NATHAN BEDFORD

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY The 1868 Democratic National Convention was held at Tammany Hall in New York City between July 4, and July 9, 1868. The first grand wizard of the KKK was honored at the 1868 Democratic National Convention Forrest, Joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 (two years after its founding) and was elected its first Grand Wizard. The group was a loose collection of local factions throughout the former Confederacy that used violence and the threat of violence to maintain white control over the newly enfranchised, formerly enslaved people. The Klan, with Forrest at the lead, suppressed the voting rights of blacks in the Southern United States through violence and intimidation during the elections of 1868. In 1869, Forrest expressed disillusionment with the lack of discipline in the white supremacist terrorist group across the South, and issued a letter ordering the dissolution of the Ku Klux Klan as well as the destruction of its costumes; he then withdrew from the organization.