In Part 2 of America’s First Anti-Terrorist Campaign: The Ku Klux Klan Trials of 1871, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas examines the rise of the original Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War and separates the reality of the 1860s Klan from the later mythology created by The Birth of a Nation. He traces the Klan’s beginnings in Pulaski, Tennessee, its rapid spread across the South, and its campaign of violence and intimidation against African American voters and white Republicans. The episode also follows President Ulysses S. Grant’s response, including the creation of the Department of Justice, the first Enforcement Act, and the legal machinery that would soon be used to confront Klan terrorism.