This is the world African-Americans used to live in during the 1960’s in the US South. A world in which an African-American tried to take one step forward into equality, then got pushed back by the government and white supremacy. One of the main leaders of this movement was the Ku Klux Klan, also known as the KKK, a white supremacist group that heavily impacted the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. The KKK’s attacks against African-Americans’ equality surprisingly benefitted the Civil Right Movement by gaining international attention and creating empathy for the African-Americans in the south.
The KKK was a group made mostly of poor, white southerners. It began in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, and spread massively into the south, covering …show more content…
In 1915, amid World War I, the Ku Klux Klan made a revival in the state of Georgia. The next generation of the KKK not only took a stand against African-Americans, but Jews, Catholics, and foreigners too. It peaked in the 1920’s, with 4 million people a part of the Klan’s movement and ideology. Unfortunately for the KKK, it got separated again in the 1930’s with the great depression abound and didn’t regroup until after World War II. It wasn’t until the 1950’s, during the Civil Rights Movement where the KKK regrouped to retaliate the protest African-Americans were giving to the US government. When the government started beginning to lean in the African-Americans’ direction the KKK went full force with its beatings, murders, bombings, and shooting onto the activists, both white and black (Staff "Ku Klux …show more content…
On September 15th¸ 1963, at 10:22 am, a majority African-American church got bombed, the 16th Street Baptist Church. This was a bombing by the KKK, and it killed 4 girls and injured 14 other people. Now, an attack in Birmingham was nothing new; in fact, it happened on the constant. The difference was that this attack was planned and aimed to kill. Most violence against the African-American’s retaliation was used to was aimed to jail, not to kill. Police were usually taught to battle against the African-Americans rebellious acts. Even though the act of the bombing was done by the KKK, no charges were filed against the Klan until the early 21st Century, due to correspondance, witnesses, and Klan members refusing to talk. After the attack on the church, all shackles broke loose, with at least two people dead in the riots and the National Guard being called in (Parrott-Sheffer). The KKK had no mercy against anyone, even people who weren’t part of the movement. Their grasp on the government was slipping as days went by and their plans were failing, they had to fight back. These attacks gained attention in the north and creating empathy for people in the south. This created the Freedom Summer of 1964, where people, mostly college-level, from the north would go down to the south to help to help and benefit the African-American communities by trying to give them a chance to vote and to be