Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army and the first Grand Wizard was Nathan Bedford Forrest from 1867 to 1869, who was an outstanding general during the Civil War. The Klan members, for the next two years would wear masks, white cardboard hats, and would be draped in white sheets. They tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites whose behavior violated old ideas of black subordination. They hated the idea of Blacks gaining rights after the Civil War, and they would do anything to stop it. They terrorized Blacks to prevent them from voting in elections or exercising any other right. In the middle of the night they would murder them, rape them, beat them, or hang them, and it has been known that sometimes they would chop off a male's scrotum. 1) "I don't have a problem with a Black living next door to me. If he goes about his business, goes to work, doesn't mix with drug dealers, doesn't beat on his kids or wife, and he's a good neighbor then I have no problem with him. But if one comes in that I can put in the category of a nigger -- that does not work, has wild parties all the time, his kids are out stealing stuff, he's out stealing and destroying the neighborhood -- then he is a nigger to me and I have a problem with him living next to me whether he's Black or White." All their members, who were sworn to secrecy, were known for burning the catholic cross. The Klan believes it is okay to use the word "nigger" when referring to a person of African American descent because if you look it up in the dictionary it means 'a person of black descent." Therefore, if they don't like being called nigger than they are embarrassed of being their heritage. They claimed they were not racist all though it is clearly obvious according to these actions that they were against blacks, yet Jeff Berry in an interview quoted, "The reason the Klan is in existence is for equal rights.
