Examples Of Intolerance In The 1920s

Intolerance and nativism and recovery of nativist sentiments and the reemergence of the Klux Klan shows racial and ethnic bias. In 1925, the Klux Klan said that they had 5 million active members, making them out to be one of the largest and most fierce organizations in the country at the time. The renewal of the Klan was done by a rise in violent and racist incidents, including lynchings, across the country. These things were not limited to just the southern states but spread to the west and some northern states, choosing their victims such as African Americans, but also selected other groups, including Mexican Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, Catholic Americans, and others that were not white. (Cited: (n.d.).

This view grew stronger as the Catholic Church began ministering directly to the African-American and Mexican populations (93). Despite this, the Klan’s distrust of the Catholics and Jews was short-lived, as most of the population viewed religion as separate from race (95). The Klan fell from power entirely not long after, following a Klansman losing the 1924 election for governor and the imprisonment of one of its national leaders (100). Despite the opposition, the black community thrived during the early 20th century. The stereotyping enforced by the white population strengthened and unified the black community (104).

To begin, the Klu Klux Klan is an organization whose purpose is to terrorize people of color. Dressed in all white, their identities are hidden as they attack in the dead of night. The KKK is founded by a group of confederate veterans in 1865, and their goal was to end Reconstruction. The Klan only recruited members who were male, white, and not Jew. Former Confederate Nathaniel Bedford Forrest tried to stop the organization for, “...the Klan’s violent tactics grew too extreme” (Source 1).

Going beyond the roots of the southern states, the KKK had a huge impact on the American society in the 1920’s. To fully understand the Ku Klux Klan you have to know how the KKK originated. The Ku Klux Klan founded in 1866 in the town of Pulaski, Tennessee by former confederate army veterans; the first leader of the KKK is also known as the “Grand Wizard” was Nathan Bedford Forrest who was a former slave trader. The KKK was created in order to enforce white superiority in the south. The Klan members primarily targeted people who were not white, Anglo- Saxon, or Protestant.

Up until the Ku Klux Act, the Ku Klux Klan’s (KKK) influence spread throughout the Southern states and acted as a violent and driving continuation of the Confederate movement after the Civil War. It was created right after the Civil War by six Confederate Army veterans. Not only had the South just suffered their most humiliating military loss, but they also lost the institution of slavery, money, government power and beloved family members. As a result of their loss in the Civil War and the emancipation of their slaves, the Southern white man felt great embarrassment and humiliation. Though he could not preserve the institution of slavery, he now felt an obligation to preserve and reassert white supremacy.

In the South, there was a group called the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK. They would run rampant killing whoever they pleased, and no one would stop them. The KKK would kill political figures who supported Reconstruction or freedman. In a testimony to the Senate, Abram Colby states, “On the 29th of October 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open , took me out of my bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead” (Colby 513). The KKK targeted African Americans and tortured them to death.

Originally designed as a club for ex-Confederate soldiers, the KKK became a “vehicle for Southern white underground resistance to Radical Reconstruction” (The Editors of). Members would attack recently freed slaves in an attempt to assert white superiority over blacks. Members could be found spread throughout the southern United States, including in levels of state and local government (The Editors of). Although the KKK saw membership dramatically decline due to growing racial tolerance in the United States, the late 20th century featured a revival of the group due to the Civil Rights movement. KKK attacks on supporters of the movement still occurred until the late 1980’s

The KKK was a white supremacist group that utilized intimidation and violence to keep white control over the political and economic structures of the state. Despite being outlawed in the early 1870s, the Klan continued to operate in North Carolina and had a crucial part in the establishment of the Democratic Party in the state in the late nineteenth century. During this period, North Carolina was also home to a number of other white supremacist organizations, such as the Red Shirts and the White Brotherhood, in addition to the Ku Klux Klan. For the sake of maintaining their hold on political power, these organizations engaged in acts of violence and

The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist group that ruined the lives of millions of African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan founded in 1915 by a William J. Simmons, who was a Methodist preacher, who had groups, or “klaverns”, in Alabama plus Georgia. In American history there has been three waves of the Ku Klux Klan. First was the Reconstruction-era Klan. They started in the South towards the conclusion of the Civil War that had a few thousand members.

The KKK began to grow and become a large problem for innocent people. In 1833 the United States passed a bill called the Force Bill (Carson 1). This made the klan disappear for awhile but did not stop them. Still to this day people are struggling with the Ku Klux

Keira Castillo US History Honors Period Four Research Paper Project January 27, 2023 Ms. Wasil Ku Klux Klan: The Societal Impact of the 1920s Did you know that the Ku Klux Klan, (also referred to as the “KKK”), was originally founded on December 24, 1865, in Pulaski, TN; became the most well-known terrorist group around the 1920s, and has a summer camp called “Kool Koast Kamp”? With this rapid upbringing, the Ku Klux Klan had a way to come congregate in one spot and inspire people to “tune” into their racism towards colored people in violent ways by joining their cult. Even their own children would be conditioned to follow their society’s rituals and become “Ku Klux Kiddies”. Who would have known that this vile group had a spot that was like

After the first wave of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) collapsed in the late 19th century, the organization regained its footing in the 1920s as the KKK’s power and influence stretched farther north than it ever had before. Revived by tensions between native-born Americans, immigrants, and the Great Migration of African Americans moving north, the Klan rapidly expanded after laying dormant for almost half a century. As a Klan auxiliary group, the Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK) was formed in 1923 in Arkansas but quickly collapsed in the second half of the decade. Historians debate what attracted women to the Klan in the 1920s and their significance in the greater White supremacist movement since the organization only ever existed during this period.

1920’s Racism and the Great Migration During the 1920s, racism was an ordinary experience for anyone who was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. Ku Klux Klan reached its maximum amount of members in the beginning of the 1920s, while ruining the lives of many immigrants and black migrants. Racism was extremely distinct in the southern states and developed into violent issues and severe segregationist laws in the north and the south. The prejudice events in the south helped shape America’s Great Migration.

The racial identity in the 1920s was based off of one’s own personal beliefs. If you did not have the same beliefs as another person, then there would be racial conflicts. From the Ku Klux Klan to the Jim Crow laws, everything was completely different than what it is today. The Ku Klux Klan was not only anti-black, but also started to focus on other minorities whose existence threatened the American way. African Americans, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and Asians started to fight for the equal opportunities that they deserved, but that only made the Ku Klux Klan even more powerful and made them even more offended (Baker, Kelly).

The Ku Klux Klan first emerged in Pulaski, Tennessee following the Civil War. As we know today, the mere mention of the Klan triggers fear as the KKK is known for its various tactics of violence that came in the form if lynchings, murders, and mutilations. Following their emergence, the KKK were quickly symbolized and portrayed as the protectors of the South, following the defeat of the Southern states in the Civil War and the beginning of the period of Reconstruction by the federal government (Gurr, 1989, p. 132). During the 1920s, the KKK achieved its greatest political success and growth outside of the South. During this period, the membership of the Klan heavily expanded to the states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Oregon, to which the KKK obtained two to two and one-half million members at its apex.