What violent group emerged during Reconstruction to terrorize those challenging white supremacy?

• A. The Ku Klux Klan.
• B. The Red Shirts.
• C. The White League.
• D. The Knights of Labor.

Answer: (A)

During Reconstruction, violent resistance to those challenging white supremacy grew into organized groups that used terror to restore white control. The Ku Klux Klan became the most infamous of these, forming to intimidate freedpeople and their allies—targeting Black voters, Republican supporters, and reform governments with threats, beatings, arson, and lynchings. This fearsome, clandestine violence was aimed at dismantling Reconstruction gains and reasserting white dominance across the South, which is why the Klan is the best answer here. Other groups like the White League or the Red Shirts did use similar tactics in specific states, but they are not as emblematic of Reconstruction-era terror as the Ku Klux Klan. The Knights of Labor, on the other hand, was a national labor organization focused on workers’ rights and inclusion, not a white-supremacist terror group.