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The Ku Klux Klan's long history of violence, racism, and hatred stemmed from the Southern states and its citizens during the Civil War. Blacks, having won the fight for freedom were now faced with extreme prejudice and a new struggle against the terrorizing antics of the Ku Klux Klan. While the terror and fear of the Klan have died down over the years, it has never been fully erased.

The true facts about the beginning of the Klan and its rebirth 50 years later are still unclear to many people today. A little more than a year from its founding, the "secret society" spread across the war-torn South, fixed Reconstruction governments for its own use and hailed down with a reign of terror and violence for the better part of four years. It seems as though as soon as the Klan gained power, they lost that power just as fast. After World War I, the Klan resurrected itself. These days, it is hard to believe that such an organization, one opposed to the America's basic beliefs of justice and equality, could come to power as they did, not only once, but twice. The legend comes from not the cross burnings and parades of the 1920's, even beyond the Reconstruction Era and the Civil War. The story actually starts on the frontier where generation after generation learned hard lessons about survival. Those lessons were what produced America's most admired qualities of life; individualism, inventiveness, and the freedom to be whoever we choose to be. The frontier spawned fiercer traits as well, such as the vigilante justice system of private, instant, and often violent methods to settle differences without involving lawyers or courts, a system adopted by the Klan. Arguably the most obvious explanation of the South's sympathizing attitudes toward the Klan is the acception of slavery. For many white southerners, the freedom of slaves represented the true defeat of the South, not only on the battlefield, but economically and socially. A series of bloody slave revolts across Virginia led to the formation of night riders. Legally deputized white males who would make constant horseback rides on the roads looking for any runaways, upholding the slaves curfew, and preventing slave riots. They were given the power by law to give a certain number of lashes to anybody that they caught. The memory of these legal night riders is still fresh in the minds of both defeated Southerners and liberated blacks when Klansmen took the same rides starting in 1866.

After the Civil War, the Klan grew out of the Southern anger and hostility over their defeat and the Reconstruction that soon followed. Northerners saw an attempt to win through terrorism what they could not win on the battlefields. There is very little doubt that Civil War soldiers traded their Confederate gray for the white robes and hoods that the Klan are famous for. The conditions in the South immediately after the war added to Southerners fears and frustrations. Cities, plantations, farms, everywhere you looked throughout the South, all that came to sight was poverty and starvation. The Reconstruction governments threatened to topple the white ruling authority. In the first few months after the fighting had ended, white Southerners had to deal with the loss of life, property, and to themselves; honor. The time was perfect for the Ku Klux Klan to rise.

The true origin of the Klan was a greatly guarded secret for many years, although there were many popular theories as to how they came about. One popular idea was that the Ku Klux Klan was a secret order of Chinese opium smugglers, others claimed that it started with Confederate prisoners during the war. Perhaps the most rediculous theory came from the idea that the Klan started from a Jewish document referring to the Hebrew being enslaved by Egyptian rulers. In fact, the beginning of the Klan is nothing too dark or sinister, it all started with six young Confederate veterans gathering around a fire in December of 1865 to form a social club. The area was Pulaski, Tennessee, near the Alabama border. When they got together a week later, they were full of ideas. It would be so secret and the titles of their officers would be so rediculous sounding to heighten the amusement of the group and to avoid any military and political connections. The head of the group became known as the Grand Cyclops and his assistant was the Grand Magi. The Grand Turk would greet all candidates for admission and the person to act as secretary would become known as the Grand Scribe. Members, if the six could find any, were Ghouls. Now the founders were determined to come up with a name for their society. Being educated men, they played around with some Greek terms, such as "kuklos" from which the English words circle and cycle come from. Another member, Captain John B. Kennedy added the word "clam" and after playing with sound of the words, the six came up with "Ku Klux Klan". The choosing of the name had much to do with the Klan's early success. Something about the sound gave the group an immediate air of mystery as well as the initials K.K.K. which would soon become a symbol of great fear. Soon after the group was named, the founders, dressed in white sheets, jumped on their horses and paraded through Pulaski. They also held small initiations for new members, similar to college sorority's. Although it sounds dumb by todays standards, this was actually the high point of the Klan's earliest activities. The night rides quickly became the main practice of the group. Klansmen would make constant stops at the homes of blacks and threaten more visits if they did not behave themselves. It did not take long for the small visits to become overly violent when blacks exercised their new found rights and freedoms. Before the six original founders knew it, the Ku Klux Klan became something they may not have actually wanted, something deadly serious.

From that beginning, the Klan quickly grew into something larger. Many historians disagree about the founding members true intentions for the Klan but it is known that word about the new organization whose members met in secret and rode through the night with their faces hidden. The Klan's early rides were more mischievous than anything else. Often times, Klansmen would knock on the door of a black home and demand a bucket of water, when they were handed the water, they would gulp it down, while in fact the water went down a hose through the bottom of their robe. After going through several buckets of water, the man would exclaim that he had not had a drink since he died at the Battle of Shiloh and would then ride into the night, leaving the idea that the ghosts of soldiers were haunting the countryside. When blacks first heard of armed white men roaming the countryside, it reminded many of the nightly slave patrols, and the fact that these men had their faces hidden heightened many blacks fears. The violence that started began with whippings, but soon became bloody battles between Klansmen, and blacks, Northerners that had moved South or Southern Unionists.