The Fourth Wave of The Klan
Patriot Front, Proud Boys, MAGA, and More: A Rose By Any Other Name…
At any previous peak of Klan activity, they were de-centralized. Soon after they were founded in 1865 in Tennessee, there were multiple groups, indistinguishable from each other; the Knights of the White Camelia, the White League, the Ku Klux Klan, and others. There have been three previous waves of Klan activity, each stronger than the previous one, all in reaction to advancement in some way of Black Americans. We are now in the Fourth Wave. While there are dozens of currently active groups named Klan, the main groups have different names like Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, and Oath Keepers. Though some would resent being linked to the Klan which they consider low class, they are the Klan, and all they represent just the same.
The First Wave began in Pulaski, Tennessee when six former Confederate soldiers sat around drinking on Christmas Eve and thought up the Klan. The thought of formerly enslaved people running around free annoyed them, but states had already passed Black Codes that did all they could to reinvent enslavement so they weren’t that mad. It took Congress passing the first of the Reconstruction Acts and states passing the Fourteenth Amendment that pissed people off. By the time the Fifteenth Amendment passed and Black people got the right to vote…
