African American Slavery

 

    The Africans who were kidnapped were referred to as African Americans because of the role they played in bringing wealth to the southern states even though they did not become citizens of this country until the 14^th Amendment was passed in 1868. In 1808 federal legislation was passed that made it illegal to import captive people from Africa into the U.S. Like all bans it was violated to some degree. However, most of the black people in the country by 1868 were naturalized citizens. The involuntary labor black people provided in the fields planting and harvesting cotton and tobacco along with other crops was invaluable. While at the same time the southerners built a pampered lifestyle of opulence. The African women suffered from being raped continuously and had children by their owners. Their families often broken up and traded to other rich landowners. Some of the slave owners were kind and others practiced cruel forms of oppression. Most were malicious. In order to prevent rebellion, a hierarchy created a separation between the slaves. Some served in the households, a higher position, while others toiled in the fields, a lower ranking position. Laws prevented them from learning how to read. Needed to keep them as ignorant as possible to prevent rebellion. An age of “neoslavery” existed after the Civil War in which they served in the shadow of involuntary servitude. Modern-day slavery, also known as the aforementioned neo-slavery, referred to as institutional slavery that has continued to occur through vagrancy laws against black people. Many acts of discrimination have held black people hostage to the insidious legacy of racism.

    Captive Africans from Angola, in southwestern Africa, suffered the journey from their country in the cargo hold of a Portuguese slave ship. They were bound for a life of slavery in Mexico. Approximately half of the kidnap victims died while on the ship. The remaining captives were taken to Point Comfort near the port of Jamestown, the capital of the English colony of Virginia, by a ship called the “Dutch man of war.” The governor and cape merchant purchased the captives in exchange for food for the kidnappers. Even though people of African descent were present in North America since the 1500s, free and enslaved, the sale of the 20+ African people set the stage for what became of slavery in the United States. After that transaction, the white settlers in the colonies defined status by race and class. Freedom was limited to preserve the operation of slavery and to ensure power for the white colonists and southerners at a later date.

    The prisoners, crammed in the ships’ hauls, wore shackles around their arms and legs made of iron that tore at their skin. They spent months at sea before arriving at America. The unfortunate children usually made up 26 percent of the captives which was advantageous because they filled the ship’s small spaces. As a result, the kidnappers could increase the size of their cargo. The forced migration was known as the Middle Passage (Elliot, 2019).

    Olaudah Equiano, a formerly enslaved author said “I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils s I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death to relive me” (Elliot, 2019, para. 7). The captives faced extreme heat, thirst, starvation and violence while aboard the slave ships. Approximately 15 percent of the captives died before reaching land. Suicide attempts were very common. The captains put netting around their ships to prevent loss of the human cargo. A loss of human cargo, a loss of profit. The white working class crew members also committed suicide or ran away at port to break from the brutality. Sometimes the captives expressed resistance by refusing to eat or jumping overboard to mutiny. The kidnapped did not know what was in store for them, how long they would be on the ships, what would happen to them when they reached land.

    The slave trade ensured political power, a social standing and wealth for churches and European settlers. They made money by slave trading and buying and selling the commodities the slaves produced. The entrepreneurs secured political positions which determined the destiny of the nation.

    The Virginia law in 1662 declared the status of the children born to enslaved women was the same of their mother. Enslaved women gave birth to generations of children who ended up as commodities. Families of black people were often torn apart when parts of the family were sold to other rich landowners. African people were enslaved for life.

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable

Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of

Happiness.”

 

   While the colonists fought against the British for their freedom, they sustained slavery and avoided the matter stated in the Constitution. The enslaved people took advantage of every opportunity to assure their freedom. Many were not successful. They served in the military during the Revolutionary War either for the British or the other European settlers. Emancipation enacted in some states such as Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey provided some of the enslaved freedom with contingencies. For example, in New York, if children were born after July 4, 1799, they became legally free after their 25^th birthday if they were women and 28 if they were men. The rationale was that slaveholders kept the enslaved during their most productive years. The introduction to the cotton crop in the Deep South called upon a need for more slaves (Elliot, 2019). Before the Civil War, almost 4 million slaves worked the fields in the South. Only a few slaves accepted their lack of freedom or enjoyed life on the plantation. As one ex-slave put it, “No day dawns for the slave, nor is it looked for. It is all night – night forever.” For many slaves the night of slavery only ended in death, (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2023, para. 2).

 

    George Washington enslaved 317 black people. Life at Mount Vernon was like it was at a lot of other plantations. Family members were separated across different farms due to their work assignments. The 317 Africans enslaved at Mount Vernon worked in various areas. Some worked with skilled trades, while others worked in the fields and the lucky ones worked as butlers, waiters and cooks. They worked 14 hour days in the summer from the time the sun rose until it set. Washington wanted the slaves to be as productive as possible. Their diet consisted of cornmeal and salted fish which they harvested themselves. With what little spare time they had some slaves kept gardens, raised poultry and foraged. A one room log structure with a wooden chimney served as their home. While many enslaved people who worked as house servants and craftsmen lived in barracks style quarters (Wiencek, 2022).

 

    The crops grown in the South before the Civil War included sugar, rice and corn. Cotton ended up being the main money-maker. Millions of acres was turned to cotton production after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. More cotton lands became cultivated, especially in Mississippi and Texas. The need for more slaves escalated. By 1860, a male slave cost between $1,000 to $2,000. A female sold for a few hundred dollars less. The majority of slaves were field hands which included men, women and children. Their owners decided when the child would work in the field, usually between 10 and 12 years of age.

    The cotton picking season, usually in August, consisted of a time of very hard work and fear concerning the slaves. Solomon Northup described what picking cotton was like on a plantation located along the Red River in Louisiana:

    “An ordinary day’s work is two hundred pounds… The hands are required to be in the  cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted to be a moment idle  until it is too dark to see… The day’s work over in the field, the baskets are ‘toted,’ or in other words, carried to the gin house, where the cotton weighed. No matter how fatigued and weary he may be… a slave never approaches the gin-house with his  basket of cotton but with fear. If it falls short of weight… he knows that he must be whipped. And if he has exceeded it by ten or twenty pounds, in all probability his master will measure the next day’s task accordingly” (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2023, para. 14).

    They could only return to the crude home after they finally finished working for their master to tend to their family needs. The lives of the enslaved came under the control of a variety of customs, rules and laws known as the slave codes. Slaves could not travel without a written pass and they were forbidden to learn how to read and write. They could be searched at any time and could not buy or sell anything without a permit. They were subjected to a nightly curfew.

    When they sought marriage, they had to seek permission from the master. Slaves could marry others living at the plantation they were working or at neighboring ones. Their marriages carried no legal standing (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2023).

   

    Slaves were punished for not working fast enough, for arriving late to the fields, for defying authority, for running away, and a multitude of other reasons. Various forms of punishment were inflicted on them: whippings, torture, mutilation, imprisonment, and being sold away from the plantation. Flogging or whipping was the most common form of punishment. Often the slaves were attached to the ground and their back was flogged.

    “In Twelve Years a Slave, Northup reported one instance in which a young slave woman named Patsey was brutally whipped for visiting a neighboring plantation without permission:

    “The painful cries and shrieks of the tortured Patsey, mingling with the loud and angry curses of Epps [the slave master whipping her] loaded the air. She was terribly lacerated — I may say, without exaggeration, literally flayed. The lash was wet with blood.... How did the slaves react to the whippings, the endless labor for others’ profit, the lack of freedom? Some like Nat Turner rebelled. In 1831, he led a slave revolt that left nearly 60 white persons dead in Virginia. Such insurrections were relatively rare in the South. White people outnumbered slaves in most places, possessed firearms, and could call on the power of the government to suppress rebellions. Nevertheless, slaves everywhere found other ways to resist their bondage. They sabotaged tools and crops, pretended illness, and stole food from the master’s own kitchen. The most effective way that a slave could retaliate against an owner was to run away. It is estimated that 60,000 black people fled slavery before the Civil War.

