Bennett says that the Klan was, “concerned with the threat they saw posed by all non Anglo-Saxon immigrants and their descendants.” The KKK fought for the rights of white American men and considered themselves to be one hundred percent American. They believed in American superiority, and they refused to let America become a melting pot. The Klan disliked anyone who was considered “un-American” such as Jews, Catholics, African Americans and many other races and cultures that are not “white”. Because of their ethnic differences these people were targeted and tortured. Members of these Klan’s often participated in activities like floggings, tar and feathering, lynchings and beatings. The violence that they inflicted was to create and gain control of a perfect society Women were highly valued but received harsh punishment. The women were accused of things like prostitution and adultery. For their punishments, they were stripped naked, then beaten leaving them heavily bruised and or brutally injured. The men did…
The Klan at that time focused mainly on the threats and intimidation of the 'freed slaves', called Freedmen. The KKK wanted to despoil their newly acquired rights. In 1868, the Klan acquired first national recognition which a large number of supporters. It sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans. In 1871, the US Congress approved the Civil Rights Act, which were successfully enforced in prosecuting and suppressing Klan crimes. Then, in some South areas, president Ulysses S. Grant acted tough against the KKK. Hundreds of Klansmen were arrested, but only a small part was condemned by insufficient capacity. therefore, by 1875 this first Klan fully dissolved.…
Southern Democrats used intimidation, violence, and restrictive laws to undo gains in African American freedoms. This is shown in many ways throughout the Reconstruction Era, one way is Abram Colby’s story and what the Klansmen did to him, the Black Codes, and Klan violence in general. Abram Colby’s story was that the Klansmen broke into his house and beat him for hours and left him to die. They even offered him money to go with them, or to send someone else to take his place. They wanted to keep Colby out of politics.…
They tried to enact laws that would codify inequality between the blacks and the whites. In this paper were going to research the one form of white terrorism in the south that still is active today. The Ku Klux Klan and the Women of the Klan also…
White racism and intimidation was a very significant factor that slowed the civil rights movement. This is evident in the South in which the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council were lynching blacks quite frequently. Additionally, after the ruling of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) of ‘separate but equal’, segregation was made legal, therefore southerners took it so far that Supreme Court rulings in favour of blacks were completely defied, such as in the Little Rock Crisis where Governor Faubus stopped black students from entering the high school despite previous rulings from Brown II (1955). This intimidation from supremacist groups and resistance from state government and general citizens slowed progress significantly because blacks were now afraid to campaign for fear of being lynched meaning that any effort made by blacks for equality was often negated by this strong resistance in the South. However, the resistance also had a positive effect on civil rights progress, such as in the Birmingham Movement 1963 in which the violence encouraged by Chief of Police Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor actually caused nationwide media attention which increased white sympathy and therefore made progress easier for blacks. Therefore racism in the South was a major obstacle before the 1950’s because any de jure change never resulted in de facto, however, after this point, campaigners targeted overtly racist places for their campaigns which was very advantageous for progress, meaning…
“One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Gandhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes” by Jack Canfield. In the two stories, Waiting for Dan, and A Letter Home, they talk about what the experience was either having a family member in one of the many movements or experiencing it first hand on a campus. In Waiting for Dan it is told from the wife’s point of view who is waiting for her husband to come back home from a Freedom Ride. In A Letter Home, this college student, Kara, is experiencing first hand a riot at her school, she is trying to tell her parents what…
By 1870 the KKK extended into almost every southern state. Black Americans in the southern states constantly lived in fear of being lynched. Lynching was when a black person was tortured, mutilated and murdered by a white mob. The KKK would lynch any black American trying to better themselves or improve their situation because they didn’t want any black to become more powerful than a white person in any way. This led to many black Americans continuing to work on farms or other low paid jobs in fear of being lynched. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves and become a victim of the KKK. This is important because this resulted in many black Americans not fighting for their rights. They did not try to fight the Jim Crow Laws or voting restrictions as a result of fear of the KKK. This is reflected in the quote “Blacks who tried to vote or gain an education were subjected to name calling, bullying and beatings from white people who supported the aims of the Ku Klux Klan.” (www.historyonthenet.com). Many members of the KKK were policemen, judges, lawyers or other important figures. This meant it was very rare that a member…
