Ku Klux Klan - An American History | Part 1 | Free Documentary History

The Ku Klux Klan is the oldest terrorist group in the United States. This secret society, created
in 1865, has survived throughout the decades and has always managed to rise from its ashes.
It has been making the news for over 150 years. 150 years of hatred, racism and horror. A
cruel history whose demons still haunt America.

Part 1:
In 1865, a handful of Southern Civil War veterans founded a secret society: the Ku
Klux Klan. Very quickly, the Klan instituted a reign of terror among the recently freed black
population. Murders and lynchings were common. In Washington, Congress launched an
offensive against the invisible empire, which was officially destroyed in 1872. The Ku Klux
Klan was reborn in 1915 thanks to the film The Birth of a Nation by D. W. Griffith. Under new
leadership, it evolved to fit into an America undergoing major changes and broadened its
trade in hatred. The KKK became anti-immigrant, anti-urban, anti-communist, anti-Semitic,
and anti-Catholic. Nearly four million Americans joined what would become a highly
influential mass lobbying organization. But at the end of the 1920s, scandals and the
economic crisis weakened the movement, which eventually disappeared again after the
Second World War.