    “Solomon Northup attempted to run away but failed. Then, in 1852, a white carpenter with abolitionist sentiments met Northup and learned about his kidnapping. The carpenter wrote several letters to New York state officials on behalf of Northup. In response, the governor of New York sent an agent carrying documents proving that Northup was a free black man. After a court hearing in January 1853, a Louisiana judge released Northup from his bondage. He finally returned home to his wife and children” (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2023, paras. 19 – 22).

    Congress ratified the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution on December 6, 1865 outlawing slavery in the United States. That did not end the hardships faced by many black people in the South. The Old South continued to amass sins which infuriated the Republicans. To make a mockery out of the 13^th Amendment they implemented Black Codes. Black people were not permitted to own land or weapons, break work contracts with white employers or establish any independent business, use rude gestures or mutinous speeches. South Carolina went as far as only allowing black people to only work as farmers and house servants. Florida ordered 39 lashes for blacks who tried to attend white assemblies and the same punishment occurred when black people were caught publicly smoking cigars in Alabama. Insolent servants were fined $50 under Alabama’s Black Code. Black children over two years of age were torn from their families and apprenticed to whites until maturity if their parents did not teach them white-approved “habits of industry and honesty” (Newton, 2005, pg. 4).

     Law enforcement joined in the Southerners efforts to destroy the black people. May of 1866 the Memphis police led white rioters and killed 46 freedmen, and two white Republicans. Approximately 80 blacks were wounded and 90 black homes, 12 schools and four churches were burned to the ground. In July of 1866 New Orleans police led another massacre in which 34 blacks were killed and 200 wounded. Throughout the Dixie area individual lynchings, murders and assaults upon freedmen increased dramatically. The Ku Klux Klan operated in full force against the black people. The Klan and other white supremacists threatened, murdered, assaulted and tortured many people who were a threat to the southern way of life and continued to do so for many years. The Confederate flag was represented at the January 6^th, 2021 attack on the Capitol in the U.S. that was instigated by POTUS.

    Douglas A. Blackmon provided his readers with a rendition of a specific black person’s life named Green Cottenham in his book “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.” In 1908, he faced vagrancy charges in Alabama. Other southern state legislatures followed the same format which was enforced by local sheriffs and constables. High unemployment rates among southern men, primarily black men, led to the outlawed vagrancy charges and the public looking for free labor. The court found twenty-two year old Cottenham guilty and ordered him to spend 30 days of hard labor. Because of his inability to pay a variety of fees to the sheriff, the deputy, the court clerk, and witnesses, his sentence increased to approximately one year of grueling labor.

    Cottenham, the youngest of nine children born to former slaves, was sold. The county had an agreement with the U.S. Steel Corporation. The young man was turned over to them for the duration of his sentence. The subsidiary of the steel company, Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company paid $12. a month for Cottenham’s fine and fees. It was entirely up to the company’s managers what they did with Cottenham and the other thousand of black men.

    He was plunged deep into the darkness of a mine referred to as Slope No. 12 at the edge of Birmingham called the Pratt Mines. He was chained inside a long wooden barrack at night and had to spend every waking hour digging and loading coal. The requirement of the removal of eight tons of coal must be met or he faced a whipping. The catacombs of darkness were filled with desperate men covered in sweat and coated with coal dust. The scene resembled hell even for a child of slaves.

    During the 1920s, many black people were lynched. White Supremacists continued to assault, kill and torture African Americans until current day when they feel threatened by civil right actions and when black people rise politically and economically. Their actions have held people of color in a prison laced with hatred. Native Americans also faced the same vagrancy laws and had to serve hard labor. People of color faced many acts of discrimination and genocide.

 

1970s Sterilization of Native American Women

 

https://time.com/5737080/native-american-sterilization-history/?fbclid=IwAR29sZRLpjTHpnnF14h1cU7G-0S4gSKHlncGCH6etCgY1gUFhJ75lRSmPaM

·       

·      HISTORY 

·      OPINION

·      A 1970 LAW LED TO THE MASS STERILIZATION OF NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN. THAT HISTORY STILL MATTERS 

A 1970 Law Led to the Mass Sterilization of Native American Women. That History Still Matters

A Navajo woman walks towards her hogan on the Navajo Indian Reservation between Chinle and Ganado, Ariz., in August of 1970.

 

Bettmann/Getty Images

BY BRIANNA THEOBALD

 

UPDATED: NOVEMBER 28, 2019 11:47 AM ET | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 27, 2019 11:00 AM EST

Marie Sanchez, chief tribal judge on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, arrived in Geneva in 1977 with a clear message to deliver to the United Nations Convention on Indigenous Rights. American Indian women, she argued, were targets of the “modern form” of genocide—sterilization.

Over the six-year period that had followed the passage of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970, physicians sterilized perhaps 25% of Native American women of childbearing age, and there is evidence suggesting that the numbers were actually even higher. Some of these procedures were performed under pressure or duress, or without the women’s knowledge or understanding. The law subsidized sterilizations for patients who received their health care through the Indian Health Service and for Medicaid patients, and black and Latina women were also targets of coercive sterilization in these years.

But while Sanchez and the Native women with whom she organized responded to the results of that 1970 law, they also recognized that the fight against involuntary sterilization was one of many intertwined injustices rooted—as was their resistance—in a much longer history of U.S. colonialism. And that history continues to this day.

When the federal government forced Native peoples onto reservations in the 19th century, the situation produced a cascade of public-health disasters. By 1900, the American Indian population had reached its nadir of less than a quarter million. Infants and children proved particularly vulnerable to illness and death. One government official estimated in 1916 that approximately three-fifths of Indian infants died before age 5. On many reservations, women responded by bearing more children despite their compromised health. The historian Frederick Hoxie has argued that “only the maintenance of extraordinarily high birth rates” saved one nation from “dropping into oblivion.”

As Native peoples confronted the hardships of reservation life, the federal government embarked on a campaign to assimilate—or Americanize—them. Rather than killing Indians through physical violence, as had been a hallmark of federal policies into the 1870s, politicians and reformers set out to kill off all markers of Indianness: language, clothing, and cultural and spiritual practices. In this context, the federal government criminalized Native healers and disparaged midwives and their birthing knowledge. Under pressure, ceremonial practices, including women’s coming-of-age ceremonies, were circumscribed, driven underground or ceased.

Treaties signed before 1871, and executive orders and other agreements thereafter, established federal responsibility for the provision of health care for tribal members. As the poor health conditions plaguing many reservations became more difficult for the federal government to ignore, the Office of Indian Affairs began constructing rudimentary hospitals, which employees encouraged Native women to use for childbirth. By the 1950s, when the Indian Health Service was created, the vast majority of Native women gave birth in hospitals—at rates that nearly reached national levels.

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In these same years, however, the federal government closed some reservation hospitals and threatened to close more, as politicians chipped away at federal services that benefited only Indians. Their ultimate objective, although never realized, was to absolve the federal government of any responsibility for Indian affairs. Some of the sterilization procedures that Marie Sanchez and others protested in the 1970s occurred in remaining reservation hospitals, while others took place in off-reservation hospitals the federal government had contracted to provide health services for tribal members.

