Rise Of The White Supremacy Movement

White supremacy is an idea that has been circulated throughout societies ever since the concept of race began. Before the Civil War, the North and South had been going back and forth on this topic restlessly. The rise of white supremacy movements created great impacts including, the specific causes for their rise, sections of society involved, and southern sociopolitical features. The causes for the rise of white supremacist movements in the South include slavery, violence, and oppression. Up until 1865, whites enslaved and oppressed blacks. Black slavery contributed to the rise of white supremacy because since then whites had power over the slaves, while the black slaves had no choice but to obey or die. According to Goldfield, the Civil War may have ended terms of slavery, “but white
This organization composed of confederate veterans, was one of the big segments of society involved in the white supremacy movements. The KKK used acts of violence to terrorize the blacks of the South. After the 15th Amendment allowed black people the right to vote, the KKK “unleashed a wave of terror against them” (469). Not only did the Klu Klux Klan imprint a terrifying social impact, they also impacted Southern politics. The main goal of the Klan was to resist the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies, which aimed at creating political equality for blacks. They positioned their violence towards “subverting the electoral process” and forcing Republican blacks to vote Democrat (469). When social and political acts by the Klan got out of hand, Congress implemented the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which allowed authorities to arrest or prosecute members of white supremacy groups that denied a citizen’s civil rights. The KKK had such a sociopolitical impact that by the end of Reconstruction, the entire South was under Democratic