White Terrorist Groups in the U.S.
For the institution of slavery to have thrived in the United States, slave owners had had to use violence—or, more accurately, the threat of violence, reinforced constantly by its predictable, highly visual application against those enslaved. Precisely the same approach helped to secure the long reign of “emancipation without freedom” in the South.
White terrorist groups—chief among them the Ku Klux Klan—made sure African Americans lived in constant terror of random violence.
The Klan
The white supremacist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan had two formal incarnations. The first, dating from 1866, was led by the former Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest; it focused on wounding, murdering, and otherwise terrorizing African Americans, and on maintaining a racially divided society in which whites dominated. That version of the Klan was formally disbanded in 1869, although For-rest's followers continued to work in informal networks to deny African Americans their voting rights.
The Klan formally resurfaced in 1915, inspired to carry out a much broader mission of hatred. In response to large-scale immigration from Europe, the Klan added Catholics, Jews, and southern and eastern Europeans to its list of undesirables. This incarnation of the Klan, which took advantage of a wave of native-soil patriotism during the World War I period, proved extraordinarily popular not only in the South, but in certain Northern areas as well. (The movement was an extremely powerful political force, for instance, in the state of Kansas in the early and mid-1920s.)
American Terrorism in the Aftermath of the Civil War
The following is a sampling of some of the outrages perpetuated by white supremacist groups against African Americans following the conclusion of the Civil War. It's important to bear in mind that these acts of violence were undertaken by pseudo-military organizations against innocent civilians for the purposes of bringing about a desired set of political, social, and economic changes. Thus, white supremacists in the American South offered object lessons in terrorism to the later hijackers, bombers, and suicide pilots of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
| July 1866 | White mobs, led by local law enforcement, attack African American and white Republicans meeting in New Orleans. Forty people are left dead; the leader of federal troops in Louisiana refers to the event as a “massacre.” |
| September 1867 | Whites assault a group of African Americans who had embarked on a public march through Georgia. Nine African Americans die; a number of whites taking part in the march also receive injuries. |
| September 1867 | At least two hundred African Americans are reported murdered in the Opelousas Massacre in Louisiana. |
| October 1867 | Several more African Americans are murdered in Louisiana by white marauders. |
| August 1869 | North Carolina's election process is effectively commandeered by white supremacists whose tactics include political assassination and violence against African Americans. |
| April 1873 | Over 60 African Americans die in the Colfax Massacre in Grant Parish, Louisiana. |
| December 1874 | Seventy-five Republicans meeting in Vicksburg, Mississippi are murdered by white supremacists. |
| November 1875 | The infamous “Mississippi Plan” successfully delivers control of the state government to white supremacists, despite a black majority of voters. The plan includes massacres, staged riots, and a program of systematic intimidation of African American voters. (The plan will later be adapted for similar takeovers in South Carolina and Louisiana.) |
| September 1876 | Thirty-nine African Americans and two whites are murdered by whites in Ellenton, South Carolina. |
| May 1879 | Confederate veteran General James R. Chalmers attempts to stem African American migration by shutting down the Mississippi River to African American travelers. He vows to sink any boat that attempts to run his blockade. |
| 1882 | Reports of substantial numbers of lynchings of African Americans appear. They will continue for half a century. |
| 1898 | Eight African Americans are killed in civil disturbances in Wilmington, North Carolina. |
It was a bleak time indeed to be an African in America.
By the turn of the century, African Americans may have been technically liberated from the formal bonds of slavery, but they were nevertheless caught in a web of discrimination, intimidation, and violence that added up to something very nearly as obscene. With the clear sanction of the United States Supreme Court, many state legislatures set about establishing a system of laws designed to ensure the perpetual humiliation, submission, and victimization of African Americans.
The laws—and the way of life they represented—came to be known by a catchy name: Jim Crow.
Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to African-American History © 2003 by Melba J. Duncan. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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