Ku Klux Klan Founded as Terrorist Organization to Restore White Supremacy

Six Confederate veterans found the Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, in Pulaski, Tennessee—creating what historians characterize as America’s first terrorist organization. The founders—Calvin E. Jones, John B. Kennedy, Frank O. McCord, John C. Lester, Richard P. Reed, and James R. Crowe—initially frame the organization as a “social club,” deriving its name from the Greek word “kuklos” meaning “band” or “circle.” But during spring 1867, the KKK transforms into a full-scale political and terrorist movement explicitly dedicated to destroying Reconstruction and restoring white supremacist control.

In summer 1867, local KKK branches convene and establish what they call an “Invisible Empire of the South,” electing former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest as the first and only Grand Wizard. The organization operates as a decentralized terrorist network conducting systematic campaigns of violence against Black Americans exercising their constitutional rights and white Republicans supporting Reconstruction. Scholar W.E.B. DuBois describes Klan attacks as “armed guerrilla warfare” and estimates that between 1866 and mid-1867 alone, the Klan commits 197 murders and 548 aggravated assaults in North and South Carolina. The violence includes beatings, lynchings, night raids, arson, and assassinations—all designed to terrorize Black voters and destroy Reconstruction governments.

The Klan’s terrorism proves devastatingly effective at suppressing Black political participation and enabling the restoration of white Democratic control across the South. Congress eventually responds with the Force Act (1870) and the Ku Klux Klan Act (1871), authorizing President Grant to suspend habeas corpus, suppress disturbances by force, and impose penalties on terrorist organizations. Forrest orders the Klan disbanded in 1869 due to “excessive violence,” but local chapters continue operating. The first Klan era ends only after federal prosecution in the early 1870s—but the organization’s successful use of terrorism as a political weapon establishes a template for violent suppression of Black civil rights that persists through the Jim Crow era and beyond. The Klan resurges in 1915 and again in the 1960s, demonstrating how terrorist organizations can be temporarily suppressed but never fully defeated when the underlying white supremacist ideology remains embedded in American institutions.