An organization called the Ku Klux Klan used many different ways to intimidate blacks in the South (Foner and Garraty 1). The first arose was a movement of white Southerners to stop the newly freed African Americans from exercising their rights of citizenship with threats and terror, including murder. The KKK was a secret society and its members burned crosses and wore hood like masks (Daniels 1). The Ku Klux Klan was a racist group of people that wanted segregation between blacks and whites.
The Ku Klux Klan became a terrorist group dedicated to defeat the Republican Party and keep blacks in their place. Most counties saw little of the Klan, but others were overrun by the KKK for months or years at a time. The KKK grew in number in locations when a political race was very close. The KKK would recruit members so that they would vote for their candidate that promoted segregation (Foner and Garraty 1). It aimed to grow where the two parties or races were evenly balanced and terrorism would change election results. “In the worst-affected counties, disguised night riders ranged the countryside on a regular basis, dragging people from their homes, whipping, shooting, or otherwise assaulting them, destroying their property, or driving them away”(Foner and Garraty 1). The KKK used intimidation to elect racist candidate. The Ku Klux Klan committed many crimes against civil rights leaders and African Americans in the 1960s. On August 1955 while visiting relatives in Mississippi, Emmett Till, an African-American teenager from Chicago, was murdered after allegedly whistling at a white woman. Till’s alleged assailants was found not guilty by an all-white jury (ProQuest Staff 4). On February 27, 1967, KKK workers planted a bomb in Wharlest Jackson’s car which resulted in Jackson’s death. On March 25, 1965, Klansmen fired twice with his pistol and killed Viola Gregg Liuzzo. Viola Gregg Liuzzo was a white civil rights leader. Liuzzo sang strains of