The First Klan is a neologism or a retronym which is used to describe the first of three distinct operational eras in the history of the Ku Klux Klan, a White supremacist domestic terrorist group in the United States. The First Klan, or the Reconstruction Klan, was followed by the Second Klan, which reached its peak in the 1920s, and finally, it was followed by the Third Klan, which has been extant since the 1960s. According to historian Carl N. Degler, "Aside from the name, about the only common trait that the three Klans possess is vigilantism."
The first Klan was extant during the Reconstruction Era which followed the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. (There were numerous similar groups which operated under other names: Red Shirts, Knights of the White Camellia, the Black Cavalry, etc.) The goal of this Klan was to intimidate freedmen and reformers ("niggers, carpetbaggers, and scalawags") into surrendering their newly gained political and social power over what had once been the hegemonic White system of the Old South. According to a report which was published in 1976, "The extent of these Klan activities will never be known. Nor can it ever be determined the extent of fear that such activities engendered in their targets. Although it is known that close to 1,000 murders were committed by Klansmen, this figure represents only a very small part of the Klan terror." Federal investigations and prosecutions such as the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials of 1871–1872 and legislation such as the Ku Klux Klan Act attempted to expose and to repress the group.[1]
Unlike the Second Klan, which was a national organization, the First Klan was primarily a regional entity, most active in those former slave states that had supplied the most manpower to the Confederacy. This group largely achieved its goals following the Compromise of 1876 and as a result, it slowly declined in significance.[2]
As the Klan concept spread outward from Tennessee in 1867 and 1868, the basic structure of the Klan was State – Congressional District – County, reflecting their preoccupation with reserving representative democracy for themselves alone. State leaders were called Grand Dragons of the Realm, congressional district leaders were Grand Titans of the Dominion, and county leaders were Grand Giants of the Province.
In Walton County, Georgia, a "typical" Southern county with a population of 11,000 in 1870, "there were three dens of Klansmen...each with approximately 75 to 100 members." The president of Spartanburg Female College in South Carolina estimated that roughly 80 percent of White male voters in Spartanburg County were in the Klan in 1870–1871. Between them they victimized 227 people, and killed four African-American members of the South Carolina State Militia. In Mississippi, there is evidence of collaboration between small-town Klans as both a means of operational security and as for increased manpower: "The Ku Klux Klan of Winona went to Grenada and were likewise aided by the Grenada Klan. In this way there was less chance of being recognized."
The First Klan was often a flamboyantly-styled continuation of the antebellum slave patrol. Typically horse-mounted, well-armed, and functioning at the behest of Whites who rested atop any given region's socioeconomic ladder, the pre-war slave patrol begat the wartime bushwhacker begat the post-war Klan paramilitary. Per historian Michael Fitzgerald, the main "difference was that planters lost their financial motivation to protect slaves' lives. Little restrained self-appointed patrollers after the war."
Horse-mounted hunters versus freedmen often without the means to afford proper shoes was a succinct visual summary of the power dynamic at work. As Walter Johnson wrote about escaped slaves, "Beginning with the idea of the horse as a tool that converted grain into policing, one might define the several dimensions of horse-borne slaveholding power...More than that, as the historian Rhys Isaac long ago observed, a slaveholder (or patroller) on horseback visually commanded the landscape; traveling several feet above 'eye level' vastly expanded the immediate field of slaveholding power."
One Alabama survivor of slavery, "Nancy Pugh, decades later, mixed the Klan and prewar patrols together indiscriminately in her memory."
According to professor, the Klan had three advantages in its war on Radical Reconstruction: "operations in total secrecy, the ability to ignore forms of legalism, and the support of the great majority of the Southern Whites." The first and second of these advantages were combined in the fact that "the Klan's capacity for deceit was virtually limitless. Editors and politicians who were subsequently proved to have been Klansmen themselves derided the very notion that a Klan existed."
According to one history of Reconstruction in Mississippi, "The oath taken at initiation was as follows: 'You do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God and before this assembly of witnesses, that you will do the acts commanded of you by the commander of this Ku Klux Klan, outside of the civil law, so help you God.' The question put to the candidate when initiated was: 'What are the objects of the Ku Klux Klan?' Answer: 'It is to suppress the negro and keep him in the position where he belongs, and to see that the Democratic party controls this country.'"
A different Mississippi county history recounts, "The costume worn by members of the klan was usually made by their wives. It was either a white, loose-flowing garment or a black robe with white stripes across the breast, and a tall, pointed cap, of a yard long. They wore tin buttons on the front of their clothes. These were made by a tinsmith, named Henery Nance, who lived in Oakland. The horses were covered with sheets to keep them from being recognized. The Ku Klux Klan in Grenada was organized by seven prominent citizens in the bank building, in a room directly over a barber shop. It met in the back room of some store, in a deserted house, or in the cemetery. Lights were not allowed." Elaborate regalia was also known in Alabama: "pasteboard funnel hats, long gowns, and red pants with white stripes up and down the seams, with full disguises for the horses as well."
There are multiple accounts of Klansmen of the era playacting at being ghosts or walking dead bodies, perhaps risen from their graves on a Civil War battlefield to reinforce the racial order with spooky messages. These shows were believed to be convincing performances that the "ignorant, superstitious negroes" took seriously.
In Tennessee, "the most typical activity was the taking of guns from Negroes." In Alabama, whippings were "the default mode of Klan intimidation." In Mississippi, one threatening letter outlined that a vote had been taken about the target and whether or not they were guilty of certain "crimes", and explained that they typically granted their potential victims no more than three days to depart the vicinity. An oral history of slavery taken from Polly Turner Cancer of Marshall County, Mississippi produced by the WPA Slave Narratives project recounts similar stories:
Intimidation of anyone involved in the education of Black Americans was common. For example, "On Saturday night, February 22, [1868] about 20 Ku Klux paraded through Murfreesboro, some lingering around the house of teachers of Negro schools." According to one history, "With almost no exceptions the teachers were resented as 'radicals and social equality propagandists'." Teachers who arrived in more rural areas faced almost total ostracism and no little danger from the Klan and company, "which helps explain why the most successful Negro schools were in larger places such as Charleston and Memphis". Female teachers from the North were typically ignored by the First Klan, although they were often harassed by Southern society generally. Male teachers who did not comply with Klan commands to leave town were often tortured.
The Klan also served to impede free movement of former slaves after the war. Mary Gaffney, interviewed for the WPA Slave Narratives project, recalled "one negro that Mistress sent him to San Antonio for his Maser so he would have horse to ride back. He was riding one horse and leading another, she did not send pass with him as the war was over and the slaves were done declared free and before that negro boy got to where he was going them K K K held him up for his pass and he did'nt have any, so they took him off his horse and beat him up so bad he liked to have died, then they took some rawhide strings, bound his hands and feet around that horse's belly and turned that horse toward home. When he got home he was nearly dead, without anything to eat or drink. They had to take him from that horse and carry him to his quarters and the doctor thought for several days that he was going to die, as inflamation had set up in his legs where he was bruised. An old negro mammy there saved his life by putting his feet in a pan of hot water, boiling that inflamation out of that negroe's legs and he got well. That is what the KKK would do for the negro if he tried to leave his Maser without his Maser say so."[3]
The distinction between the First, Second, and Third Klans dates back to the 1960s.