A secret terrorist organization that began in the southern states during the
             reconstruction period following the Civil War and was reactivated on a larger basis in
             the 20th century. The original Klan was brought together in Pulaski, Tennessee in
             1865, by six X-Confederate officers who gave their society a name from the Greek
             word kuklos. Although the Ku Klux Klan began as a prankish social organization, its
             activities soon were directed against the Republican Reconstruction governments
             and their leaders, black and white, which came to power in the southern states in
             The Klansmen thought of the Reconstruction governments as hostile and
             oppressive. They also believed in the inferiority of blacks so they resented the rise of
             former slaves to a status of equality. The Klan became an illegal group committed to
             destroying the Reconstruction governments everywhere from the Carolinas to
             Arkansas. Wearing robes or sheets and masks with pointed hoods, the Klansmen
             terrorized public officials in order to drive them from office and blacks in general to
             stop them from voting. It was normal for the Klansmen to burn crosses near homes of
             people they wanted to frighten. When these things failed to create the wanted
             outcome, their victims might be mutilated or even murdered. These activities were
             justified by the Klan as needed measures in defense of white supremacy.
             A secret meeting of Klansmen in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1867, took on a
             declaration of principles showing loyalty to the United States Constitution. The
             convention designated the Klan as an invisible empire and made it possible for a
             supreme official, called Grand Wizard, who had racist power. Other officials of the
             Klan were the Grand Dragon, the Grand Titan, and the Grand Cyclops. From 1868 to
             1870, while federal troops were being taken out of the southern states, the Klan was
             more and more controlled by the rougher parts of
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