Ku Klux Klan Southern Poverty Law Center. , the Anti-Defamation League puts total Klan membership nationwide at around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) puts it at 6,000 members total. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to America's "Anglo-Saxon" blood, hearkening back to 19th-century nativism. Although members of the KKK swear to uphold Christian morality, virtually every Christian denomination has officially denounced the KKK. The first Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, sometime between December 1865 and August 1866 by six former officers of the Confederate army as a fraternal social club inspired at
Pulaski riot Pulaski riot The Pulaski riot was a race riot that occurred in Pulaski, Tennessee, on January 7, 1868. While the riot appeared to be based in a trade dispute of the previous summer between Calvin Lamberth, a white man, and Calvin Carter, an African American, it was provoked when Lamberth shot a friend of Carter's over rumored comments about the former's black mistress. After Lamberth shot Carter's friend, Whitlock Fields, numerous other armed whites came from nearby houses and attacked Carter and seven other black men at a nearby black-owned grocery store. Although the constable arranged a ceasefire, after the