Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

364 • KONGRA-GELKONGRA-GEL. See KURDISTAN WORKERS’ PARTY.KU KLUX KLAN (KKK). The historic Ku Klux Klan was a white supremacistorganization founded in 1865 by Confederate veterans ofthe U.S. Civil War. The name has continued to be used by a numberof groups that adhere to the twin beliefs of the racial superiority ofthe white race and the need to safeguard that primacy by protectingits purity against racial desegregation, integration, and miscegenation.The distinguishing marks of the Klan were the burning crossand the hooded and white-sheeted garments of its members. Its typicaltactics were nighttime raids in full regalia against blacks and others,in which they would beat, tar and feather, or lynch their victims.Altogether about 1,000 blacks are estimated to have been killed byKlansmen during the early post–Civil War period, although there areno definitive statistics from that time.For most of its history, the Klan and its successor groups actedlargely as a repressive group, seeking to counter the power of northernersin the south and to keep blacks socially and politically subordinate.Therefore, the federal banning of the Klan in 1871 made littledifference since many of the Klansmen’s limited aims were achievedthrough the electoral laws passed by post-Reconstruction southernlegislatures that effectively deprived their black citizens of civil rights.The latter-day Klan groups, however, have developed beyond havinglimited aims of repression to becoming right-wing revolutionarygroups willing to undertake more ambitious terrorist activities, includingforming alliances with neo-Nazi and skinhead groups.The original Ku Klux Klan targeted blacks and northern agentsof Reconstruction. The Klan was resurrected by a former Methodistminister, William J. Simmons, with a cross-burning ceremonyattended by 16 men on Stone Mountain, Georgia, on 24 November1915. The revived Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKKK) in 1920expanded its list of enemies to include Roman Catholics, Jews, immigrants,and, later in the 1930s, Communists. By adding Jews andCatholics to the list of hated groups, the revived Klan was able torecruit new members outside the traditional Old South. In part, thiswas done on the advice of Edward Clarke and Bessie Tyler, foundersof the Southern Publicity Association, who pioneered mass-marketingtechniques and grass-roots organizing with great effectiveness onbehalf of the Anti-Saloon League’s temperance movement as well as