The Ku Klux Klan
At the end of the radical members of Congress attempted to destroy the white power structure of the Rebel states. The was established by Congress on 3rd March, 1865. The bureau was designed to protect the interests of former slaves. This included helping them to find new employment and to improve educational and health facilities. In the year that followed the bureau spent $17,000,000 establishing 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals and providing homes and food for former slaves. Attempts by Congress to extend the powers of the Freemen's Bureau was vetoed by President in February, 1866. In April 1866, Johnson also vetoed the Civil Rights Bill that was designed to protect freed slaves from Southern (laws that placed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations).
The election of 1866 increased the number of in Congress. The following year Congress passed the first . The South was now divided into five military districts, each under a major general. New elections were to be held in each state with freed male slaves being allowed to vote. The act also included an amendment that offered readmission to the Southern states after they had ratified the and guaranteed adult male suffrage. Johnson immediately vetoed the bill but Congress re-passed the bill the same day. The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. A year later a general organisation of local Klans was established in Nashville in April, 1867. Most of the leaders were former members of the and the first Grand Wizard was , an outstanding general during the . During the next two years Klansmen wearing masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites. , who they blamed for the election of , were also targets of their hatred. Between 1868 and 1870 the Ku Klux Klan played an important role in restoring white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.
At first the main objective of white supremacy organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards and the Knights of the White Camelia was to stop black people from voting. After white governments had been established in the South the Ku Klux Klan continued to undermine the power of blacks. Successful black businessmen were attacked and any attempt to form black protection groups such as was quickly dealt with.
in Congress such as urged President to take action against the Ku Klux Klan. In 1870 he instigated an investigation into the organisation and the following year a Grand Jury reported that: "There has existed since 1868, in many counties of the state, an organisation known as the Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire of the South, which embraces in its membership a large proportion of the white population of every profession and class. The Klan has a constitution and bylaws, which provides, among other things, that each member shall furnish himself with a pistol, a Ku Klux gown and a signal instrument. The operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably directed against members of the Republican Party. The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the coloured citizens of these citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering."
Congress passed the Ku Klux Act and became law on 20th April, 1871. This gave the president the power to intervene in troubled states with the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in countries where disturbances occurred. Although used this legislation several times, the Ku Klux Klan. However, because its objective of white supremacy in the South had been achieved, the organisation practically disappeared. The Ku Klux Klan was reformed in 1915 by William J. Simmons, a preacher influenced by Thomas Dixon's book, The Ku Klux Klan (1905) and the film of the book, , directed by . The (NAACP) became the main opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. To show that the members of the organisation would not be intimidated, it held its 1920 annual conference in Atlanta, considered at the time to be one of the most active Ku Klux Klan areas in America. After the the Ku Klux Klan also became extremely hostile to , , , and anybody they identified as foreigners.
