What Is The Societal Impact Of 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.).

The KKK is an influential part of society that is responsible for hate crimes throughout

David Chalmers is a University of Florida professor emeritus of history. He is best known for his seminal work on the Ku Klux Klan, Hooded Americanism, that was first published in 1968. In 2003 Chalmers wrote Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement. As the subtitle indicates, this more recent work of Chalmers’ is about how the activities of the civil rights era Klan prompted the federal government to pass laws that protected the civil rights of African-Americans. “Klan violence played an important role in the passage of the 1964 Public Accommodation Law and the 1965 Voting Rights Law.

At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide. The 1920’s , the time of the reborn the Ku Klux Klan, immigration restriction. though this intensified prejudice of the 1920’s

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

During the Reconstruction Era, African-Americans began to attain more political power. Therefore, African Americans began a large rally toward better social and economic fairness. This type of behavior startled the white supremacy and therefore, reacted with fear and violence (Alexander, 2010). This became the birth of Jim Crow, a series of firm anti-black laws. Whites believed that in order to “redeem” the South, it would be reinforced with a rising group known as the Ku Klux Klan, which “fought a terrorist campaign against Reconstruction governments and local leaders, complete with bombings, lynching, and mob violence” (Alexander, 2010, p. 30).

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.

This document shows what the Ku Klux Klan is. The Ku Klux Klan (or KKK) was a white supremacy group, that used violent steps to undermine the republican party and prevent equality for African Americans. This shows how Reconstruction failed because African Americans were still treated very unfairly, even when they were not

Founded in 1866, the (KKK) extended into virtually each southern state by 1870 and have become a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed toward establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged associate underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Congress passed legislation designed to curb KKK, the organization saw its primary goal “the reestablishment of white supremacy” fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South within the decennary. Once an amount of decline, white Protestant nativist teams revived the KKK within the early twentieth century, burning crosses and staging

The swift pace of change during the era incited a repercussion amidst those left behind by modernity like the farmers that received no economic gains from the new industry, traditional moralists angry about flappers and speakeasies, Christian fundamentalists annoyed by Darwinian objection to the literal word of the bible, nativists overrun by immigrants. All these disagreements made conflict between tradition and modernity. A failed doctor named William J. Simmons coordinated a new Klan in Atlanta, declaring it to the world by a great fiery cross up on Stone Mountain. Simmons new KKK spread around America in the era, enhancing the most critical agent for a traditional politics that was not just anti-black but also anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Communist, anti-alcohol, anti-immigration, anti-sex, and anti-science. ”In 1921, Congress, at the urging of the resurgent Ku Klux Klan...

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.

The Ku Klux Klan or KKK has created centuries of fear. They originated in Pulaski, Tennessee. The famous hate group was out to re establish white supremacy. The KKK has influenced local governments and people in power. It has also had an impact on American people and specifically black minorities.