First Klan

Common card · No. 351029

The First Klan is a retronym which is used to describe the first of three distinct operational eras in the history of the Ku Klux Klan, a White supremacist domestic terrorist group in the United States. The First Klan, or the Reconstruction Klan, was followed by the Second Klan, which reached its peak in the 1920s, and the Third Klan, which has been extant since the 1960s. According to historian Carl N. Degler, "Aside from the name, about the only common trait that the three Klans possess is vigilantism." The first Klan was extant during the Reconstruction Era which followed the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. (There were numerous similar groups which operated under other names: Red Shirts, Knights of the White Camellia, the Black Cavalry, etc.) The goal of this Klan was to intimidate freedmen and reformers ("niggers, carpetbaggers, and scalawags") into surrendering their newly gained political and social power over what had once been the hegemonic White system of the...

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