Final answer:
The Ku Klux Klan utilized terror and violence with the objective of reinstating white supremacy after the Civil War, preventing African Americans from gaining economic, political, and social rights. They also influenced politics to maintain the social order and attacked those who supported Reconstruction.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly known as the KKK, used terror and violence as their main tools to enforce their will upon both African Americans and their white allies during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Their primary goal was to restore white supremacy and revert the social order to pre-Civil War conditions.
This included acts such as intimidation, political assassination, burning of public schools, and various other acts of violence to prevent African Americans from achieving economic independence and exercising their political and social rights.
Paramilitary groups like the Klan viewed their actions as a measure of maintaining order, and they actively supported the Democratic Party to win elections, thereby protecting the status quo. Klan activities included murder, lynchings, and other forms of brutal violence targeted at Black communities, as well as at white supporters of Reconstruction, with the aim to subdue any progressive movements towards racial equality.
During the 1920s, the second emergence of the KKK expanded its targets to include nonwhite and non-Protestant immigrants and also gained significant membership among the middle class. Influenced by pseudoscience and eugenicist thought, they not only aimed at maintaining racial hierarchy but also at altering the demographic composition of the country.