To really understand how this all played out we need to do what many superhero tales have done and begin with the villain’s origin story.
It all started in 1865, when six former Confederate officers from Pulaski, Tennessee, got together to form a secret fraternal organization. They named their little club with a combination of two words from two languages: the Ancient Greek word “kuklos” (meaning circle) and the English word “clan.” The K must have looked more menacing than the C. The boys from Pulaski met with some early success franchising their secret society. Copycats popped up all across the South, and after congress granted Black men voting rights in 1867, these clubs banded together to form a national organization.
As their first Grand Dragon, the Klan selected Nathan Bedford Forrest — a former Confederate general, slave trader, and paragon of the Southern gentleman. In the ensuing years during and after reconstruction, the Klan stopped at nothing to destroy Black communities and instill fear in those who oppose them. Thousands of Black Americans lost their lives or were driven from their homes.
It became so bad that in 1869, even Forrest said it was too much and ordered the Klan to disband, but at this point Frankenstein’s racist monster was already on the loose. Even the Grand Dragon himself couldn’t get him back in his cage. The violence continued, and in 1870 and ’71 congress passed the Enforcement Acts giving President Ulysses S. Grant the power to suspend habeas corpus and send federal troops to suppress the KKK. Grant exercised this power with his trademark impugnity and brought hundreds of Klansmen to justice.
Grant’s second campaign against the South was nearly as devastating as the first one — so much so that by the end of the 1870s the KKK was nearly destroyed. Unfortunately, as it turns out, you can destroy bad people, but bad ideas tend to be shockingly resilient.
