Overview:Since its birth in 1865, in the wake of the American Civil War, the history of the Ku Klux Klan has been inseparable from that of the United States. The debates over slavery, the populism in the roaring twenties, the struggle for civil rights in the sixties, the rise of the far-right in the early 21st century; the Klan seems to have always embodied the dark side of the nation, with its gray areas and blind spots.