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It was started by wealthy Democrats to organize poor southerners in an attempt to keep Republicans(remember the parties weren't the same back then, Abraham Licoln was a Republican) out of the south. Since African American people were the major supporters of Republicans at the time, the creators of the Klan mainly had them targeted, justifying their attacks with the racism that was rampant in the South at the time. The Klan has since then changed, become even less political and more about spreading hate.
And I'm assuming when you say "keep blacks in their place", you mean from the Klan's perspective and don't mean that African Americans actually deserve to be treated like that.
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