The Ku Klux Klan or KKK is one of America's oldest and most feared groups. Driven by the dream of a world with only one master race, the KKK often uses violence and takes the law into their own hands in order to promote their cause. They did not start as a violent group, or to promote white supremacy.
             At the end of the War between the States in April of 1865, some felt it marked the beginning of a terrible time of trouble for the white citizens who remained loyal to the southern states. This infamous chapter of American history is known as the Reconstruction period.
             Although large portions of the South were untouched by military action during the war, the problems after the war touched all and were severe. Private homes and farms were burned and personal property seized. Some of the seized property was given to some of the newly freed slaves, who many feared would rise up in revolt at any moment. Many individual cases did occur, and the law turned a blind eye too often to be tolerated. It was a lawless time when street justice prevailed.
             It was out of these dismal conditions that just and "decent men" of honor came together forming the Ku Klux Klan. Led by Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee, by 1877 these "courageous" men had driven the federal troops back north. For a time they saved the white south from the tyranny of the federal government, the extortion of the carpetbaggers, the treason of the scalawags, and the hatred of the numerous renegade Negroes.
             The "Ku Klux Klan, or KKK as known today, was started in the spring of 1866. Six Confederate veterans formed a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee. The group adopted the name Ku Klux Klan from the Greek word kuklos, meaning circle, and the English word clan. They chose the circle because they felt it was the best symbol of creativity and also because it's the oldest symbol of unity. This KKK only lasted a short six years, but...