Ku-Klux-Klan

The organization is related in time to the Civil War between the North and the South. Originally it was created as a club by a few officers of the Confederate Army of the South and looked quite innocent. It was organized in 1865. The main purpose of the Organization was to oppose radical Republican Reconstruction and maintain "white supremacy". It spread very fast in the Southern States and absorbed many smaller groups of former slave traders. Its practices played upon fears and superstitions of the Afro-Americans. Their main weapon was intimidation and murder.

The policy of intimidation was successful in keeping the Afro-Amer- icans from the polls and it enabled the ex-confederates to gain political control in many states despite the disbandment of the Ku-Klux-Klan ordered in 1869.

By the end of the 1860s the Klan had over half a million members, and the acts of terror and intimidation it committed numbered millions of the bloodiest crimes. The local law enforcement bodies which were to implement the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitu­tion by allowing Afro-American to take their proper place in society could not or didn't want to withstand the pressure of the former aristocrats.

The Klansmen continued to burn down schools for the Afro-Amer­icans, and their farms if they were prosperous. These atrocities attained their aims at the time: the former slaves were often kept from voting and education. They remained entirely at the mercy of their former masters and were forced back into peonage which was no better than slavery.

The NAACP^[1] made a study of lynching which it issued in 1919. It was entitled "Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States; 1889-1918" and listed 3,324 lynchings. Sixty-one of those victims were women.

Lynching and general terrorism prompted redoubled frantic attempts of the Afro-Americans to escape by fleeing Northward. So, by 1930 the proportion of Afro-Americans in the North increased by 63.6% and at the same time in the South by only 5% and this brought quite a number of problems.

After World War II attempts at reviving the KKK failed when state after state specifically barred the organization.

Eventually all of this persecution, pillage, and intimidation, led to the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the adoption of a number of important acts condemning racism and providing civil rights to all American people.

There still exist local organizations of the Klan. Its members meet in secret and wear long white clothes and long pointed hats to disguise themselves.

In the 80s struggles for "Affirmative Action" have become crucial. "Affirmative Action" is defined as "termination of a discriminatory practice, adopted to correct... for past or present discrimination"^[2]... These struggles have acquired a broader sense and affirmative action is identified as a form of sustained and comprehensive efforts to achieve full and unconditional equality for all members of society, irrespective of race, color, sex, or religion.

Дата добавления: 2015-04-24