Introduction
The abolishment of slavery in 1865 changed the lives of many individuals living in the South of the US. In the same year, a group called the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) had its first official meeting (Alexander 38). The group was created in Tennessee, and its appearance significantly affected the politics of many Southern states. During the 1860s, the KKK grew in size as it gained more members due to its aggressive and hateful policies (Parsons 30). The influence of the KKK was exacerbated by the fact that the group appeared when the country was recovering from the Civil War. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that the creation of the KKK was caused by the political unrest that followed after the end of the war.
The Ku Klux Klan and the ideology of violence
The ideology of the Ku Klux Klan was based on violence. The lack of control after the war-affected people who were dissatisfied with the results of the war and wanted to establish a new order. The focus on violence appealed to individuals, whose prejudice against black people progressed into notions of white supremacy. Thus, the group’s aggressive behavior was fairly disorganized in the beginning phase of its existence (Alexander 40). However, the race issue was not the only basis for the group’s growing influence. The economic reasons that guided many of the Klan’s members were founded in their refusal to accept the outcomes of the war (Du Bois 381). For instance, many white voters wanted to dominate the politics of the Southern states to retract the changes brought after the institutionalized slavery was destabilized. The members of the KKK assumed that the end of slavery could amount to the loss of voting privileges for white Americans.
Many of them also perceived black people to be a threat to their property and employment rates (Billings 201). Therefore, parts of the South were affected by the KKK the most because of the widespread of slavery before the war. The group’s members tried to suppress black votes using violence, killing and injuring countless black Americans as a result. The presidential election that took place in 1968 can be considered as one of the examples, where the Klan’s members used violence to affect the election’s result (Du Bois 332). Black Republicans were persecuted to influence other members’ votes. While some states were recruited to pack people to represent their communities in court, Southern states continued to be affected by aggressive and uncivilized notions (Burke 127). In the end, multiple states in the South did not offer their support to the Republican candidate, and the majority of votes were given to the Democratic party. After two years of disorganized violent activities, the group started to lose its influence.
Conclusion
During the 1870s, white Americans were in control of the majority of Southern states, excluding only Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. South Carolina had many former slaves, freedmen, affecting the political situation in the state. However, in 1876, ten years after the end of the war, the interest in maintaining black voter’s rights was decreasing among the members of Congress (Robinson 7). On the other hand, the opposition to the Republican party was continuously increasing and becoming more organized. Thus, the Red Shirt Militia started being active in the state of South Caroline to affect the state’s elections (Robinson 3). Members of this group were armed and were more prepared for organized violence than the KKK. Their aggressive tactics led to the Democrats assuming full power in the state.
Works Cited
Alexander, Charles C. The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest. University Press of Kentucky, 2015.
Billings, Dwight B. Planters and the Making of a” New South”: Class, Politics, and Development in North Carolina, 1865-1900. UNC Press Books, 2017.
Burke, W. Lewis. All for Civil Rights: African American Lawyers in South Carolina, 1868–1968. University of Georgia Press, 2017.
Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt, editors. Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. Routledge, 2017.
Parsons, Elaine Frantz. Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction. UNC Press Books, 2015.
Robinson, Stephen. “’To think, act, vote, and speak for ourselves’: Black Democrats and Black ‘Agency’ in the American South after Reconstruction.” Journal of Social History, vol. 48, no. 2, 2014, pp. 363-382.