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For her part, Sanchez did not lose momentum after her return from the United Nations. The following year, she was a founding member of the Women of All Red Nations, or WARN, an organization led by Native women, and she soon joined the advisory board of the National Women’s Health Network. By the end of the decade, advocacy by Native women and other women of color resulted in the adoption of federal regulations that offered women some protections from unwanted sterilization procedures. The new regulations required, for example, an extended waiting period—from 72 hours to 30 days—between consent and an operation.

But Native women’s reproductive autonomy was constrained in other ways. Since the late 1970s, the Hyde Amendment has prohibited federal funding for abortion services with few exceptions. The amendment hinders the ability of all low-income women to terminate a pregnancy and disproportionately affects women of color, but it discriminates against Native women specifically because they are entitled to receive health services from a federal agency.

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From the establishment of the first government hospitals, Native women—as nurses and other staff, as members of tribal health committees, and as activists—have struggled to ensure that these institutions met patients’ needs. But non-Native hospital staff’s openness to Native healing practices has varied over time and by institution, and reservation hospitals have been consistently underfunded. In recent years, some hospitals have reduced or eliminated obstetric services, forcing women to drive up to two hours to give birth. Drive time, as public health researchers emphasize, directly affects outcomes.

This history matters. It matters because it continues to affect Native maternal and infant health outcomes. It matters because today Native American women continue a rich legacy of advocating for the health and well-being of their communities. At a congressional briefing session on Native maternal and reproductive health earlier this year, Native experts advocated policy changes such as the repeal of the Hyde Amendment. They insisted that the Indian Health Service be held accountable for providing quality health care to tribal members. They called for greater resources for community and grassroots organizations that are already providing culturally oriented maternal and reproductive health care.

This history matters because knowledge of historical injustices can be a crucial ingredient in working toward a more just future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Deadly Reign of the KKK

The Southerners lost the Civil War in 1865 which led to hatred, scandalous acts of murder and a loss of their honor. Six Confederate veterans in their twenties started the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the first American terrorist group, after the end of the Civil War. In the beginning the group provided entertainment at parties and attempted to scare the black population when they claimed to be dead confederate soldiers. Jobs were scarce, the southern countryside and plantations destroyed by battles and southerners upset and ready to put up a fight against the Reconstruction sanctions. The pranks turned to deadly nightly raids, killing and sending many running for their lives. Black Americans served as the first targets. After the reconstruction efforts began, the targets expanded to Republicans, and the teachers of black students. Interest in the KKK dwindled and came back with a vengeance during the 1920s. Lynching served as the main method of murder. The KKK and other white supremacist groups that followed the KKK belief system added bombing, poisoning and shooting to its murderous repertoire. The Klansmen struck against anyone, black or white, who they felt violated racial boundaries.

    The KKK represented a tremendous level of violence because of race, nationality, religion and lifestyle. The atrocities went beyond what most could even imagine. Throughout many years a multitude of other groups followed in the KKK’s footsteps. Some sported swastika tattoos and called themselves Skinheads, while others wore camouflage fatigues and trained in guerrilla warfare maneuvers. They dressed as professionals sworn to deny the Nazi Holocaust ever happened. Many believed the federal government happened to be an illegal entity and all governmental power needed to rest with county sheriffs.  To this day, murders, arsons, bombings and attacks have been committed based on common beliefs of racism and prejudice which sustained the KKK for over 150 years.

    The white people, who started the slave trade, did not hate black people. They did not care about them at all until they learned they could make money by selling and using them for free labor. It was when the black people arrived in America the hating began. To justify having slaves, the slave owners had to convince themselves that black people were not fully human and undeserving of respect. The slave owners had to believe they were inferior. After many years of treating black people in horrible, inhumane ways, they became freedmen and the white people feared retaliation. The slave trade was behind the building of the South and its strong economy. Slavery has been outlawed in the U.S. for over 150 years. The scars from the brutality of slavery still permeate with African Americans. Many Africans jumped off the ships to avoid the terror of a unknown future when they were being transported to America. The heritage of these people gone forever (Gregory, 2018).

 

    After the Civil War, the Confederacy lay in a smoldering ruin. The South was leveled to the condition of a frontier. Geographical devastation and economic collapse caused psychological trauma and the institution of Southern contentment and prosperity had been eradicated. The benefits, which elevated white Southerners above their true standing, had been removed by the Thirteenth Amendment. A Texas newspaper announced that another crop would not be planted by a race of people who were impossible to govern except with a whip and were placed in charge of their own destiny (Wade, 1987). The freedom of slaves meant defeat for the Southerners. They suffered economically and their way of life met its demise when they lost the Civil War. It was a nightmare come true and when the freed slaves lived among them, the plantation owners in particular, they viewed the large number of freed slaves a threat to their property and their lives. Many Southerners suffered from poverty and were often hungry. The Reconstruction government reminded them that their white ruling authority was severely diminished.

    In February of 1865, General Sherman declared a Special Field Order #15 which secured 400,000 acres in the Sea Islands area for the settlement of the freed people in which they were promised forty-acres plots, mules and titles of ownership. President Johnson vetoed the order and the freed people were ordered to leave and the land returned to its original owners.

    On March 3, 1865, Congress created the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees and Abandoned Lands which was known as the Freedman’s Bureau. The Bureau constructed 3,695 schools, three universities and approximately 100 hospitals and provided over 21 million rations and free transportation to approximately thirty thousand people relocated due to war. Without the Freedmen’s Bureau the survival of the blacks would have been dependent on their former masters. Southern whites detested the Bureau. According to Southerners, the Bureau was administered by “carpetbaggers.” The term meant a Southern-based Northerner who did not buy into Confederate views. Southerners were concerned they filled the minds of Negroes with new ideas. Records proved whites benefitted from the Bureau more than blacks. As a result of the Bureau, around 5,000 Northern teachers traveled south to educate blacks. Most of the teaching staff were members of the American Missionary Association. They maintained a goal that involved damage control to undo slavery’s legacies.

        In April of the same year, the Civil War ended, and President Lincoln was assassinated. Andrew Johnson became the president, and he began more lenient presidential Reconstruction efforts. Under Johnson the Southern state governments reorganized and Confederate leaders regained power in governmental positions.

    The new Southern government reelected the former vice-president of the Confederacy, six of its cabinet members, 58 Confederate congressmen, four Confederate generals and five Confederate colonels. The same men who were responsible for the secession of the South had been put back in charge. December of that year Congress reconvened and refused to seat Southern government representatives. During the same month the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified which abolished slavery everywhere in the United States which did not sit well with southern whites (Bartoletti, 2010). 

    After President Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson became the 17^th president and proclaimed amnesty for former Confederates which gave them ability to regain U.S. citizenship. Approximately 14,000 military and political leaders of the defeated Confederacy received Johnson’s pardon. President Johnson introduced a simple plan for the defiant southern states to rejoin the union. Ten percent of each state’s electorate from 1860 had to abolish slavery, repeal secession ordinances, and retract any Confederate war debts. By 1865, every state except Texas complied with the terms. Newly elected senators and representatives prepared to take their seats on Capitol Hill when Congress reconvened on December 4, 1865 (Newton, 2005).   

    During the election campaign in 1866, Johnson stopped at many Northern industrial cities. Many Americans got a first-hand view of him and his lack of tact and narrow-mindedness. He argued unprofessionally with hecklers. Johnson’s tactics during the campaign helped win both houses by two-thirds for the Republicans.

