The nineteenth century Klan was initially composed as a social club by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866. They obviously got the name from the Greek word kyklos, from which comes the English "circle"; "Klan" was included for similar sounding word usage and Ku Klux Klan developed.
The association rapidly turned into a vehicle for Southern white underground protection from Radical Reconstruction. Klan individuals looked for the reclamation of racial domination through terrorizing and viciousness went for the recently emancipated dark freedmen. A comparative association, the Knights of the White Camelia, started in Louisiana in 1867.
