The KKK did not originate as a racist organization. It was a resistance movement during the punitive period of Reconstruction when northerners stole property from southerners, imposed black governments and denied whites self-rule, and encouraged blacks to rape southern women as a way of humiliating southern men and women. The KKK was the response of people who had had enough.

The federal government ended Reconstruction because the ruling Republicans who had imposed the punitive measures on the South realized that abuses were producing a guerrilla movement.  The KKK faded away with Reconstruction's repeal.

In 1915 primarily in response to too much rapid change, too much immigration, too much super patriotism and fear of foreigners the Klan was reborn. The Klan's target was not blacks so much as change. To prevent unwelcome change, power had to be pried out of the hands of the ruling elite.  Many millions of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe of different religion, habits, and appearance moved into the cities between 1900 and 1915, changing the distribution of the population from rural to city. President Wilson's propaganda during the First World War demanded 100% Americanism.  German-Americans became victims and some were lynched. The sedition Act was passed. The length of women's skirts rising from the floor to the knee signified a decline in sexual morality. A resulting disdain for elites, intellectuals and cities resulted in intolerance toward Catholics, Jews, blacks, and foreigners. The Klan saw itself as an anchor of stability. It would clean up movies and literature, deal with bootleggers, prostitutes, and other corrupters of public morality, and restore chivalry and deference to women. To reduce the confusion of a deracinating period to "white racism" is an ahistorical response.