      During the spring of 1866, a private social club became America’s most tenacious terrorist group. The founders were six young Confederate veterans who resided at Pulaski, Tennessee: James Crowe, Richard Reed, Calvin Jones, John Lester, Frank McCord, and John Kennedy. In their twenties and well-educated sons of good families with promising careers such as lawyers, one elected to the Tennessee state legislature and another an editor of the Pulaski Citizen. They strived for entertainment after four long years of war and only wanted to have fun and play pranks on the public (Wade, 1987).

    The secret society were familiar with the Kuklos Adelphon Fraternity which led them to choose ku klux, a distortion of the Greek word for “circle.” They added klan with a “k” for uniformity. Thus, the name Ku Klux Klan became the name for their social club. The founding fathers made up strange names for themselves such as Grand Cyclops (president), Grand Magi (vice president), Grand Turk (sergeant-at-arms), Grand Exchequer (treasurer), and Lictor (guardian at the meeting place, or Den). Costumes were left up to the individual members but they were requested to be weird and ghastly. They aimed at scaring superstitious former slaves by terrorizing them while professing to be zombies or Confederate dead soldiers. Shortly after the Klan’s inception they enticed more initiates and expanded to other surrounding districts (Newton, 2005).   

    A series of slave revolts in Virginia and other parts of the South led to the practice of authorized night patrols of white men who were deputized to carry out patrols. Night patrols were considered their civic duty similar to serving on a jury or the military. The regulators (night patrollers) traveled throughout the south to enforce curfew for freed slaves and they guarded against further uprisings. The regulators were given permission to give a specific number of lashes to any violators they caught. The outcome of the Civil War and the Reconstruction efforts served as the impetus for the Klansmen’s peak in power. Northerners referred to the Klan as a form of terrorism and rebellion since they did not win on the battlefield. Many Confederate veterans donned hoods and sheets to serve for the Invisible Empire (Wade, 1987).

    The African people who were abducted and forced to board ships to come to America lived normal lives when they resided at their home country. They lived in villages, with governments and means of providing for their villages. They fought to secure their land holdings which resembled the Europeans’ way of life. Many of the African people spoke the Swahili language which was foreign to the language spoken by their kidnappers. Many of these people happened to be intelligent, were strong willed and confident before their kidnapping. Their personalities and other abilities were passed down to future generations. Some of the slaves were beaten into submission while others maintained their hatred towards their abductors. In order for slave owners to own and control slaves they had to view them as less than human. Animals toiling in fields like the beast who pulled the plows (Gregory, 2018). 

    The Old South continued to amass sins which infuriated the Republicans. To make a mockery out of the 13^th Amendment they implemented Black Codes. Black people were not permitted to own land or weapons, break work contracts with white employers or establish any independent business, use rude gestures or mutinous speeches. South Carolina went as far as only allowing black people to only work as farmers and house servants. Florida ordered 39 lashes for blacks who tried to attend white assemblies and the same punishment occurred when black people were caught publicly smoking cigars in Alabama. Insolent servants were fined $50 under Alabama’s Black Code. Black children over two years of age were torn from their families and apprenticed to whites until maturity if their parents did not teach them white-approved “habits of industry and honesty” (Newton, 2005, pg. 4).

    The Congressional Republicans, livid at the obstinate Southerners, passed America’s first Civil Rights Bill. They surpassed President Johnson’s veto. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was approved again over Johnson’s veto which guaranteed freedmen full citizenship. To further the Southerners’ anguish, Congress passed a law overriding Johnson’s veto which granted blacks the right to vote. Southern whites reacted to the news from Washington with violence towards blacks.

    Law enforcement joined in the Southerners efforts to destroy the black people. May of 1866 the Memphis police led white rioters and killed 46 freedmen, and two white Republicans. Approximately 80 blacks were wounded and 90 black homes, 12 schools and four churches were burned to the ground. In July of 1866 New Orleans police led another massacre in which 34 blacks were killed and 200 wounded. Throughout the Dixie area individual lynchings, murders and assaults upon freedmen increased dramatically.

    By 1866, laws were introduced to protect all citizens and violence against blacks and Republicans escalated. In April, Congress overrode Johnson’s veto and passed a Civil Rights Bill. The Fourteenth Amendment was passed on June 8, 1866 which included provisions that entitled all people born or naturalized in the U.S. to citizenship and equal protection under the laws of the U.S. The aforementioned laws did not stop the violence. Southern states predominantly rejected the Fourteenth Amendment which placed black people in a precarious position. In November, the Republican election victories took over two third majorities of the House and Senate. 

    March 1867 served as a turning point when Congress took over Reconstruction efforts from President Johnson and passed several Reconstruction Acts which divided the Confederacy into military districts governed by Union generals. The new governing sanctions ordered new elections for state constitutional conventions and blacks voted for the first time in Southern history. Soon after, the KKK’s Pulaski den held a meeting at the same time as the Tennessee’s Democratic convention. The meeting’s purpose, announced in secret circulars, made specific plans (Newton, 2005).

    “To reorganize the Klan on a plan corresponding to its size and present purposes; to bind the isolated Dens together; to secure unity of purpose and concert of action; to hedge the members up by such limitations and regulations as are best adapted to restrain them within proper limits; to distribute the authority among prudent men at local centers and exact from them a close supervision of those under their charge” (Newton, 2005, pg. 5). 

    The Klan’s renewed purpose involved guerilla warfare against blacks, Republicans and any other groups that threatened the “southern way of life” and was encased in the creed of white supremacy. A command government was formalized which included Provinces (counties), Dominions (congressional districts) and Realms (states). Each state ruled by a Grand Dragon and supervised by a Grand Wizard who served like the president of the United States, placed in charge of the entire domain of the “Invisible Empire.” The Klan chose Nathan Bedford Forrest who happened to be a former slave trader and Confederate cavalry leader, known for his combat prowess and insubordination towards his superiors in uniform. His cavalry massacred black prisoners of war at Fort Pillow, Tennessee in which victims included a number of children and women. Forrest was appointed the Grand Wizard in May of 1867 and he ensured by his style of command of the reorganized KKK that he would demonstrate extreme facets of violence and carelessness. His authority was what young ghouls respected. His connections as a railroad entrepreneur and insurance representative granted him the connections and associations necessary to complete his duties as the most prominent member of the Klan as the Grand Wizard.

    In Tennessee the Klan increased their visibility through announcements, parades and meetings which gave them the image of brotherhood. Tennessee ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and as a result did not have to be subjected to the Radical Reconstruction. Many of the southern states continued to struggle with the Reconstruction efforts (Newton, 2005).

     “The Klan’s version of Reconstruction goes like this: in the dark days immediately after the Civil War, Southerners were just beginning to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives when an evil and profit-minded coalition of Northern Radical Republicans, carpetbaggers and Southern scalawags threw out legitimate southern governments at bayonet point and began installing illiterate blacks in state offices. Worse, the conspirators aroused mobs of savage blacks to attack defenseless whites while the South was helpless to do anything about it. The Radicals pulling the strings behind the scenes stole Southern state governments blind and sent them deeply into debt. After a few years of this, the Ku Klux Klan arose, drove out the carpetbaggers and Radicals and restored white Southerners to their rightful place in their own land” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2011, pg. 13).

    “One historian summed up the radical governments this way: Granting all their mistakes, the radical governments were by far the most democratic the South had ever known. They were the only governments in Southern history to extend to Negroes complete civil and political equality, and to try to protect them in the enjoyment of the rights they were granted. And when this government was replaced by all-white conservative governments, most of these rights were stripped away from blacks and in some cases from poor whites as well.

    “The restoration of white government in the South was called ‘redemption,’ and although there are many historical reasons for the change, it was a development for which the Klan claimed credit, thereby placing the secret society in what it viewed as a heroic role in Southern history” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2011, pg. 13).

