The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May 1866.

During the next two years Klansmen wearing white masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black americans and sympathetic whites.

At first the main objectives of white supremacy organisations such as the KKK, the white brother hood, the men of justice, the constitutional union guards and the knight of white camelia was to stop the black people from voting.

After white governments had been established in the south the KKK continued to undermine the power of blacks. successful black businessmen were attacked and any attempt to form black protection groups such as trade unions was dealt with quickly.

 After the abolition of slavery in the United States, three Constitutional amendments were passed to grant newly freed African Americans legal status: the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Fourteenth provided citizenship, and the Fifteenth guaranteed the right to vote. In spite of these amendments and civil rights acts to enforce the amendments, between 1873 and 1883 the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that virtually nullified the work of Congress during Reconstruction. Regarded by many as second-class citizens, blacks were separated from whites by law and by private action in transportation, public accommodations, recreational facilities, prisons, armed forces, and schools in both Northern and Southern states. In 1896 the Supreme Court sanctioned legal separation of the races by its ruling in H.A. Plessy v. J.H. Ferguson, which held that separate but equal facilities did not violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment.