Kuklos Adelphon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kuklos Adelphon (also known as the old K.A. , Kappa Alpha, or Kuklos Adelphon of the Southern States) was a college fraternity widespread throughout the Southern states of the U.S.A. in the pre-Civil war period. Its name means Circle of Brothers. Some sources state that the group was organized in 1812 by four members of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Other sources attribute the founding to the 1840s at the University of Alabama. It expanded to over twenty colleges and townships throughout the South, but later dissolved during the American Civil War.

Its elaborate rituals were a model for those later adopted by the Ku Klux Klan after the war's end.

It is not to be confused with either the Kappa Alpha Society, the first fraternity, or the Kappa Alpha Order, a traditional Southern fraternity.

• Ku Klux Klan from the Handbook of Texas Online