1950-1969
THE THIRD RISE OF THE KLAN:
Violence in the Civil Rights Era
After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, African Americans and organized labor.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local Ku Klux Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings, and shootings of Black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of Detroit’s Viola Liuzzo, a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. She was driving along the route of the third Selma-to-Montgomery march when a group of Klansmen—including an undercover FBI agent—shot her. In part because of the shocking national impact of Liuzzo’s brutal murder and other related forms of racist brutality, pressure grew on the federal government to act, and Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Signed into law on August 6, the legislation outlawed literacy tests and bolstered federal enforcement of Black suffrage.
Cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the following decades, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward.
As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League estimated Klan membership to be around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center put the number at 6,000.
Some 42 different Klan groups were active in 22 states as of June 2017, a slight increase from early 2016, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, a nonpartisan civil rights advocacy group. The Klan, known for promoting white supremacist and white nationalist ideas, captured public attention in 2017 during a weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, marked by race-fueled clashes.
In addition to the more than 40 identified Klan groups, the ADL tracked Klan activity to 11 other states during that same time, including some states perceived to be liberal, such as California. The ADL tracked the movement from January 2016 to June 2017.
Nationwide, there are still an estimated 3,000 Klan members and unaffiliated people who “identify with Klan ideology,” according to the ADL. Membership, though, remains spread across dozens of groups. The largest Klans reportedly don’t have more than 50 to 100 active members, and most have fewer than 25.
Sources
US News.com – KKK is Still Based in 22 states in the US in 2017