Behind a mask of chivalry, the Ku Klux Klan seeks to perpetuate white supremacy. Often simply called by its acronym, the KKK was founded as a fraternal organization in the South after the Civil War.
Some Supreme Court decisions have allowed prosecution of the Klan for terrorist activity. Other rulings have affirmed the First Amendment speech rights of KKK members, using a test of whether the speech is such that it incites violence.
KKK started as a secret organization of violence
The first Klan was organized in May 1866 by a group of young Confederate veterans as a prankish social club. Soon, however, it evolved into a secret organization seeking to enable southern whites to reassert their political and social supremacy against Radical Reconstruction. Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was its first leader.
During its first incarnation, the KKK intimidated blacks, carpetbaggers (migrants from the North), and scalawags (southern collaborators).
Flogging, mutilation, lynching, and other acts of violence and lawlessness were employed to intimidate blacks and keep them from voting. Indeed, the early KKK committed more crimes than its 20-century successors combined. Largely rural, the organization paralyzed the normal law enforcement process.
Federal troops were sent to states to combat KKK violence
Although Forrest formally disbanded the KKK in 1869, it did not die.
In response, Congress passed a Force Act in 1870 and in 1871 and the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871, authorizing the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, suppress disturbances by force, and impose heavy penalties on terrorist organizations.
Federal troops were sent into some areas to combat Klan activity. Nine South Carolina counties suspended habeas corpus, and federal agents arrested hundreds of southerners for conspiracy against the national government.
As whites regained political power, the activities of the KKK declined.
In 1882 in United States v. Harris, the Supreme Court declared a section of the KKK Act inapplicable to the acts of private persons and thus unconstitutional.
In 1915, the Klan was re-created by a former preacher, “Col.”William J. Simmons, as a patriotic fraternal society. In this Sept. 21, 1923, photo, members of the KKK ride horses during a parade through the streets of Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo)
KKK reorganized as patriotic society
In 1915 at a ceremony at Stone Mountain, Georgia, the Klan was re-created by a former preacher, “Col.”William J. Simmons, as a patriotic fraternal society.
This resurgence followed the release of the sensational movie Birth of a Nation, based on the 1905 novel by Thomas Dixon, The Clansman.
The original Klan did not burn crosses; this notion took birth in Dixon’s novel. But Klan leaders did have blown-up titles: Grand Wizard of the Empire, Grand Dragon of the Realm, Grand Titan of the Dominion, and Grand Cyclops of the Den.
KKK grew nationally in 1920s with anti-Jew, anti-immigrant message
In the early 1920s, an era of economic dislocation, the Klan spread nationwide. With a membership of between two and four million members, it held political power in Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon, as well as in the old South. There, it helped to elect U.S. senators and governors. The Klan appealed to white, native-born Protestants who were very patriotic and fearful of immigrants, radicals, Jews and Catholics, and labor unions.
In 1924 the National Democratic Convention defeated a motion denouncing the Klan after a bitter party platform controversy. In the mid-1920s, inept and exploitive leadership, internal conflict, and alleged immorality and violence damaged the Klan’s reputation.
The 1930s found the KKK anti-Jewish and anti-Communist.
In 1940 the Klan joined with the German-American Bund in holding a large rally in New Jersey. The organization formally disbanded in 1944 when it was unable to pay back federal taxes.
A hangman’s noose dangling from an automobile driven by a hooded KKK member is among the grim warnings to blacks to stay away from the voting places during an election in Miami, Florida, on May 3, 1939. (AP Photo)
Third KKK movement emerges after WWII with opposition to civil rights movement
A third Klan movement emerged in 1946, after World War II, based on fear of Communism and the civil rights movement.
Samuel Green, an Atlanta physician, headed the revival. However, the group was a shadow of its earlier incarnations. Membership peaked in the 1960s at about 17,000.
The new Klan offered hard-core opposition to the civil rights movement. It was behind the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964, and the murder of Viola Liuzzo, a voting rights volunteer from the North, in 1965. The passage of civil rights laws and surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation led to a further decline in membership.
In the 1970s, the Klan sought respectability by accepting women members and setting up youth groups. It largely abandoned its opposition to Roman Catholics. Some Klan leaders even ran for public office in the South. David Duke, a former Grand Wizard, was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989 and ran unsuccessfully for governor as a Republican in 1991.
KKK activity has been at the heart of many First Amendment cases, including some that have reached the Supreme Court. Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations and racially provocative statements by Klansmen have often produced controversy. Members of the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan march around the Madison County Courthouse in Canton, Miss., Saturday, May 29, 1999. (AP Photo/Rogelio Solis)
KKK speech has led to landmark rulings on free speech
KKK activity has been at the heart of many First Amendment cases, including some that have reached the Supreme Court.
Demonstrations (and counter-demonstrations), racially provocative statements and intimidation by Klansmen and others have often produced controversy over what is free speech and what is a threat or intimidation.
Three Supreme Court cases involving KKK activity are:
- In overturning the conviction of a Klansman in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court established that states could only suppress subversive speech that is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
- In Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board v. Pinette (1995), the Court upheld the right of the Klan to display a Latin cross on state capitol grounds.
- In Virginia v. Black (2003) the Court ruled that the First Amendment did not prohibit laws that penalized individuals who burned crosses with the intent of intimidating others. This decision further defined the limits of cross-burning that the Supreme Court discussed in R.A.V. v. St. Paul (1992). In that case, which involved a minor and did not mention the KKK, the Supreme Court struck down a hate speech law that had been applied to youth who had burned a cross on a lawn, ruling that the law contained a form of viewpoint discrimination prohibited by the First Amendment.
This article was originally published in 2009. Martin Gruberg was President of the Fox Valley Civil Liberties Union in Wisconsin.