The name Ku Klux Klan comes from the Greek word kuklos, meaning circle, because in it is contained some of the unique characteristics of the White (or Aryan) race. In Tennessee,1865, The South had just lost the Civil War. Sadness was around everyone. Six young veterans, without money and needed something to bring them out of the depression and bring some spirit back into their lives. "Boys" one of them said, "let's start something like a club of some kind" they said as they were in the meeting, the next day they had another meeting in the house of Colonel Thomas Martin, A Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was the Klan's first leader, whose title was the Grand Wizard. .
White superiority was the philosophy of the Klan, and they would often use violence and terrorization of blacks as a means of exercising this philosophized superiority. The Klan detested the idea of blacks gaining any rights following the Civil War into the Reconstruction, and terrorized blacks to prevent them from voting in elections or practicing any other right. They were most active during election campaigns, when their nighttime rides to murder, rape, beat, and warn were designed to overcome Republican majorities in their states. In most states Republican authorities were unable to suppress the violence, fearing that they would provoke outright race war if they sent their mostly black state militias against the Klan. Blacks and white sympathizers were often threatened, beaten, or even murdered by Klan members in the South; the Klan used the now familiar white robes and hoods to mask their identity. The Ku Klux Klan became known as the Invisible Empire as it grew and spread rapidly.
At its height in the early 1920s, the Klan had more than two million participants and exercised great political power in many Southern, Western, and Midwestern states. And by this millenium there are still more groups of the KKK.
