The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded in late 1865 or early 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by six former Confederate soldiers shortly after the end of the American Civil War.
The six original founders were:
• Frank O. McCord
• Richard R. Reed
• John C. Lester
• John B. Kennedy
• J. Calvin Jones
• James R. Crowe
The six were closely aligned with the Democratic Party in that region and era.
Here’s the accurate historical context:
• The six Confederate veterans who founded the first Klan were all Southern Democrats.
• During Reconstruction (1865–1877), the KKK functioned as a violent paramilitary arm used primarily by Southern white Democrats to:
• Terrorize freed Black people and prevent them from voting
• Intimidate and assassinate Republican officials (both Black and white)
• Resist Reconstruction policies enforced by the Republican-controlled federal government
• The vast majority of Klan members and leaders in the 1860s–1870s were Democrats, because in the post-war South, the Democratic Party = white Southerners opposed to Reconstruction, while the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln, emancipation, and Reconstruction.
Key points to avoid modern myths:
• The Democratic Party of the 1860s–1870s South is not the same as the modern Democratic Party (the parties realigned ideologically over the 20th century, especially on civil rights).
• The Republican Party of that era was the progressive, anti-slavery, pro-Reconstruction party in the South.
• No national Democratic Party leadership officially created or endorsed the KKK, but many local and state-level Democratic officials in the South either belonged to it, tolerated it, or benefited from its violence.
Later iterations of the Klan:
• The second Klan (1915–1940s) had members from both parties and was more widespread nationally.
• By the mid-20th century and beyond, the Klan drew support primarily from conservative white Southerners, many of whom later shifted toward the Republican Party during and after the Civil Rights era.
The original KKK was started by Southern Democrats (former Confederates) and operated as a terrorist wing to support Democratic efforts to regain political control in the South after the Civil War. It was never an official creation of the national Democratic Party, but it was deeply tied to the Southern Democratic power structure of the 1860s and 1870s.
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