kkk黨英文版介紹.doc

Racism: the belief that race accounts for differences in human character orability and that a particular race is superior to others. Racism has existed throughout human history. It may be defined as the hatred of one person by another - or the belief that another person is less than human - because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. It has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and legal codes. The basic contents of racism: racial discrimination, apartheid, genocide. Racial segregation, called “Jim Crow”, excluded blacks from public transport and facilities, jobs, juries, and neighborhoods. Blacks had separate hospitals, prisons, orphanages, parks and pools. The 19th century ended with the races firmly segregatedculturally and legally.Ku Klux Klan also known as KKK: a secret white supremacist organization at various times in American history terrorized blacks and white sympathizers with violent acts of lynching, shootings and whippings.Of all the types of right-wing hate groups that exist in the United States, the Klan remains the one with the greatest number of national and local organizations around the countryFounded: 1866 by 6 Confederate Civil War veteransHeadquarters: Each different Klan group has its own headquarters. Powderly, Kentucky; Butler, Indiana; Jasper, TexasBackground: The Klan has fragmented into more than 40 separate factions of varying sizes. There is no “one” Ku Klux Klan.Estimated size: There are over a hundred different chapters in the various Klan organizations, with varying memberships. Overall, there may be as many as 5,000 members and associates of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan is strongest in the South and in the Midwest.Criminal Activity: The Klan has a relatively high association with criminal activity, ranging from hate crimes to acts of domestic terrorism.Media: Mass mailings, leafleting and the InternetStrategy: Public rallies and protests, adopt a highway programs and other attention getting stunts, InternetIdeology: White supremacist ideology not far from that of neo-Nazis, although it tends to be more Christian-oriented and to stress nativism. Affiliations: National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations, Christian Identity groupsFinancial support: Little. Most funding comes from membership dues and sales of Klan paraphernaliaFirst Klan 18661874The Klans purpose was to restore white supremacy in the aftermath of the American Civil War. The Klan resisted Reconstruction by assaulting, murdering and intimidating freedmen and white progressives within the Republican Party. In 1870 and 1871 the federal government passed the Force Acts, which were used to prosecute Klan crimes. Prosecution of Klan crimes and enforcement of the Force Acts suppressed Klan activity. In 1874 and later, however, newly organized and openly active paramilitary organizations such as the White League and the Red Shirts started a fresh round of violence aimed at suppressing Republican voting and running Republicans out of office. These contributed to white conservative Democrats regaining political power in the Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.During the next two years Klansmen wearing masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites. a Grand Jury reported that: The Klan has a constitution and bylaws, provides things, that each member shall furnish himself with a pistol, a Ku Klux gown and a signal instrument. The operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably directed against members of the Republican Party. The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering. Immigrants, who they blamed for the election of Radical Republicans, were also targets of their hatred. Between 1868 and 1870 the Ku Klux Klan played an important role in restoring white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.The second Klan: 19151944In 1915, the second Klan was founded. It grew rapidly in a period of postwar social tensions, where industrialization in the North attracted numerous waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and the Great Migration of Southern blacks and whites. The second KKK preached racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and antisemitism. Some local groups took part in lynchings, attacks on private houses, and carried out other violent activities. The Klan committed most of its murders and acts of violence in the South, which had a tradition of lawlessness. The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure.The name Ku Klux Klan has since been used by many independent groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governors offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama.Several members of KKK groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers and children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers, and the murder of three civil rights workers. Today, researchers estimate that there may be approximately 150 Klan