Ku Klux Klan
There have been three entirely different Ku Klux Klan organizations in the U.S. They copied the same name and regaalia, but hads very different goals and activities.
First KKK
The first KKK was an unorganized movement of white Southerners who opposed Reconstruction iinm the late 1860s by violence against black leaders and white sympathizers. Local Klans were entirely separate and there was no organization or coordination above the county level, and no county or state officers. The Klan was broken up by President Ulysses S. Grant and the U.S> Army and had disappeared by 1872.
Second KKK: The 1920s
The second KKK was a nonviolent membership organization in the 1920s that reached hundreds of thousands--possibly millions--of men in every state. It was mostly a Ponzi scheme whereby the organizers took all the money (for initiation fees and costumes); when they had organized an area they moved on, leaving local chapters without money or leadership. No prominent American admitted he was a member at the time, but state organizers claimed vast powers. In tecenty years historians have found enough records to show that local chapters were discussion groups, often with speakers who denounced Catholics, Jews, crime and violation of the prohibition laws. A series of scandals ruined the reputation and the group faded away after 1925, except for some remote areas like West Virginia. Robert Byrd, now a Senator, was an organizer in West Virginia in the 1940s, and has apologized repeatedly for it. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black admitted in 1939 that he had been a memeber in the 1920s.
Third Klan
The third Klan curfrently exists and comprises a few thousand members in local chapters. There is no real organization, and the group sponsors vehement hate talk, and occasional violent threats and actions. I is racist and aims at the suppression of African-American, Jewish, Homosexual, and Catholic interests. The current Klan presents itself as a Christian organization, but all denominations have rejected it as inherently un-Christia.
David Duke, who was a Democrat at the time of his official membership with the Klan, and after leaving served as a Louisiana Republican Representative and as chairman of the party in St. Tammany Parish while maintaining his ties to white supremacist organizations like the NAAWP, which he founded. Despite being in the minority, Duke authored the anti-Affirmative Action House Bill 1013 (1990) which was passed by the Democratic majority controlled Louisianna State Legislature.