: 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"
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. Depraved Kkk
In 1915, the film The Birth of a Nation glorified the first Klan and inspired a massive resurgence. This version of the Klan moved beyond the South, gaining millions of members in the North and Midwest. : President Ulysses S