After the Civil War, the United States tried to mend the relationship between the Union and Confederacy through the institution of reconstruction under Johnson. President Johnson established minimal requirements that created much controversy between the Congressmen supporting that supported the Union during the war. Ultimately, Johnson acted in protecting poor whites since there was now an abundant supply of cheap labor with slavery no longer being enacted. Slowly with the reintegration of the South, there were state laws created to repress African Americans since they were now the population that was in the majority in comparison to whites. The population grew due to freed African Americans in the South, whites saw that the racially-structured …show more content…
Black communities in the south changed the status quo through the construction of black churches and schoolhouses that would be the center of communal activities. The black community repressed their enslaved past and self-empowered their communities in the post-emancipated world. White vigilantes saw these actions as a threat, thus created violence by “…burned down black churches and schoolhouses and drove off repugnant teachers and minsters.” These black community centers were a threat of the Ku Klux Klan even though it was in the beginning stages of growing in power. The assembly of the black communal centers became a crucial tactic of the Klan members that took advantage to implement violent methods of torture to a large group of African Americans. African Americans who were recently freed began to educate themselves in schoolhouses were threaten because historically the South was largely populated by Democrats, thus shifted the balance of power if black voters exercised their political power. Activist deterred the violence through the empowerment of the African American voters despite the violence that …show more content…
Violence targeted at these communities was indiscriminate and genderless because white supporters of the Republican party helped black communities endured violence. The mutilation of men to suppress their manhood and publicly humiliated them in growing Republican towns. Hahn states, “…the Klan not only brutalized and murdered but also often enacted rituals of degradation or emasculation.” The Klan members’ brutal beatings represented their superiority in manhood in comparison to the Republican black and white members. Schoolteachers that were founded to be advocates of the black communities would be reprimanded. The difference here was race in which the punishment differed because white schoolteachers could escape the threats meanwhile black schoolteachers could not. Humiliation tactics of whipping and killing black schoolteachers as a punishment would remind them where they socially belonged and deflect them from fighting back. Hahn described the killing of white man named Outlaw who had been mutilated in front of everyone and the Klan attached a note stating, “Beware you guilty both white and black.” The Klan discouraged communities from changing the status quo and integrating African Americans into the community. The brutalization of the bodies were method of violence to refrain citizens from changing the dynamics of the
Klan violence in Mississippi forced the Johnson administration to turn to a reluctant FBI into an effective Klan-fighting force…” Furthermore, Chalmers updated his previous work on the Klan through Backfire. He tells three stories in the process of relaying this information. His four points or stories are the rise and
The KKK terrorized African Americans, as described in Document 1. The KKK physically attacked blacks, burned their churches and schools and also tried to prevent them from exercising their right to vote. The KKK and other white power groups tried to prevent blacks from being able to protest and whites from helping them through intimidation and fear. The KKK was
Another realization was that these Klansmen were almost playing with the people they hated. They chased and caught them much like children playing tag, hide and go seek, or duck, duck, goose. Only instead of being it, the loser loses their life. The use of ordinary objects, minus the white hoods adds the element of normalcy.
As a result of this, racist organizations were founded to wreaked havoc on former slaves. Secret societies in the southern united states, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia used violence against the blacks. Their goal was often to keep blacks out of politics. Our textbook states, “In other states, where blacks were a majority or where the populations of the two races were almost equal, whites used outright intimidation and violence to undermine the Reconstruction regimes” (Brinkley 368). The people involved in such organizations were using violence to take away the fifteenth amendment right from the former slaves.
“It was the Supreme Court decision against public school segregation on May 17, 1954, that gave the ‘Invisible Empire’ a new impetus and environment for action.” (Chalmers, 5). The Ku Klux Klan burst back into society after this decision that let a young black schoolgirl attend class at a previously all-white school. They shed off prior goals and ambitions from the past KKK generations to just leave one major belief, their white supremacy. As the civil rights movement gained power and hit the streets, it was evident this could be the only time where the Klan effectively combated and put a stop to the black
In the middle of the town 2 Southerners were holding a black guy at gunpoint. “Of Course he wants to vote the Democratic ticket.” The thing that makes everything worse is that other Southerners weren’t doing anything. Some people knew that it was bad but was too scared to say anything because they thought that they would be targeted also. The KKK had so much power and most of it was from fear not because they liked them or believed in what they stood for.
