188k views
4 votes
Why did the KKK gain popularity in the South after the Civil War?
HURRY

User Fnjn
by
7.6k points

1 Answer

1 vote

Answer:

Although the KKK had reemerged in the South in 1915, it wasn’t until after the end of World War I that the organization experienced a national resurgence. Membership in the KKK skyrocketed from a few thousand to over 100,000 in a mere ten months. Local chapters of the KKK sprang up all over the country, and by the 1920s, it had become a truly national organization, with a formidable presence not just in the South, but in New England, the Midwest, and all across the northern United States.

The members of the Ku Klux Klan were mostly white Protestant middle-class men, and they framed their crusade in moral and religious terms. They saw themselves as vigilantes restoring justice, and they used intimidation, threats of violence, and actual violence to prevent African Americans, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, liberals, and progressives from attaining wealth, social status, and political power.

KKK members wore elaborate costumes with distinctive white hoods to mask their identities, and held nocturnal rallies to plot acts of terror and foment hatred against people deemed not “truly” American—basically, anyone who was not white and Protestant. The activities of Klansmen ranged from issuing threats and burning crosses to outright violence and atrocities such as tarring and feathering, beating, lynching, and assassination.

The revival of the KKK in the early twentieth century reflected a society struggling with the effects of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Klan chapters in major urban areas expanded as many white Americans became bitter and resentful about immigration from Asia and Eastern Europe. Klansmen complained that these immigrants were taking jobs away from whites and diluting the imagined “racial purity” of American society. Given that the country had been populated by immigrants from the beginning, such ideas of racial purity were complete myths.

Step-by-step explanation:

User Sevas
by
7.6k points