Who were the six founders of the Ku Klux Klan and what roles did each play during Reconstruction?
Executive summary
The Ku Klux Klan began in Pulaski, Tennessee, when six Confederate veterans formed a secret fraternal order in late 1865/early 1866; historians agree the original core were local ex‑Confederates who created costumes and rituals that later enabled a broader campaign of racial and political terror during Reconstruction [1] [2] [3]. Contemporary scholarship and reference works identify two of those six by name—Luther McCord and his brother Frank McCord—and show that later figures such as Nathan Bedford Forrest took on national leadership roles that turned the Pulaski founders’ local club into a regional force resisting Reconstruction [2] [4] [5].
1. The Pulaski six: a fraternal origin with political consequences
Multiple sources agree the Klan began as a small, secret fraternal society created by six Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, and that the founders’ initial claim—that rituals and “weird” theatrics were invented for amusement—masked how those forms were repurposed into instruments of intimidation against freedpeople and Republicans during Reconstruction [1] [2] [3].
2. Luther McCord and Frank McCord: the local organizers named in the record
Histories that examine Pulaski’s records name the McCord brothers—Luther McCord, a newspaper editor, and his brother Frank—as two of the six founders and identify them as part of the local leadership that devised rituals and public spectacle that later helped coordinate Klan activity in their region [2] [6].
3. The other four founders: collective actors, individually obscure in surviving accounts
Standard summaries repeatedly note “four others” alongside the McCords but do not consistently record all their names in the cited sources, and scholarly treatments emphasize that the original six are best understood as a collective of young Confederate veterans rather than as nationally prominent individuals whose biographies are well documented in the available excerpts [1] [6] [2]. Because the provided reporting does not supply a reliable, consistently cited list of all six names, definitive claims about each founder’s individual Reconstruction‑era role beyond the McCords would exceed the evidence here.
4. Nathan Bedford Forrest: the contested national leader who amplified the founders’ project
Although not necessarily one of the original Pulaski six, former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest is widely described in the sources as the probable Grand Wizard or overall leader by 1868 and as a decisive figure in organizing and spreading Klan activity across the South during Reconstruction; he consolidated and militarized the movement until reportedly ordering the organization disbanded in 1869 because of excesses [4] [5]. Historians differ on the degree to which Forrest engineered the Klan’s violence versus serving as its symbol and organizer, but the consensus in the cited work is that his leadership transformed the Pulaski club’s local theatrics into a broader campaign to subvert Reconstruction policies [4] [5].
5. What the founders’ roles amounted to in Reconstruction politics and violence
The founders’ invention of secrecy, costumes, and ritual created a template that enabled night raids, intimidation of Black voters and Republican officeholders, and terror aimed at reversing Reconstruction gains—actions documented broadly in the sources as central Klan tactics that targeted Black civic participation, Republican institutions, schools, and churches and prompted federal legislation like the Enforcement Acts and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 [3] [7] [8]. Where the primary Pulaski founders were local figures, their cultural innovations and the later organizational leadership of men like Forrest converted a small social club into an insurgent instrument of white supremacist restoration across multiple Southern states [2] [4] [7].
6. Limits of the record and competing interpretations
The sources establish firm ground on the group’s origin as six Confederate veterans in Pulaski and on the McCord brothers’ membership, and they document Forrest’s later leadership and federal responses to Klan violence [1] [2] [4] [8]. They do not, in the provided excerpts, furnish a single authoritative, fully named roster of all six founding individuals with detailed biographies of each during Reconstruction; therefore, any attempt here to present all six founders’ precise names and distinct Reconstruction roles beyond the McCords and Forrest would exceed what these sources reliably report [2] [1].