    In April of 1867, the order went out to all KKK chapters and dens to send representatives to Nashville, Tennessee for a meeting to plan a response to the federal Reconstruction policy. Into the fall of that year the Klan became more violent. Thousands of white people of all walks of life from doctors to farmers joined the Klan from Tennessee, northern Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Many of the Klan members became alarmed at the level of violence, not because of sympathy for the victims, but because the night riding activities were getting out of their control. Many white men wore a sheet and a mask and rode into the night to commit assault, rape, robbery, arson and murder. The Klan was being used as a cover up for common crime and personal revenge.

    The aforementioned meeting gave birth to the fundamental creed of the Ku Klux Klan  entrenched in white supremacy. They delivered threats to blacks, radicals and other enemies warning them to leave town. The night raids on individuals they singled out received harsher treatment. The mass demonstrations of masked and robed Klansmen casted an imminent fear over already distressed communities. By 1868 stories of Klan activities appeared in newspapers throughout the nation and reconstruction governors realized they faced an insurrection by a terrorist organization. Orders went out from state capitols and Union army headquarters to suppress the KKK (Newton, 2005).

   

    By the late 1860s white Southern voices against the Klan were a minority. The Klan’s greatest strength came from the support they received from a large number of ministers, former Confederate officers and political leaders who hid behind sheets and guided the Klan’s actions. “Were all the Ku-Klux arrested and brought to trial, among them would be found sheriffs, magistrates, jurors, legislators, clerks and judges. In some counties the Ku-Klux and their friends comprised more than half of the influential and voting populations” (Wade, 1987, pg. 57). Forrest fed the admiration for the “invisible empire” by traveling all over the South establishing new chapters and advising new members.

    As the violence intensified, it quickly turned to anarchy, and some Klan groups began fighting each other. Tennessee became plagued with guerilla warfare between official and fake Klans. The KKK was under constant attack by Congress and Reconstruction governments. Klan dens in many of the Southern states descended on unsuspecting white Republicans, teachers of black students and black people. Voting for Republicans served as a reason to suffer severe abuse. Black people, who were self-employed and owned property, infuriated Klans and many were severely beatened, murdered and chased off their lands. They were also drowned and threatened horribly.

    They also stripped their victims and put them through extremely sick sexual acts. The KKK members raped black women and at the same time blamed black men for doing the same thing concerning white women in which in most cases they were falsely accused. The black women who resisted the sexual advances of whites ended up raped and often shot, some were scalped and had their ears cut off.  Since white southern men have been having sex with black women, their slaves, for a very long time, they believed freedmen would do the same to their women. All a black man had to do was smile at a white woman and he was considered dangerous. The KKK members told the people they harassed harshly to leave the area they resided (Wade, 1987). What happened to the property and homes of their victims if they ran from their treacherous oppressors?

    Klans were under attack by Congress and the Reconstruction state governments concerning its unlawful actions. Forrest ordered the Klan to disband in January of 1869 but the way things looked he did that so he could deny any connection to the Klan’s atrocities. His orders did not end the violence and the carnages became more extensive. Martial law was imposed in KKK dominated counties and Klan leaders were actively hunted. Congress passed an anti-Klan law which followed the North Carolina mandates set forth when that state was under martial law. Under the new federal law, Southerners lost control over crimes of assault, robbery and murder and the president was given authority to declare martial law. The government forbade night riding and the wearing of masks. Hundreds were arrested but few faced prison time.

   

    Violence was particularly stark during the election years in Louisiana in which a large black electorate resided. Before the presidential election of 1868, white Louisianans murdered approximately seven hundred Republicans. William R. Meadows, a black leader, was drug from his home, shot and beheaded in front of his family. As the election campaign proceeded, white mobs meandered through the streets of New Orleans, assaulting black people and breaking up Republican rallies. The hostility made a serious impact on the Republican vote in the state of Louisiana (Goldfield, Abbott, et. al., 2004)

    During the 1868 presential campaign, the Democratic Party ran on a platform in support of white supremacists and stated white men must run the country. They maintained that former slaves lacked the ability to handle the responsibilities of citizenship and voting. They believed black people were incapable of self-government. Black suffrage became a reality in the Southern states. The Democratic candidates who ran for local offices realized they needed votes from former slaves and believed their past slaves would vote for them, the men who clothed and fed them. They were wrong. As former slave owners watched the freedmen think for themselves, they resented them and their Union Leagues. Despite the Klan’s terror tactics, freedmen voted in extraordinary numbers. After the 1868 election, the Democrats’ disappointment turned to anger when they realized the impact of black voters. White supremacy was under attack by black political power when Ulysses Grant was elected the 18^th president (Bartoletti, 2010).

    Grant did not support the goals of the KKK which led to its expansion when he took a different approach and aligned himself with what was considered radical Republicans. He was a prominent Union general who led the Union army to victory against the Confederates which did not set well with the Southern Democrats. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 better known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. Because of Ku Klux Klan Act it was a federal offense to interfere in a person’s right to vote, hold office, serve on a jury, and enjoy equal protection of the law. The act also made it illegal for anyone to conspire together or wear disguises to scare or cause harm to individuals or thwart state authorities from protecting citizens. Individuals accused of  disobeying any of the above laws were to be tried in federal court, not in state or local courts. Democrats called the new laws a threat to individual freedom. With the Ku Klux Klan acts in place, President Grant and the federal government had the authority to protect citizens from the unlawful actions of the KKK.

    As a result of Grant’s efforts things took a turn for the worse for Black people. Southerners put into effect massive “Jim Crow” segregation ordinances. Black people were barred from using and visiting railroads, streetcars, theaters, water fountains, public parks and residential neighborhoods. Their right to vote blocked by literacy tests, poll taxes, and strict interpretation of obscure state laws (Newton, 2005).

    Further hatred rose for many KKK members. School teachers for colored students received whippings and other forms of torture. Other carpetbaggers targeted by the Klan included Republican sheriffs, election managers and revenue officers. Klansmen despised being charged taxes by the Reconstruction government. Collectors of school taxes were the most hated. The vast majority of black victims happened to be voting Republicans which the Klan felt pertinent to receive a visit and a whipping by the Klan.

    “In his third annual message of 1870, Governor William Holden presented a grim analysis of the Invisible Empire in North Carolina. Holden found it impossible to say how many people had fallen victim to the Klan, but their number include state legislators, sheriffs, schoolteachers, and countless black voters. ‘Some of these victims were shot,’ he said. ‘some were whipped, some of them were hanged, some of them were drowned, some of them were tortured, some had their mouths lacerated with gags; one of them had his ears cropped; and others, of both sexes, were subjected to indignities which were disgraceful not merely to civilization but to humanity itself.’ Holden claimed that nearly forty thousand Klansmen were active in the state of North Carolina alone – all of them united by an infernal bond of loyalty. ‘Consequently,’ he continued, ‘grand juries in many counties frequently refused to find bills against the members of this Klan for the gravest and most flagrant violations of law’” (Wade, 1987, pg. 84).

    “The Confederate veterans who made up the bulk of Klan membership were encouraged to whip, maim, and murder – to do as Rebel soldiers to achieve their goals, which were now aimed at the overthrow of Reconstruction and the complete disfranchisement of blacks” (Wade, 1987, pg. 86). Fear instilled the need to avoid any form of incitement towards the Klan. A joint investigation was held by members of the House and Senate to come up with a plan of action against the Klan. Matters sat for a while because they felt the problem was somewhat insurmountable.

