and West.
- Study the Legal Response: Look into the 1871 KKK Act. It is still used today in civil rights lawsuits. Understanding how the law was designed to fight domestic terrorism provides a lot of context for current legal battles.
- Analyze Propaganda Techniques: Watch fragments of The Birth of a Nation (with historical context) to see how film was used to rewrite history. It’s a masterclass in how media can be weaponized to create a "hero" out of a villain.
- Support Archival Research: Visit sites like the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Anti-Defamation League to see how they track the evolution of these groups into modern digital spaces.
The history of the Klan isn't just a "Southern problem" or a "thing that happened a long time ago." It is a blueprint for how extremist movements gain a foothold in the mainstream. By recognizing the patterns—the recruitment through "family values," the use of new technology (like film or radio), and the exploitation of economic fear—we can see the same red flags when they appear in different outfits today. The rise of the kkk serves as a permanent warning that democracy is fragile and that "normal" people are often the ones who let the darkness in.