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The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 by Nathan Beford Forrest (do not confuse him with Forrest Gump--the similarity of the names is just a coincidence). The name comes from the Greek word kuklos, which means circle. Originally, it was conceived as an organization for former officers of the Confederate States Army, and it was intended to assure stability in the states of the South which had been defeated in the American Civil War (1861-65). However, a great many other former soldiers formed groups of "night riders" who would go out a night, masked to keep their identity secret, and they would terrorize or even kill freed slaves or Northerners who had come to the South. Forrest became disillusioned, and dissolved the organization in 1870. He and John Gordon of Georgia were both accused of organizing and promoting the night riders. Both men were cleared of the charges by a committee of the United States Congress.

Night riders who terrorized former slaves continued, whoever. They were commonly called the Ku Klux Klan, even though the organization did not formally exist any longer. They were falsely portrayed as noble men who protected Southern women from attack by sex-crazed black men--a false charge which was used to "lynch" black men, which means they were hanged by a mob. One author, Thomas Dixon, wrote a book and a play in 1905 entitled The Clansman. It was intended to convince Northerners to maintain racial segregation. It was a very popular book in both the North and the South. A famous early movie make, D. W. Griffin, used the triology (The Clansman was the first of three books) as a basis for his most famous motion picutre, The Birth of a Nation. At this time, there was a movement in the American South, which also had many supporters in the North, called the Lily Whites. These were white Protestants who were racially prejudiced against blacks, and religiously prejudiced against Catholics and Jews. After a Jewish man, Leo Frank, was accused of murder and lynched (illegally executed by hanging), and with the popularity of The Clansman and The Birth of a Nation, William Simmons of Georgia was motivated to re-establish the Ku Klux Klan in 1915.

The moder Klan is every bit as murderous and dangerous as the night riders were in the 1860s and -70s. In the motion picture Forrest Gump, the reference to the Ku Klux Klan is to the modern organization. The Klan is dying out, but it is not gone. At the height of its popularity in the 1920s, there were many "klavens" in Northern states--it was not just Southerners who were racially prejudiced and willing to murder blacks. A "klaven" is what the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan is called.

If you are really curious, their homepage is here: http://www.kkk.com/

I hesitate to correct the king of proper spelling, but it's "klavern."

I can assure you that my familiarity with the Ku Klux Klan derives from a knowledge of history, and not from a desire to be well-educated in all the details of an organization which hates blacks, Jews and Catholics--the latter cateogry once having been descriptive of me. I accept the correction, appending the question: "Who gives a rat's ass what these murderous troglogytes call themselves?"

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