    In April of 1871, Congressman Richard Butler addressed the House and told them that Americans were safe everywhere but in their own country. Butler selected cases for review which happened to be appalling. The Democrats could not leave the chamber quick enough. One of the cases he presented involved a member of the American Missionary Association, William Luke, who was murdered by the Alabama Klan. Before he was hanged, the Klansmen allowed him to prepare a note for his wife which Butler read to the present House members (Wade, 1987).

    “My Dear Wife: I die tonight. It has been so determined by those who think I deserve it. God knows I feel myself innocent. I have only sought to educate the Negro.

    “I little thought when leaving you so far away that we should then part forever.

    “God’s will be done! He will be to you a better husband than I have been, and a father to our six little ones.

    “There is in the company’s hands about two-hundred dollars of my money; also my trunk and clothes are here. You can send for them or let Henry come for them as you think best.

    “God of mercy bless and keep you, my dear, dear wife and children” (Wade, 1987, pg. 93). 

    President Grant ran for a second term and won in 1872. The following summer, he pardoned Klansmen serving sentences, acknowledging the pardons necessary to restore peace for the South. The pardons permitted all convicted Klansmen to return home. Within four years almost all convicted Klansmen had either completed serving their sentences or were pardoned. Despite the generous moves, each state and local election introduced a new wave of violence. A flood of new white supremacist groups emerged under different names: Rifle Clubs; the Red Shirts; the White League; the White Liners; and the White Caps. These newly established groups intimidated black voters openly and violently.

    In 1874, Democrats won the majority in the House of Representatives.

    The violence continued. In September of 1875, white supremacists killed thirty black church leaders and teachers, and white Republican officials in Clinton, Mississippi.

    By 1876, the majority of the white public grew tired of the long battle to protect the rights and lives of Southern blacks. Northern whites sought normalcy. They wanted peace and a reunion with Southern whites. The Supreme Court went along with public demands and ruled the Fourteenth Amendment did not give the federal government the power to enforce laws protecting citizens from white supremacists. The duty of protecting citizens’ equal rights was turned over to the states.

    The presidential election held in 1876 appointed Rutherford B. Hayes as the next president. He promised to leave the South alone and soon after he withdrew the last of the federal troops. Reconstruction efforts were eliminated. 

    Meanwhile freedmen made attempts to be self-sufficient. For most freed slaves farming was the work they knew best. Many freedmen ended up renting the land from white landowners. Some white landowners refused to rent to black people. Other whites realized they were land rich and money poor, so they found sharecropping suited them. This form of farming eased their labor problems and provided them with a dependable work force. Some of the freedmen registered as Democrats to provide themselves with a layer of protection which did not end up saving many black men who appeared to be doing well on their farms. Klansmen abducted a multitude of them during the night hours and they were beaten and many threatened with their lives if they did not leave their land (Bartoletti, 2010). 

    During the 1870s  a number of Republicans decided to take a different approach. Corruption appeared in many of the Southern governments. Evidence demonstrated that greed was bipartisan in which both Republicans and Democrats succumbed. Many Republicans pulled away from their efforts to protect the rights of all citizens which included black people and focused more on making money. The Republicans’ abandonment of the blacks in the South gained further support by the U.S. Supreme Court. Between 1876 and 1898 the court eradicated human protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court struck down clauses of the Enforcement and Ku-Klux acts. The court declared the Civil Rights Act as unconstitutional and removed it completely. As a result of Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896, the court imparted racial segregation. Southern Democrats took these court rulings as permission to eliminate black voting altogether. They enforced voting tests, poll taxes and the ability to understand state constitutions as part of the barriers for black voters. Blacks were also barred from train depots, restaurants, circuses, pool halls, drinking fountains, bathrooms, beaches, parks, pools, and recreational centers. To add insult to injury, the North vindicated the South’s actions with literary works that acclaimed black inferiority posed as scientific anthropology. Any progress made for equality for black people suffered immensely (Wade, 1987).

     Additional events set the stage for the rebirth of the KKK. The country faced a massive immigration of 23 million people from England, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Russia. Many Americans felt inundated by alien people. An American Protective Association was organized in 1887. This organization, a secret and oath bound group, settled primarily in the midwest and its why and where the KKK drew a lot of its strength. Later on, a Klan leader resided in Michigan among other states in the west and midwest.

    In 1890, an agrarian Populist movement built a coalition of blacks and poor whites which went against mill owners, large landowners, and elite. White supremacy raised its ugly head and resisted the movement to the point in which the newly established group was turned away in every southern state except for Georgia and North Carolina. As a result, the privileged and poor whites decided the blacks needed to be erased (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2011).

    Fueled by hatred and exhilarated by legislation against blacks, a wave of racist violence occurred in the South. Approximately 2,880 Blacks faced lynching by white mobs between 1883 and 1907 without a single indictment. Rioting by whites with the help of police on occasion, was common during this time period (Newton, 2005). 

    The producer D.W. Griffith in 1915 transformed Baptist Minister Thomas Dixon’s novel “The Clansman,” into a silent motion pictured called “The Birth of a Nation.” The movie was a box office success. Motivated by the movie, a group of white Southern men burned a wooden cross on the top of Stone Mountain in Georgia where the first cross was burned. The Ku Klux Klan, reborn again, became a pro-Christian, pro-American brotherhood. They added to their list of hates which included Catholics, Jews, immigrants, liberals, welfare recipients, and labor unions. Their membership grew exponentially in the 1920s with at least five million men who dedicated their lives to white supremacy, conservative family values, and old time religion. The Klan murdered at least 718 black women, men and children and eight white people (Bartoletti, 2010).

    The KKK burning of crosses originated from the aforementioned movie. The practice dates back to medieval times in Europe in which the Klan views as morally pure and racially homogenous. Scottish clans set hillside crosses on fire as a symbol of defiance against military rivals and/or to gather troops when a battle may be imminent. The original Klan copied many of its rituals from the Scottish fraternal practices. Cross burning was not originally a part of its reign of terror. 

   War World I also served as a renewal of KKK chapters. Americans lived with suspicion, hatred and distrust of anything alien. This sentiment caused the refusal of President Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. William J. Simmons, a Spanish war veteran who became a preacher and salesmen, belonged to several clubs and two churches. He wanted to start a fraternal group of his own and in 1915 he put his plans into action. On the eve of Thanksgiving, Simmons hired a bus and enticed 15 fraternity members onto the bus which traveled from Atlanta to Stone Mountain. Simmons erected a cross made of pine boards and lit a match. The Ku Klux Klan of the 20^th Century rose into existence after that ceremony. His ultimate goal was to make money. The goal of the newly established Klan involved defending the country from aliens, blacks, who they considered lazy and union leaders.

    In 1920 Simmons met with Edward Young Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler, two publicists who had a business in Atlanta. By June of 1920 the Klan’s membership was only a few thousand. Clarke and Tyler used a forceful advertising approach which promoted the Klan’s pro-American approach against black people, Jewish people and Catholics. By the summer of 1921 approximately 100,000 enrolled in the “Invisible Empire” at $10 a person. Clarke expanded the treasury, launched Klan publishing and manufacturing firms and invested in real estate with a promising future.

    Violence consisted of lynching, whippings, tar-and-feathers raids and the use of acid to mark the letters “KKK” on the foreheads of their victims, anyone they felt were anti-American. All walks of life such as police, ministers, mayors and judges ignored or secretly participated with the Klan. Few were arrested and less convicted. 

