More fully Ku-Klux-Klan. [A fantastic name said to be made out of Gr. κύκλος circle + CLAN.]
1. A widespread secret society, which arose in the Southern States of North America after the civil war of 1861–5, beginning with the effort to overawe the negro population by whipping and arson, and developing a system of political outrage and murder; it was finally put down by the U.S. military forces. Also attrib.
1871. Illustr. Lond. News, 15 April, 359/1. The House of Representatives has passed a bill making Ku-Klux crimes in the south punishable in the Federal Courts. Ibid., 29 April, 414/3. The Ku-Klux Bill has passed both Houses at Washinglon with considerable modifications.
1872. Whittier, Presid. Elect., Pr. Wks. 1889, III. 164. Let us not despair of seeing even the Ku-Klux tamed into decency.
1880. ‘E. Kirke,’ Garfield, 54. That the horrors of the Ku-klux and the White-Lives should not run riot at the poles.
1884. D. L. Wilson, in Century Mag., July, 398/1. No chapter in American history is more strange than the one which bears for its title: ‘Ku Klux Klan.’
2. A member of the Ku-Klux.
1884. D. L. Wilson, in Century Mag., XXVIII. 402/1. The ‘procedure’ was to place the would-be Ku Klux in an empty barrel … and to send him whirling down the hill!
Hence Kuklux v., to outrage or maltreat in accordance with the methods of the Ku-Klux-Klan. Kukluxism, the system or methods of the Ku-Klux; outrage or murder.
1879. Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 Nov., 1/5. Ten men … were to-day taken … on a charge of kukluxing a man named McAlpine, his son and daughter.
1881. Philadelphia Rec., No. 3452. 1. A word … suggestive of kukluxism.
1884. American, VIII. 72. Not only a Confederate but was sent to the Albany Penitentiary for Ku-Kluxism.
