Ku Klux Klan

KU KLUX KLAN[pic 1]

Laura López Ruiz-Roso & María Esperanza Lozano Lacoba

CULTURA DE LA LENGUA B (INGLÉS)

The Ku Klux Klan’s (KKK) organization is worldwide known and feared but, what do we really know about them? How such an empire of hatred arises and… why?

Origin: The 1st Klan

It was the year 1865, the Civil War had ended but the population was still driven a wedge between themselves. White race versus ‘negroes’. Black people versus ‘crackers’. After war, they returned to their homes in neighborhoods where they lived together but the hate had not come to an end back then. This situation was significant especially in the South, where several outlaws and deserters – among others- ran away.  

The Government was plunged into a social reconstruction. By that moment, black people got rid of their condition of slaves but all of a sudden, they became part of a citizenship governed by the same people that previously were their own slave traders. Black population felt no respect for that community and white people felt underestimate and defenseless. Therefore, both groups were full of harshness and resentment. Moreover, this situation favored several legal loopholes that incited to organizations – as much from one side as from the other- to act outlaw without being prosecute and without being tried.

A lot of racist organizations had been already raised: the Pale Faces, White Brotherhood, the Constitutional Union Guards, the White League, the Knights of the White Camellia… But any of them never in their wildest dreams did they expect such a discriminatory movement thereafter. All of them were the result of a mixed of political, civil and social conditions determined by the antecedent war.

A group of men once were gathered in a little bar in Pulaski (Tennessee).They jokingly proposed to create some kind of organization against black people inspired by their ill will… and they did it. This group was made up of highly educated and lettered men, some even related to the Masonic order – claim the reliable sources - and virtually all of them had had an implication beyond being a simple soldier in the Civil War.

When those men started to meet, their purposes did not transcend more than stand up for white supremacist and for self-defend. The meeting place was quickly changed to a more isolated place and the moment of choosing a proper name came. Among several possibilities, somebody suggested ‘Kukloi’ from the Greek term κυκλος (band or circle). They separated the term in ‘Ku Klux’ and completed the alliteration with ‘Klan’. That name was the chosen one because of his striking sonority and his ambiguity, meaning nothing to common people and fueling the aura of mystery that they desired for the organization. Then, the Ku Klux Klan was born. With a name and its first ‘den’, they began to design their regulations, rituals and procedures.