The Ku Klux Klan was originally founded immediately after the American Civil War, and this version of the group lasted throughout the 1870s, until another iteration of the Klan was founded in 1915. In 1865, at the conclusion of the Civil War, six Confederate veterans gathered in Pulaski, Tennessee, to create the Ku Klux Klan: a vigilante group that would organize a campaign of violence and terror against African American people across the country, just as they began to benefit somewhat from Reconstruction. (1) There have been a number of theories about the Klan’s founding and naming over the years: one idea held that the Ku Klux Klan was originally a secret order of Chinese smugglers, while another claimed that the group was founded by Confederate prisoners during the Civil War. The wildest theory posited that the Klan’s name was based on an ancient Jewish document that referred to Hebrews enslaved by the Egyptian Pharaohs. (2) 

 

The real origins of the Ku Klux Klan were, of course, not nearly as mythical as these theories; their naming and structure was inextricably linked to the surrounding culture of secret societies pervading America at the time of their founding. Part of the inspiration for the Klan’s fanciful hierarchies, with names such as the Grand Cyclops, may have been a secret society called the Knights of the Golden Circle. This was a semi-military secret society active in the Midwest throughout the American Civil War, launched in 1859 by George Bickley, a freebooter and adventurer, with the eventual goal of annexing Mexico entirely to the US. According to Bickley, this would ensure that the Southern US states would not be overwhelmed by the industrial and commercial interests of those in the North. While the group had little influence in the South, and few or no Northern members, it had the effect of sparking the founding of Union League clubs, which were associations started to generate support for the Union cause during the war, spreading counterpropaganda to that espoused by the Knights of the Golden Circle. (3) Other, successor organizations include the Sons of Liberty and the Order of American Knights. It was out of this contextual landscape that the Ku Klux Klan emerged: the expression and action stemming from the Klan’s white supremacist ideals was heavily influenced by the aesthetics and tropes of the time, and its founders were not just enthusiastic for their violent designs, but for the formation of a fraternity with all the trappings of secrecy and coded language. 

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Thus, the KKK was born with a mythical hierarchy embedded: the head of the group would be named the Grand Cyclops, and his assistant the Grand Magi, while there would be a Grand Scribe acting as Secretary. Members were to be called Ghouls, messengers were Night Hawks, and the guard would be known as a Lictor. The group’s name derives from the Greek word ‘kuklos’, from which the English words ‘circle’ and ‘cycle’ originate; this was then transformed into the Ku Klux Klan by the founders’ love of alliteration. As well as the myriad of secret societies that formed the backdrop for the Klan’s founding, they also drew on university fraternity traditions for their initiation ceremonies: like fraternities, they introduced hazing rituals for new members that included blindfolding candidates, subjecting them to a series of silly oaths, and then bringing them before a ‘royal alter’ to be given a ‘royal crown’ – except the royal crown was in fact a pair of donkey’s ears, and the altar was, in reality, a mirror. While these activities seem ridiculous today, they were in keeping with the usual antics of secret societies and college fraternities at the time, and were therefore perceived with much less derision than they might be today. This also goes for the costumes that the Klan were to become infamous for: these originally began with the members donning white sheets, in the vein of the exaggerated aesthetics of other secret societies, yet evolved into the white robes of the KKK being an instant symbol for far-right extremism.