How did the KKK change or maintain the cultural landscape of the antebellum South?

Answer 1

The KKK was masterful in creating an environment of intimidation, terror, and violence in efforts to gain and maintain white supremacy in the Antebellum South. Through the use of racial identity politics and fear mongering techniques, they crafted a narrative of African American savagery and violent demeanor willing to take opportunities from hard-working whites, rape their women, and take over their lives. Movies like Birth of a Nation, political cartoons depicting Northerners and Blacks colluding to take down Southerners, and many other forms of imagery were used to draw moderate whites into their ranks. Terror was also a tool used to maintain the control in most of the South. Between the end of the Civil War to the 1960s, many historians would argue that between 4 to 10,000 African Americans were lynched in the antebellum South. This instrument of terror was used as a means of destroying maintaining white supremacy and racial segregation in the South. As the KKK grew in power, their influence was felt throughout all levels of the government as they worked to reduce the power of African Americans and others whom they felt were part of the others like Mexicans and Jews. They became an even greater force to reckon with after reconstruction as they gained the political power to stop African Americans from voting in the South through Jim Crow laws that created nearly impossible standards for most Black Americans to vote while the threat of violence for those African Americans who did vote became all too real. All in all, at its height the KKK and its sympathizers infiltrated all aspects of Southern life and were influential at maintaining the racial divisions and tensions in the United States before the Civil Rights Era. Their influence on American life and their impact on American history are still felt in many different aspects and laws today even after this issue was addressed in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.