One of the decisive turning points in US history was the failure of the Civil War and Reconstruction to do away with material foundations of racial oppression and the class rule of white men of property, the failure caused in large part by "the campaign of violence that turned the electoral tide in many parts of the South" (Eric Foner, _A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877_, Harper & Row, 1990, p. 255):
***** Violence was typically directed at Reconstruction's local leaders. As Emanuel Fortune, driven from Jackson County, Florida, by the Klan, explained: "The object of it is to kill out the leading men of the republican party . . . men who have taken a prominent stand." Jack Dupree, victim of a particularly brutal murder in Monroe County, Mississippi -- assailants cut his throat and disemboweled him, all within sight of his wife, who had just given birth to twins -- was "president of a republican club" and known as a man who "would speak his mind." Countless other local leaders fled their homes after brutal whippings. And many blacks suffered merely for exercising their rights as citizens. Alabama freedman George Moore reported how, in 1869, Klansmen came to his home, administered a beating, "ravished a young girl who was visiting my wife," and wounded a neighbor. "The cause of this treatment, they said, was that we voted the radial ticket." Nor did white Republicans escape the violence. Klansmen murdered three scalawag members of the Georgia legislature and drove ten others from their homes. The Klan in western North Carolina settled old scores with wartime Unionists, burned the offices of the Rutherford _Star_, and brutally whipped Aaron Biggerstaff, a Hero of America and Republican organizer.
On occasion, violence escalated from the victimization of individuals to wholesale assaults on the Republican party and its leadership. In October 1870, after Republicans carried Laurens County, in South Carolina's Piedmont cotton belt, a racial altercation at Laurensville degenerated into a "negro chase" in which bands of whites drove 150 freedmen from their homes and committed 13 murders. The victims included the newly elected white probate judge, a black legislator, and others "known and prominent as connected with politics." In Meridian, a small Mississippi town to which many blacks had fled from centers of Klan activity in nearby western Alabama, three black leaders were arrested in March 1971 on charges of delivering "incendiary" speeches. Firing broke out at their court hearing, the Republican judge and two defendants were killed, and a day of rioting followed, which saw perhaps 30 blacks murdered in cold blood, including "all the leading colored men of the town with one or two exceptions."
The Klan's purpose, however, extended far beyond party politics. William Luke, an Irish-born teacher in a black school, suffered verbal abuse, saw shots fired into his home, and finally, in 1870, was lynched at Cross Plains, Alabama, along with four black men. Those blacks who managed to acquire an education were often singled out for attack. The Georgia Klan murdered freedman Washington Eager because, according to his brother, he was "too big a man . . . he can write and read and put it down himself."
Equally important as a goal of violence was the restoration of labor discipline on white-owned farms and plantations. Blacks who disputed the portion of the crop allotted them at year's end were frequently whipped, and, as in 1865 and 1866, violent bands drove freedmen off plantations after the harvest, to deprive them of their share. . . .
Some historians attribute the Klan's sadistic campaign of terror to the fears and prejudices of poorer whites. The evidence, however, contradicts such an interpretation. Ordinary farmers and laborers comprised the bulk of the membership, and energetic "young bloods" were more likely to conduct midnight raids than middle-aged planters and lawyers, but "respectable citizens" chose the targets and often participated in the brutality. . . .
As the Rutherford _Star_ remarked, the Klan was "not a gang of _poor trash_, as the leading Democrats would have us believe, but men of property . . . respectable citizens."
Occasionally, organized groups successfully confronted the Klan. White Union Army veterans in mountainous Blount County, Alabama, organized "the anti-Ku Klux," which ended violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisal unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning black churches and schools. Armed blacks patrolled the streets of Bennettsville, South Carolina, to prevent Klan assaults. The scale of violence, however, dwarfed these efforts at extralegal reprisal. Indeed, many Northerners wondered aloud, in an accusatory tone, how Republican communities allowed themselves to be terrorized by violent bands. Some found an answer in the legacy of slavery. "The colored men . . . ," declared Congressman Jeremiah Haralson, who had known bondage until 1865, "are afraid of the white men. He has been raised to be afraid of them."
It is indeed true that slavery, which gave rise to numerous forms of black resistance, did not produce a broad tradition of violent retaliation against abuse. But the failure of nerve, if such it was, extended up and down the Republican hierarchy and was not confined to one race. Perhaps the problem was that Republicans, black and white, took democratic processes more seriously than their opponents. No Republican rode at night to drive Democrats from the polls. "We could burn their churches and schoolhouses but we don't want to break the law or harm anybody," wrote one black from a violence-torn part of Georgia. "All we want is to live under the law."
(184-188) ***** -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>