RECENT ACTIVITY

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling on May 17, 1954, that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional (see Brown v. Board of Education), stirred the Klan into new attempts at recruitment and violence but did not bring internal unity or greatly increased membership, power, or respectability in the South. The newly formed White Citizens Council (WCC), whose membership was largely middle class and included civic and business leaders, led the resistance to desegregation.

WCC members wielded the tools of economic intimidation and public harassment to silence civil rights proponents while also contributing to an atmosphere that tolerated and even encouraged antiblack violence. The Klan attracted marginal groups and was often at the center of violent assaults on civil rights workers, from beatings and murder to bombings. One particularly egregious crime attributed to the Klan occurred during the Freedom Summer voter registration campaign of 1964.

Three activists—two white, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and one African American, James Chaney—were murdered while investigating a church bombing in Mississippi, allegedly perpetrated by the Klan. This crime received significant media attention and increased national awareness of the Klan's covert yet powerful presence in the South.

After the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Klan experienced a startling increase in membership, reaching an estimated 40,000 in 1965. By the mid-1970s, the Klan's influence in politics had transitioned from covert to mainstream, as acknowledged Klan leaders ran for public office in the South, amassing sizable numbers of votes.

Approximately 15 separate organizations existed, including the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, and the National Klan. A resurgence of Klan violence occurred in the late 1970s, and in 1980 a Klan office was opened in Toronto, Canada. In 1989 David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of a Klan splinter group, was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989. Duke ran unsuccessfully in the state's gubernatorial election in 1991, but he did win the support of most white voters in that election.

Klan groups have been in decline since the 1980s. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and other groups have won civil suits on behalf of victims of the Klan, winning damages that have drained the movement of funds. Federal prosecutors have brought Klansmen to trial for violent acts and sedition, and have reopened several civil rights cases from the 1960s, winning convictions of Klansmen charged with the murder of civil rights leaders in Mississippi more than three decades ago.