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Ku Klux Klan Analysis

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Terrorism is notoriously difficult to define and is often used to mean different things by pundits, politicians and the media. The problem of defining terrorism has “hindered analysis since the inception of studies in the early 1970s”. It is therefore difficult to decide whether a particular organisation is considered a terrorist group. A widely used definition by Bruce Hoffman, a political analyst in the field of terrorism and counter terrorism, states that terrorism is violence or the threat of violence, against non combatants or civilians, usually motivated by political, religious or ideological beliefs.

A group that fits this definition is the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan or KKK has been described as a terrorist group by a number of …show more content…

Each movement followed by drastic decline. The original Klan was founded by a group of six Confederate army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866. Fearing increasing political control by Reconstructionist politicians buoyed by the potential electoral power of newly freed male African American slaves, the KKK responded by terrorising these ethnic groups, predominately African Americans, through physical and psychological intimidation during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. It existed until 1871, when the federal government passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, allowing the prosecution of KKK members as part of a terrorist organisation. The KKK reemerged in 1915 in Atlanta, Georgia. At the height of the group’s power in the mid-1920s, it claimed around 4–6 million members. Numbers collapsed, however, and the organisation effectively disbanded before the advent of World War II. In response to the burgeoning civil rights movement, the KKK was formed again during the 1960s and continues to function in limited ways. Today, there are at least four main KKK branches among the 72 active groups operating under the Klan name: the Brotherhood of Klans, the National Knights, the Imperial Klans of America and the Knights …show more content…

Whether Southern whites wanted slavery or not it had become the backbone of Southern ideology and comfort. A quote from Willian Loughton Smith of South Carolina from book The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America, by Wyn Craig Wade, states that slavery had become “so engrafted” in the southern United States that the eradication would destroy the Southern “happiness, tranquility and prosperity”. Whites were in control and at the end of the Civil War in 1865, they lost power over the blacks due to the Reconstruction era from 1865 to 1877. The 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln was under control and this era was the readmission of Southern states into the Union and also included the legal end of most slavery in the United

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