    Power struggles existed within the KKK. A Texas dentist by the name of Hiram Wesley Evans led the way to dethroning Simmons with six other conspirators. Clarke, convicted on a morals charge, could not fight the conspirators and Tyler resigned to get married. A full-scale war ensued between Simmons and Evans with lawsuits, countersuits, and injunctions. Simmons finally gave in and accepted a cash settlement. The Klan continued to grow during the power struggles.

    Evans launched a campaign of terrorism in the early and mid 1920s. Lynchings, shootings, and whippings served as the methods employed by the Klan against Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Mexicans and other immigrants. Sometimes the targets happened to be whites, Protestants and females considered immoral or traitors to their race or gender. A divorcee with two children was flogged for remarrying. In Georgia a woman suffered 60 lashes for a vague charge of immorality and failure to go to church. When her 15-year-old son came to her rescue, he received the same punishment. In both cases, ministers led the Klansmen responsible for the violence. Many women fought to vote, for a place in the job market and for personal and cultural freedom. The Klan stood for what they thought was “pure womanhood” and attacked women who fought for their independence.

    The Klan sported two million members with new recruits joining daily. Evans had his eye on the presidential election of 1924, so he moved his headquarters to Washington. The Klan continued to pursue political gains and managed to send Klansman Earl Mayfield to the U.S. Senate in 1922. Klan campaigns defeated two Jewish congressmen. Klan efforts helped elect governors to 12 states in the early 1920s. Deep South members happened to be Democrats but Klan members who lived in the West and North ended up being Republicans. When the Democratic convention opened in New York surprisingly the Democrats adopted a platform condemning the Ku Klux Klan. A fight resulted and tore the convention apart.  

    Evans boasted strong support in 1924 when 40,000 Klansmen marched down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. Evans bragged about his role concerning the reelection of Coolidge and passing strict anti-immigration laws. The ambitions of Catholics and others who threatened the white supremacists’ goals became the targets of the Klan. The Klan rode high during this time.

    The Klan started to suffer counter attacks by clergy, the press and a number of politicians. Dark days approached for the Pennsylvania Klansmen which exposed the “Invisible Empire.” Evans filed a $100,000 damage suit against their enemies thinking he would make an example of them. To his surprise, they fought back and a multitude of witnesses reported Klan horrors of terrorism and violence. They named members and relayed secrets. Newspapers supplied reports such as accounts of the kidnapping of a small girl from her grandparents in Pittsburgh to a Colorado Klansman who was beaten when he tried to leave the Klan. A horrible account involved a man in Terrell, Texas who was soaked in oil and burned to death before hundreds of Klansmen. The incensed judge threw Evans’ case out of court.

    The Invisible Empire shrunk from three million to several hundred thousand. Americans became weary of the masks, robes and burning crosses. The Klan’s influence diminished with the absence of supportive politicians who deserted the organization in droves. The national headquarters had to hoard its shrinking funds. They charged Franklin D. Roosevelt with bringing in too many Jewish people and Catholics into the government and referred to the New Deal as a communist effort.

     Following War World II, a multitude of Americans brought about the resurgence of the KKK. Samuel Green, an Atlanta doctor, became the new Klan leader. He called attention to goals of the newly reorganized KKK which included anti-Black, anti-union, anti-Jew, anti-Catholic and anti-Communist efforts. Federal and state bureaus of investigation prosecuted the Klan’s lawless activities. Green discovered the Klan was surrounded by enemies such as the press and ministers. Laws were passed against them. Many Klansmen went to jail. By the early 1950s, the Invisible Empire existed at the lowest level since its rebirth in 1915 (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2011).

    Another resurgence of the KKK occurred when white Supremacists under the name of Mississippi Citizens’ Council in 1954 and the leadership of Tom Brady mounted mob violence against black people. Klansmen discovered dynamite as a form of terror and destruction. The use of bombs became evident when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s home in Montgomery was blown up in January 1956. The Klan was held predominantly responsible for 138 bombings. 

   When the Supreme Court threw out the creed “separate but equal” many whites were determined to oppose the law and maintain segregation. The South during the early 1960s experienced tensions concerning those who favored integration and those who opposed. In April of 1960, a group mobbed blacks at a segregated beach. Civil Rights leaders’ homes and churches were bombed. Several months later a ministerial college for blacks in Union was attacked. They beat a white pastor and chased away other workers. In May of 1961, white gangsters tied a nine-year-old black girl to the back of car and dragged her through the streets. No arrests occurred for the guilty parties.

    Civil rights activists realized in order to seek racial equality in Mississippi it was imperative to seek political power. Few Mississippi blacks were registered to vote in 1961. For example, in Pike County only 250 of 6,939 black constituents were registered to vote. Continuous violence deterred local blacks from exercising their legal voting rights. 

    The KKK secured a connection with the American Nazi Party (ANP). The Grand Dragon in Pennsylvania, Roy Frankhouser, became a member of the ANP along with heavily armed Minutemen. Other KKK members joined the ANP. White supremacist ideology of both groups bought into the belief that the white race was in danger of extinction, overwhelmed by the rising amount of non-white people who have been controlled and manipulated by Jewish people. They believed almost any action was justified if it helped save the white race (Newton, 2005). 

   Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was killed by Klansman Byron De La Beckwith in 1963 and was convicted of murder in 1994. In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech “I Have a Dream” speech to hundreds of thousands during a march in Washington, D.C. During the same year, a church bombing killed four young black girls and injured 20 in Birmingham, Alabama. It took until 1977 for Klansman Robert Chamblis to be found guilty of first degree murder and then in 2001 and 2002 two more Klansmen, Thomas Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, faced first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for the aforementioned bombing. Violence and murder occurred in 1964 when three civil rights workers disappeared after a routine traffic stop for speeding. The victims were found buried six weeks later and Edgar Ray Killen, a Klan leader, faced sixty years in prison for organizing the murder.

    In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray was convicted and sentenced to 99 years in prison.

    Congress continued to conduct efforts to protect the citizens of this country when they passed the Federal Hate Crimes Law which made it a federal offense for willingly injuring, intimidating, or interfering with a person’s attempt to participate in federally protected activities on the basis of the victim’s color, race, religion, or national origin. The law was broadened to encompass ethnicity and gender. The law was altered again in 2008 to include sexual orientation and  disability and dropped the prerequisite that the victim had to be engaging in federally protected activity (Bartoletti, 2010). 

    David Duke, Grand Wizard of New Orleans, recruited Elbert Claude Wilkinson, a native of Galvez, to lead the mother state of Louisiana. In August of 1978, a group of Klansmen shot at a car driven by Dr. Howard Gunn, a United League leader of Okolona. Wilkinson held a rally two weeks later that received national television attention. He bragged about hurting some black people and about shooting at Gunn’s car. Two Klansmen at the rally removed their robes, revealing sheriffs’ uniforms. He boasted that they are only a small fraction of the number of Klansmen who work in law enforcement.

    Shortly afterwards, civil rights activists joined the United League in an anti-Klan rally held in Tupelo. The forty Klansmen decided not to confront the four thousand demonstrators. The Klansmen happened to be armed with a bazooka and automatic weapons. After the rally, the United League bus, had been tampered with during the demonstration, and the forty passengers were in danger when its steering failed. The Klansmen followed a caravan of demonstrators returning home, and shot at a car and forced it off the road. A Klansman held a shotgun to the driver’s head threatening to shoot him if he moved the car. The other Klansmen dragged the occupants out of the car and beat them with clubs and chains (Wade, 1987). 

