Opinion ID: 1918426
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: ku klux klan

Text: The Ku Klux Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865 or 1866, by former officers of the Confederacy. [44] It began as a social fraternity of pranksters, but was quickly transformed into a terrorist organization aimed to promote and preserve white supremacy. [45] In the post-Civil War South, under the leadership of a former Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Ku Klux Klan became a counterrevolutionary organization that whipped, shot, hanged, robbed, raped, and otherwise outraged Negroes and Republicans across the South in the name of preserving white civilization. [46] The movement was from the start, and still is, highly decentralized, but [t]he overriding purpose of the Ku Klux movement, no matter how decentralized, was the maintenance or restoration of white supremacy in every walk of life. [47] The Ku Klux Klan was officially disbanded by Forrest when even he proved unable to control it, but local units continued to operate until sent into hiding by federal troops [48] empowered by federal legislation specifically enacted to combat the Ku Klux Klan. [49] It reorganized in 1915 and was extraordinarily successful due to a nascent civil rights movement, urbanization, northern migration of blacks, and immigration. [50] The movement fragmented again after the Second World War but gained new strength in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education [51] and in opposing the growing civil rights movement. [52] Between 1955 and 1965, the Ku Klux Klan or Ku Klux Klan sympathizers perpetrated more than 200 bombings and murdered 40 civil rights workers. [53] Although the Ku Klux Klan's threat has waned since, it has recently begun to regain strength by advancing an anti-immigrant message, much as it did during its heyday in the 1920's, when its meteoric rise was fueled by fear of Catholic European immigrants. [54] Over its long history, the Ku Klux Klan has always managed to rebuild. [55] Nebraska has not been immune to the Ku Klux Klan's influence. The Ku Klux Klan began actively recruiting members in Nebraska in 1921. [56] Soon, the Ku Klux Klan claimed 45,000 members in Nebraska, and public demonstrations, parades, and cross burnings grew common. [57] The Ku Klux Klan was vigorous in its campaigns against blacks, Jews, foreigners, Catholics, and women suffragists. [58] Early resistance from key political officials and newspapers, however, blunted the Ku Klux Klan's appeal in Nebraska, and although it would linger in a number of communities well into the 1930s, [it] soon faded from the public scene. [59] But not before it divided communities with anger and hostility and engendered fear of violence among those that it targeted for exclusion. [60] The Ku Klux Klan's history and notoriety give it, and its symbols, influence and meaning greatly disproportionate to its remaining membership. The Ku Klux Klan has been characterized as `[t]he world's oldest, most persistent terrorist organization.' [61] There is little doubt that the Ku Klux Klan's main objective remains to establish a racist white government in the United States. [62] The Ku Klux Klan, like the burning cross that is its most dramatic and visible sign, is a symbol of organized violence, physical as well as verbal, directed against blacks. [63] [N]o single group more starkly demonstrates the endurance of dark social forces in the United Statesracism, religious bigotry, extralegal vigilantism, moral authoritarianismthan the Klan, a hooded secret order now well into its second century of existence. [64] Nor is there any doubt that the Knights Party is heir to the historical Ku Klux Klan. The Knights Party attempts to make itself respectable by presenting itself as representing Christian family values, and this approach has made it one of the largest traditional Ku Klux Klan groups operating today. [65] But the record establishes that the Knights Party, while it purports to discourage violence, expressly claims to be the Ku Klux Klan founded in Pulaski over 140 years ago and the Ku Klux Klan that marched in Washington, D.C., in the 1920's. The Knights Party invokes and claims the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest. The Knights Party uses the ceremonial robes and Celtic cross that have traditionally represented the Ku Klux Klan. [66] And the Knights Party invokes the same political views, declaring, God gave the entire earth to be the white man and woman's domain. That is our purpose in being here; to subdue and rule. Under our Christian guidance, all races will lead a much happier existence. Law and order is what they need. The Knights Party claims to be nonviolent, and there is no evidence in the record that it is not. But it is also worth noting that while the Knights Party officially disclaims violence, distance from violence is a tactic that traditional Ku Klux Klan groups have used in the past. [67] It has been historically common for the Ku Klux Klan to publically deny that its movement has engaged in illegal activity, or even that it is racist or anti-Semitic. [68] Among the first prescripts of the Ku Klux Klan, dating to 1868, is a formal statement of character and purpose that proclaims the Ku Klux Klan to be `an institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy, and Patriotism' intended `to protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenceless, from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal' and to support the U.S. Constitution and constitutional laws. [69] But despite that rhetoric, not dissimilar to that advanced by the Knights Party today, [i]t would be hard to imagine a greater parody than this on the Ku Klux Klan as it actually operated. It frequently pandered to men's lowest instincts; it bullied or brutalized the poor, the weak, and the defenseless; it was often the embodiment of lawlessness and outrage; . . . and it set at defiance the Constitution and laws of the United States. [70] The Ku Klux Klan's public statements disavowing lawlessness have often been self-serving attempts to avoid prosecution for acts of violence. [71] But beyond that, even when technically true, they are not entirely compelling, given the nature of Ku Klux Klan ideology. As one historian has observed, the Ku Klux Klan provides cultural sanction for violence from each of the strands in the Klan's world view: its reactionary populism, its racialism, its gender conventions, and its overall alarm about the state of society and government. Together, they worked to prompt and ennoble white male violence undertaken in defense of family and community. To put it another way, there were no significant restraining elements in Klan culture that might act to inhibit violence against outsiders to Klansmen's idea of community. [72] Stated another way, the Knights Party's attempt to disclaim violence is insufficient to excuse its continued endorsement of a historical legacy of violence, and the inevitably violent consequences of its hateful political and social propaganda. Given the history of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Knights Party's express claim to that history, we have little difficulty in concluding that for all practical purposes, joining the Knights Party is the same as joining the historical Ku Klux Klan. Nor is it difficult to conclude that the historical Ku Klux Klan represents discrimination, violence, and armed resistance to lawful authority.