In the 1870s, southern Democrats began to muster more political power as former Confederates began to vote again. It was a movement that gathered energy up until the Compromise of 1877, in the process known as the Redemption. White Democratic Southerners saw themselves as redeeming the South by regaining power. They appealed to scalawags (white Southerners who supported the Republican Party after the civil war and during the time of reconstruction). More importantly, in a second wave of violence following the suppression of the Ku Klux Klan, violence began to increase in the Deep South.
1920’s Racism and the Great Migration During the 1920s, racism was an ordinary experience for anyone who was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. Ku Klux Klan reached its maximum amount of members in the beginning of the 1920s, while ruining the lives of many immigrants and black migrants. Racism was extremely distinct in the southern states and developed into violent issues and severe segregationist laws in the north and the south. The prejudice events in the south helped shape America’s Great Migration.
Within his work, The Ku Klux Klan, W.D. Wood’s argument for the Ku Klux Klan depicts the Klan as a sort of superhero, acting as a vigilante, its primary function being to free the Confederate states from the humiliation of African American influence and the Reconstructive legislation placed upon them. The Klan, composed in playfulness and made up of schoolboys, spent their evenings terrorizing African Americans. The Klan, once again, capitalized on the superstitious beliefs of African Americans, using their ghostly costumes and extreme pageantry to evoke panic. However, the author states that the Klan never acted in blood or violence, but rather used silent and obscure maneuvers to instill fear in the African Americans. The Klan sometimes stopping
The 13th Amendment allowed the African Americans to be released from the institutionalized oppression of slavery, at the same time allowing them to achieve political and civil rights. It did not protect them from the violence that they will experience on a physical and physiological level, the newly freed African Americans that were victimized by different factors such as political regulations. Many African Americans attempted to exercise their newly acquired rights, but as a result, white southerners saw this as problematic and resorted to taking violent actions. Violence became one of the primary acts which caused the African American community’s rights to become void and it puts their black lives and black livelihood at stake.
There were many clashes that cause disputes between many people over the old or traditional lifestyle and the new. The Ku Klux Klan is a group that grew a lot in the 1920’s and is still around today. These people would use violence on African-Americans,
Upon this, the Klu Klux Klan chose to dedicate themselves to a campaign of violence against both black and white Republican leaders and voters. They did this as an effort to change the policies of Radical Reconstruction in the South (“Klu Klux Klan”). They wanted to reinstate white supremacy in the South as to how it was back before the Revolution and before Reconstruction. Other groups, such as the Knights of the White Camelia and the White Brotherhood, joined in on this with the Klu Klux Klan. Due to this dedication by these groups and the KKK, at least ten percent of the black legislators that were elected between 1867 and 1868 were subject to violence due to discrimination.
In Buzzle’s article, Racism was stated to be an unfortunate reoccurring problem in the United States today. The article went all the way back to the 1600s, while the Europeans were settling in America to also enslave blacks. The Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1867. The clan caused a saddening amount of human beings to be murdered. As stated in the article, “… for every 3 whites, 40 to 50 blacks were killed.”
Racism’s Impact on Reconstruction While the issue of slavery evidently contributed to the divide that resulted in the American Civil War, it is debated whether prevailing ideals of racism caused the failure of the era following the war known as Reconstruction. With the abolishment of slavery, many of the southern states had to reassemble the social, economic, and political systems instilled in their societies. The Reconstruction Era was originally led by a radical republican government that pushed to raise taxes, establish coalition governments, and deprive former confederates of superiority they might have once held. However, during this time common views were obtained that the South could recover independently and that African Americans
During this time, Klansmen were holding public parades and initiations throughout the nation while projecting their racist beliefs of purifying American society with native-born White Protestant males along with their White supremacy. With their massive growth, their