In defense of defense of an abused and beleagured citizenry , the Ku Klux Klan was formed Christmas Eve , 152 years ago. Not for Self but for Others.
Nope - you have the date correct but those six guys simply formed a whimsical social club because they were bored. Had no purpose for "others". It really had no purpose for anything except self-amusement (hence the silly K-alliteration).
Of course, it didn't stay that way once it was taken over in the next year by the already long-established "night rider" elements. These elements also formed at least two dozen other similar vigilante groups all around the same time. The reason we remember the Klan better than we remember the Knights of the Rising Sun etc, is because it was the Klan that got re-formed in 1915, piggybacking on the notoriety of the "Birth of a Nation" film and the overt and rampant racism of the time, and developed into a far larger and far more influential group than it or any other of the 19th Century groups had ever been.
Go back to KlanKraft. White geNOcide was rampant throughout the South after the war of northern aggression. Check out the LA House of Reps in 1865. VFW. Very Few Whites. Times haven't changed that much. Robbin , rapin , miscegeny , around blax never relax.
There was of course genocide going on
by whites
on blacks. No question about that. Having lost their ability to own people, living in a devastated war zone and finding themselves suddenly competing for livelihoods with an entire population they had just recently treated as cattle, it is not an inaccurate description. Freed blacks who had the temerity to commit outrageous acts of Uppityness such as, oh, "walking into town in broad daylight", or "expecting to be paid fair wages for their labor", were commonly harassed, beaten, shot, hung, and in at least one case ---
skinned. SKINNED. With the carcass hung prominently as a terroristic warning to other blacks.
This was the mindset that took over the Klan and organized dozens of other similar vigilante groups to pursue the same objectives via teamwork. Sometimes such acts were organized and/or planned, other times they flared up spontaneously. Such was the mindset. And it continued for several decades in the form of rampant lynchings, in no way confined to the South, complete with souvenir postcards and body parts (BODY PARTS) bought and sold, until the onset of World War Two*. Not that WW2 arrested it completely, but it did slow it down enough for the Rosa Parkses and her numerous co-spirits to gain a foothold of assertion after interminable decades and centuries of degradation.
It's really a human success story of overcoming unspeakable and undeserved obstacles, hence the theme song of "We Shall Overcome". That's exactly what that song is about.
*for more on this intervening period between the Wars, the interested reader is referred to
this thread. And to
this thread. Warning -- contents will be disturbing. The reader who does not find the content disturbing is referred to a psychiatrist.