KÜHNE, WILLY (1837–1900), German physiologist, was born at Hamburg on the 28th of March 1837. After attending the gymnasium at Lüneburg, he went to Göttingen, where his master in chemistry was F. Wöhler and in physiology R. Wagner. Having graduated in 1856, he studied under various famous physiologists, including E. Du Bois-Reymond at Berlin, Claude Bernard in Paris, and K. F. W. Ludwig and E. W. Brücke in Vienna. At the end of 1863 he was put in charge of the chemical department of the pathological laboratory at Berlin, under R. von Virchow; in 1868 he was appointed professor of physiology at Amsterdam; and in 1871 he was chosen to succeed H. von Helmholtz in the same capacity at Heidelberg, where he died on the 10th of June 1900. His original work falls into two main groups—the physiology of muscle and nerve, which occupied the earlier years of his life, and the chemistry of digestion, which he began to investigate while at Berlin with Virchow. He was also known for his researches on vision and the chemical changes occurring in the retina under the influence of light. The visual purple, described by Franz Boll in 1876, he attempted to make the basis of a photochemical theory of vision, but though he was able to establish its importance in connexion with vision in light of low intensity, its absence from the retinal area of most distinct vision detracted from the completeness of the theory and precluded its general acceptance.
KUKA, or Kukawa, a town of Bornu, a Mahommedan state of the central Sudan, incorporated in the British protectorate of
Nigeria (see Bornu). Kuka is situated in 12° 55′ N. and 13° 34′ E., 412 m. from the western shores of Lake Chad, in the midst
of an extensive plain. It is the headquarters of the British administration in Bornu, and was formerly the residence of the native sovereign, who in Bornu bears the title of shehu.
The modern town of Kuka was founded c. 1810 by Sheikh Mahommed al Amin al Kanemi, the deliverer of Bornu from the Fula invaders. It is supposed to have received its name from the kuka or monkey bread tree (Adansonia digitata), of which there are extensive plantations in the neighbourhood. Kuka or Kaoukaou was a common name in the Sudan in the middle ages. The number of towns of this name gave occasion for much geographical confusion, but Idrisi writing in the 12th century, and Ibn Khaldun in the 14th century, both mention two important towns called Kaou Kaou, of which one would seem to have occupied a position very near to that of the modern Kuka. Ibn Khaldun speaks of it as the capital of Bornu and as situated on the meridian of Tripoli. In 1840 the present town was laid waste by Mahommed Sherif, the sultan of Wadai; and when it was restored by Sheikh Omar he built two towns separated by more than half a mile of open country, each town being surrounded by walls of white clay. It was probably owing to there being two towns that the plural Kukawa became the ordinary designation of the town in Kano and throughout the Sudan, though the inhabitants used the singular Kuka. The town became wealthy and populous (containing some 60,000 inhabitants), being a centre for caravans to Tripoli and a stopping-place of pilgrims from the Hausa countries going across Africa to Mecca. The chief building was the great palace of the sheikh. Between 1823 and 1872 Kuka was visited by several English and German travellers. In 1893 Bornu was seized by the ex-slave Rabah (q.v.), an adventurer from the Bahr-el-Ghazal, who chose a new capital, Dikwa, Kuka falling into complete decay. The town was found in ruins in 1902 by the British expedition which replaced on the throne of Bornu a descendant of the ancient rulers. In the same year the rebuilding of Kuka was begun and the town speedily regained part of its former importance. It is now one of the principal British stations of eastern Bornu. Owing, however, to the increasing importance of Maidugari, a town 80 m. S.S.W. of Kuka, the court of the shehu was removed thither in 1908.
For an account of Kuka before its destruction by Rabah, see the Travels of Heinrich Barth (new ed., London, 1890); and Sahara und Sudan, by Gustav Nachtigal (Berlin, 1879), i. 581–748.
KU KLUX KLAN, the name of an American secret association of Southern whites united for self-protection and to oppose the Reconstruction measures of the United States Congress, 1865–1876. The name is generally applied not only to the order of Ku Klux Klan, but to other similar societies that existed at the same time, such as the Knights of the White Camelia, a larger order than the Klan; the White Brotherhood; the White League; Pale Faces; Constitutional Union Guards; Black Cavalry; White Rose; The ’76 Association; and hundreds of smaller societies that sprang up in the South after the Civil
War. The object was to protect the whites during the disorders that followed the Civil War, and to oppose the policy of the North towards the South, and the result of the whole movement
was a more or less successful revolution against the Reconstruction
and an overthrow of the governments based on negro
suffrage. It may be compared in some degree to such European
societies as the Carbonara, Young Italy, the Tugendbund,
the Confréries of France, the Freemasons in Catholic countries,
and the Vehmgericht.
The most important orders were the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia. The former began in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a social club of young men. It had an absurd ritual and a strange uniform. The members accidentally discovered that the fear of it had a great influence over the lawless but superstitious blacks, and soon the club expanded into a great federation of regulators, absorbing numerous local bodies that had been formed in the absence of civil law and partaking of the nature of the old English neighbourhood police and the ante-bellum slave patrol. The White Camelia was formed in 1867 in Louisiana and rapidly spread over the states of the late Confederacy. The period of organization and development of the Ku Klux movement was from 1865 to 1868; the period of greatest activity was from 1868 to 1870, after which came the decline.
The various causes assigned for the origin and development of this movement were: the absence of stable government in the South for several years after the Civil War; the corrupt and tyrannical rule of the alien, renegade and negro, and the belief that it was supported by the Federal troops which controlled elections and legislative bodies; the disfranchisement of whites; the spread of ideas of social and political equality among the negroes; fear of negro insurrections; the arming of negro militia and the disarming of the whites; outrages upon white women by black men; the influence of Northern adventurers in the Freedmen’s Bureau (q.v.) and the Union League (q.v.) in alienating the races; the humiliation of Confederate soldiers after they had been paroled—in general, the insecurity felt by Southern whites during the decade after the collapse of the Confederacy.
In organization the Klan was modelled after the Federal Union. Its Prescript or constitution, adopted in 1867, and revised in 1868, provided for the following organization: The entire South was the Invisible Empire under a Grand Wizard, General N. B. Forrest; each state was a Realm under a Grand Dragon; several counties formed a Dominion under a Grand Titan; each county was a Province under a Grand Giant; the smallest division being a Den under a Grand Cyclops. The staff officers bore similar titles, relics of the time when the order existed only for amusement: Genii, Hydras, Furies, Goblins, Night Hawks, Magi, Monks and Turks. The private members were called Ghouls. The Klan was twice reorganized, in 1867 and in 1868, each time being more centralized; in 1869 the central organization was disbanded and the order then gradually declined. The White Camelia with a similar history had a similar organization, without the queer titles. Its members were called Brothers and Knights, and its officials Commanders.
The constitutions and rituals of these secret orders have declarations of principles, of which the following are characteristic: to protect and succour the weak and unfortunate, especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers; to protect members of the white race in life, honour and property from the encroachments of the blacks; to oppose the Radical Republican party and the Union League; to defend constitutional liberty, to prevent usurpation, emancipate the whites, maintain peace
