: President Ulysses S. Grant used the Enforcement Acts to declare martial law and crush the first Klan by 1872. The Second Wave: The "Invisible Empire"

: 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