A brief history of the Klan is useful to put into perspective the hooded knights of the 1920s who were sworn to “keep blacks in their place.” The white-supremacist group was created immediately after the Civil War as an on-the-ground terror organization to help officialdom deny Negroes the fulfillment of promises made in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as those of the 1866 Civil Rights Act.
