Concept

Ku Klux Klan

A white-supremacist vigilante organization founded in Tennessee in 1866 that used terror, arson, and murder to stop Reconstruction and suppress Black political participation.

A white vigilante organization that engaged in terroristic violence with the aim of stopping Reconstruction. Founded in 1866 as a fraternal order of Confederate veterans with Nathan Bedford Forrest as its first leader, it evolved into a decentralized terrorist movement that burned schools, murdered Black officeholders and their white allies, and worked as a paramilitary extension of the Democratic Party. A related Key Terms Database entry ("Ku Klux Klan Violence", typed as an Event but carrying no explicit date) is folded into this record rather than imported separately -- see provenance.notes.