Following Lincoln's assassination, the new president, Andrew Johnson, had very different ideas. He allowed Southern states a lot of freedom to decide how they would treat Black people. Many white Southerners, like the person who wrote the 1875 letter, resisted any attempts to create equality.

In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes officially ended Reconstruction. This meant there was no strong national authority left to protect Black people’s rights or punish those who treated them unfairly. White Southerners quickly worked to take back control and limit the freedoms of Black Americans.

This is where the Jim Crow laws come in. The name 'Jim Crow' came from a character played by a white actor named Daddy Rice. He would paint his face black and act in a silly, exaggerated way on stage. This racist caricature became a nickname for Black people and then for the laws designed to segregate (separate) them from white people. For example, there were 'Jim Crow' railway carriages where all Black people had to sit, even if they paid for a better ticket.

Jim Crow laws spread across the South and even into some Northern states. These laws controlled almost every part of life, creating a deeply segregated society. They dictated where people could live, work, eat, go to school, who they could marry, and even where they could be buried. The aim was clear: to keep white people in power and Black people as second-class citizens."

THE SECOND ERA

Although the first KKK faded away after Reconstruction ended - partly because Jim Crow laws were doing the job of keeping white supremacy in place - the ideas behind it didn't disappear.

In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was officially revived. This 'second era' of the Klan was sparked by a few key things:

1. A Romanticised View of the Old South: Many white Southerners looked back on the pre-Civil War era with nostalgia, ignoring the brutality of slavery. This view was massively boosted by a hugely popular and controversial film called The Birth of a Nation (1915).

2. Anti-Immigration Sentiment: After World War One, many immigrants came to the United States. Some white, American-born Protestants felt threatened by these newcomers, who often had different religions (like Catholicism or Judaism) and cultures.

The Birth of a Nation played a massive role. This film portrayed the first KKK as heroes saving the South from corrupt Northerners (nicknamed 'carpetbaggers') and supposedly dangerous, newly-freed Black people. The film depicted Black people as unintelligent, aggressive, and a threat to white women. Although these were racist lies, many people at the time accepted the film's story as historical truth. Shockingly, it was even shown in the White House by President Woodrow Wilson, which seemed like an official approval. The KKK used the film's popularity as a powerful recruitment tool.

This new KKK wasn't just anti-Black. They also targeted Roman Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and anyone they considered 'un-American.' They adopted the burning cross as their powerful, intimidating symbol and held large rallies and parades across the country – one huge parade even took place in Washington D.C. By the 1920s, the KKK had over 4 million members nationwide.

The Great Depression in the 1930s saw Klan membership decline as people struggled with poverty, and the organisation officially disbanded again in 1944. However, like before, its members and its hateful ideas didn't simply vanish. They continued to operate, often more secretly, but the undercurrent of racial and religious hatred remained.

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