The Ku Klux Klan

This history of the Ku Klux Klan traces the evolution of the organization from its 1865 founding to the present, drawing extensively on contemporaneous media reports. The Ku Klux Klan tells the story of America's oldest and largest homegrown terrorist organization. It is a revealing look at the philosophies and methods of a secret society that used religious symbols, secret codes, and the cloak of anonymity to bind its members together in the cause of violent racial warfare. The Ku Klux Klan encompasses the organization's entire history, from its post-Civil War founding by Nathan Bedford Forrest, to its high watermark in the early 20th century, with membership swelling to four million and its founders portrayed as heroes in the film, Birth of a Nation to its resurgence in the Civil Rights era, to more recent attempts by David Duke and others to put a benign face on the Klan in order to gain elective office.