    By the 1980s the KKK went from robes to combat boots. More than 1,000 members learned advanced guerrilla warfare techniques at a paramilitary training camp put on by the Christian Patriots Defense League in Louisville, Illinois, a white supremacist group. At a Posse Comitatus survival school in 1982 members were given instruction in the destruction of roadways, dams and bridges. At a Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord survivalist compound members amassed weapons and explosives. Stringent law enforcement and new legislation in many states put an end to the paramilitary training in the early 1980s. However, many white supremacists continued to advocate arms training and preparation for a possible race war.

    The Klan experienced competition from other extremist groups. Racism and bigotry ran rampant in the latter part of the 20^th century. The Klan appeared to not be the only way to express their white supremacist beliefs. The nation went through a resurgence of neo-Nazi organizations surpassing the Klan in numbers, influence and militant activism. Many joined the anti-government Patriot movement. The ideology of the Patriot movement and its commitment to armed paramilitary training came to attention of many white supremacists.

    The Klans’ numbers dropped but their ideology carried over to the other extremist movements. The leaders of the neo-Nazi and Patriot organizations may have started in the Klan but continued in the new organizations. The legacy of hate has been a testament to the Klans’ influence for over 150 years. When the Klan failed in recruiting and keeping its members, the neo-Nazi groups and other white supremacist groups focused on the one thing for long-term survival, enlisting the next generation (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2011).

     By 1986, the Aryan Nations operated as a highly secret organization. It was dangerously armed and consisted of Klansmen, Nazis, militant survivalists, members of the antitax Posse Comitatus, ex-convicts recruited from prisons, and right-wing religious extremists. The members represented the entire socioeconomic arena from blue-collar workers to doctors of philosophy and they resided in North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and California. An underground adjunct of the organization referred to as the Order financed the Aryan Nations organization through major robberies. They conducted a Brinks job in 1984 that took in $3.6 million and an armed robbery of $500,000 which resulted in the arrests of six members of the Order. Members of the Order were linked to Alan Berg’s murder, a Denver talk-show host. They signed an eight-page “Declaration of War” document in which they agreed to kill all politicians, judges, journalists, bankers, soldiers, police officers, and federal agents who got in their way (Wade, 1978).     

    Patriotic Terror resonated throughout the United States during the 1990s. In January 1991, Knights of the New Order faced indictment for stealing weapons and explosives from Fort Bragg. In May of 1991, a minister of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator killed a black naval veteran of the Gulf War in Florida. In August 4, 1994 two members of the Minnesota Patriots Council were arrested for manufacturing ricin, a deadly poison. On November 9, 1995 an Oklahoma Constitutional Militia leader Willie Lampley, his wife and a follower were found guilty of preparing bombs for the use against the Southern Poverty Law Center, abortion clinics, welfare offices and gay bars (Newton, 2005). Lampley said “God won’t be mad at us if we drop four or five buildings. He will probably reward us” (Newton, 2005, pg. 203). The list can go on and on concerning bombings, poison and robberies. The worst of the worst happened at Oklahoma City.

     At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a truck with 4,800 pounds of homemade explosives detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killing 169 persons and injuring 850. 26-year-old Timothy McVeigh, a past KKK member who gravitated to the Michigan Militia and the Arizona Patriots set off the explosives. McVeigh was arrested soon after the bombing and indicted on 160 state offenses and 11 federal offenses, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction, found guilty on all counts in 1997 and sentenced to death (Newton, 2005). 

    When Barack Obama served as the 44^th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, many white supremacists celebrated. An assortment of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites and other white nationalists, all white supremacists, believed having an African American in the oval office would spark white America which could possibly drive millions to their cause. Perhaps a race war they hoped would ultimately end in Aryan victory (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2008).   

    The white supremacist resurrection received its power by the rise of the alt right, the newest portion of the white supremacist movement. Youth and predominantly male domination has provided new found energy for the movement. They have been influenced by a variety of sources: paleoconservatism, neo-Nazism and fascism, renegade conservatives and right-wing conspiracy theorists. They existed in their own subculture derived from rogue discussion forums. Aspects of the alt right date back to 2008, however, it was energized and highly active in support of President Trump. They relayed Trump’s success at the polls in November 2016 as support for their movement. After Trump’s election, the alt right moved from online activism to the real world, forming real world organizations and groups and targeting places like college campuses.

    Violence and crime represented serious problems that emanated from the white supremacist movement. White supremacists have killed more people from 2018 and before than any other type of domestic extremist. Not only were they responsible for murders and terror plots, other dangerous activities included attempted murders, assaults, weapons and explosive violations, violence against women and drug-related crimes.

    A culmination of white supremacist groups gathered in August 11, 2017 at Charlottesville, Virginia and assembled with tiki torches on the campus of the University of Virginia. They chanted racist and anti-Semitic slogans and fought with a group of anti-racist counter-protestors.

On August 12, they reassembled with the largest public rally of white supremacists in more than a decade, more than 500 of them. The variety of groups represented at the rally: Neo-Nazis from the National Socialist Movement; Vanguard America and the Traditionalist Worker Party; Klan members from the Rebel Brigade Knights; the Global Crusader Knights; the Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; racists skinheads from the Hammerskins; Christian Identity adherents from Christogenea; neo-Confederates from the League of the South; Odinists from the Asatru Folk Assembly; and many others. Many segments of the white supremacist movement was represented at Charlottesville.

    Eventually, the violence and disorder escalated to a point in which authorities called the gathering unlawful. Some made their way to their cars and motels while others headed towards an alternate rally location. The violence of the day was not over with, in the afternoon, a young alt right white supremacist from Ohio, James Alex Fields, Jr., drove his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protestors and killed one woman, Heather Heyer, who was protesting the white supremacists. He also injured 19 other people. He was charged with first-degree murder and other state and federal charges which included federal hate crime charges (Center on Extremism, 2018).

    FBI statistics have demonstrated that hate crimes increased 30 percent in the three-year period ending in 2017 during Trump’s presidency. The increase followed a three-year period in which hate crimes fell by about 12 percent during Obama’s presidency. “The numbers tell a striking story – that this president is not simply a polarizing figure but a radicalizing one… Rather than trying to tamp down hate, as presidents of both parties have done, President Trump elevates it – with both his rhetoric and his policies. In doing so, he’s given people across America the go-ahead to act on their worst instincts” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019, para. 6). In other words, the vast majority of hate groups became electrified by Trump’s presidency.

    A white supremacist world encouraged and disappointed by Trump has become deadly. White supremacist Robert Bowers decided to take matters into his own hands against the migrant caravan referred to as invaders as he and Trump called them. Obsessed over his fear of white genocide. Ten days before the mid-term elections, he killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh because according to him the Jewish people have been responsible for the threat of white genocide. Hate has dominated the social fabric of the United States which was made worse by Trump who was linked to planning genocide for black people (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019). Many white supremacists have added fuel to the fire concerning hate crimes.

       The Ku Klux Klan has served as a reminder of the danger of white supremacy and many other groups with similar agendas have followed in their footsteps since 1866. Many people have lost their lives to these hate groups. The attacks went from tar and feathering, whipping and lynching to shooting and bombing. The right to vote for black people was taken from them by the use of terror and other acts of corruption. Various events spurred the growth of white supremacy groups from the Reconstruction era to civil right efforts. By early 1997, 380 militias and 478 Patriot Support Groups have been identified (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2011). These groups have one thing in common, they feel threatened by the number of non-white people in this country. They have gone from being anti-black and added anti-Jewish, anti-communist, anti-Catholic and any other group they felt were non-American which included immigrants from Mexico and other countries. World War I and II inspired the resurgence of white supremacist groups. Great social upheaval has occurred when the dominant white culture feels threatened. The Klan’s message of hatred has been supported by violence and terror unmatched in the history of American extremist groups.