Wilson claimed heroism to the Southern white men who were forced to take the law into their own hands, since the government had burdened them with issues such as increased taxes. The secret club called the Ku Klux Klan formed “to protect the southern country from some of the ugliest hazards of a time of revolution…”(11) Woodson however did not see the KKK as heroes but more as villains who as a group “could not tolerate the blacks as citizens.”(13) They established themselves merely to terrorize with lawlessness and violence. Yet another perspective resides with Bailey, who did not take the antics of the KKK seriously enough to consider them heroes or villains. He does not mention the frequent lynchings made famous by the KKK, but calls their actions mere “tomfoolery”. (15) Finally, Norton breaks it down by stating that leaders “allowed factionalism along racial and class lines to undermine party unity.” (19) She goes on to list the KKK’s main purpose for existing, which was to scare and kill former slaves. Thus, accurately calling the KKK terrorists, which they clearly were, puts them in the villain category.…
A former slave, who served in the Georgia State Legislature recalls, “[the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me into the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. They said to me, ‘Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?’” (Document C). In order words, the KKK greatly opposed Reconstruction, which Radicals favored. This is why they didn’t want people to vote in favor of the Radicals. As a result, the KKK did everything in their power to try and stop Reconstruction, which included beating and killing people. These “Radical ticket[s]” were pro-integration and pro-voting rights for blacks, and when the KKK opposed these tickets, they opposed the goals of Reconstruction. Additionally, the members of the KKK were Democrats. This is not only an example of how the KKK tried to stop Reconstruction, but another example of how Democrats tried to stop it…
By passing this act, Johnson appealed to African Americans and Northern Republicans, but many Southern whites could not tolerate the idea of a black man holding office, and out of this, the Ku Klux Klan emerged. Southerners against black integration began to beat, lynch, and massacre African Americans and Radical Republican leaders.…
In the period following 1865, the understanding and recognition of being accepted into a newly forming just society was becoming the base on expressing and citing beliefs for others to agree upon in terms of racial theories. Both individual and social groups like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBoise, Ida B. Wells, and the Ku Klux Klan were expressing what they thought a just society should look like and were in hopes that their actions and theories of these beliefs would assist society toward agreeing upon them and accepting them as their own.…
During reconstruction, the south began to pass a series of “black codes”, or laws which were discriminatory at least, and were designed to impede african americans from functioning within society. Through these black codes, african americans found it difficult to vote, hold office, and sometimes lease or own land (Openstax, 468). Programs like The Freedmen's Bureau were established to help black people find labor contracts. On the other hand, groups like the Ku Klux Klan also formed. The KKK wanted to take back control of political power and did so with fear tactics. Aside from killing and intimidating black people, they did the same to white political opponents (Openstax, 480). Another group of people the KKK strongly disliked were “carpetbaggers.” Carpetbaggers were northern businessmen who traveled south in search of wealth and power (Openstax, 480). Essentially, during reconstruction, the south became a battleground to the southerners. The now freed african americans and northerners traveling to the south were perceived as a threat to the southerners grasp on…
(Hunter 35) Evidence: The African Americans faced oppression from the social and political fronts. The Ku Klux Klan were one of the groups that “mounted the most bitter opposition to black rights.” (Hunter 31) They “not only had to ward off physical threats from the KKK. In addition “they were also challenged by the existence of perfectly legal abuses that diminished the meaning of freedom” (Hunter 35).…
Spreading anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, pro-Anglo-Saxon, pro-native American, and pro-Protestant sentiments, the Klan led an extreme, ultraconservative uprising against many of the forces of diversity and modernity that were transforming American culture. The KKK spread with astonishing rapidity, especially in the Midwest and the Bible Belt South, wielding potent political influence and an attachment of nearly 5 million dues-paying members. As Hiram W. Evans explained in The Klans Fight for Americanism from The North American Review, we are intolerant of everything that strikes at the foundations of our race, our country or our freedom of worship. Evans felt threatened by any attempt to use the privileges and opportunities which aliens hold only as through our generosity as levers to force us to change our civilization. The Klan was indeed an alarming manifestation of the intolerance and prejudice plaguing people anxious about the dizzying pace of social change in the 1920s; the last thing they wanted was unrestricted…
Many white Southerners reacted to this and to the emancipation of slaves with concern. For white landowners in the South, freedom meant a loss of labor and the adoption of sharecropping. Instead of accepting the freedom of slaves, some white Southerners resorted to violence and opposition. Due to their concerns, some conservative whites began looking for ways to control freed slaves. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was formed in 1866 as a political and social organization.…