: Hooded riders used psychological warfare and brutal violence, including murder and arson.
The KKK began on Christmas Eve in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee. It started as a social club for six ex-Confederate soldiers but quickly transformed into a paramilitary group. Their goal was to overthrow Reconstruction and restore white supremacy by terrifying freed Black people and Southern Republicans.
The history of the Ku Klux Klan is a story of organized terror, political manipulation, and eventual self-destruction through internal depravity. The First Wave: Reconstruction Terror