The Formation and Second Revitalization of the Ku Klux Klan

Learn about the Ku Klux Klan, which formed in 1865 in Tennessee as a social club of decommissioned Confederate officers. Posing in costumes as Confederate officers who had come back from the dead, Klan members terrorized formerly enslaved people. Over the next six years, their acts became increasingly violent; in 1871, the federal government clamped down on the Klan, which dissolved. The Klan lay dormant for decades until D. W. Griffith’s 1915 blockbuster film, The Birth of a Nation. In the film, Klan violence is portrayed as necessary to restore order to the South during the era of Reconstruction. Before critical media coverage and power struggles ripped it apart in the 1930s, the Klan had as many as 4 million members and significant political influence.