The Ku Klux Klan & Reconstruction

“The sooner the negro is made to sink into his low sphere the better for all concerned. A little blood spilt promptly and judiciously may save torrents of the red fluid that procrastination will render necessary should be poured out.” Ryland Randolph, Tuskaloosa Monitor

Welcome to Civics and Coffee. My name is Alycia and I am a self-professed history nerd. Each week, I am going to chat about a topic on U.S history and give you both the highlights and occasionally break down some of the complexities in history; and share stories you may not remember learning in high school. All in the time it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee. 

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Hey everyone, welcome back. 

In our journey through understanding the various facets of Reconstruction, I’ve made several mentions of the incredible and widespread violence that permeated the former confederacy in the aftermath of the Civil War. Much of this violence was done by members of various supremacist organizations, including the most infamous of the bunch, the Ku Klux Klan. Originally established as an fraternizing organization for former Confederate Soldiers, the Ku Klux Klan - and organizations like it - quickly became the mechanism under which poor white men exacted terror against prominent Republican leaders and Black neighbors. 

So this week I am diving into the history of the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan. How did it start? Who made up its membership? And how was it stopped the first time? 

Grab your cup of coffee, peeps. Let’s do this. 

Before I dive into some of the details of the KKK, I want to share a word of warning for younger audiences and anyone who may have previous experience with domestic violence or sexual assault. This is an episode that dives into the political violence conducted by the Ku Klux Klan and I am going to share some pretty graphic examples of the atrocities members of this group committed as told by the men and women who lived through it. Please exercise caution while listening and skip this episode if you need to. 

The original Ku Klux Klan was established in the law offices of Judge Thomas M. Jones and consisted of six co-founders: Captain John C. Lester, Major James R. Crowe, John B. Kennedy, Calvin Jones, and Frank D. McCord in the town of Pulaski, Tennessee in the summer of 1866. While members of the KKK would go on to commit thousands of murders, the group originated as mostly a social club. The name Ku Klux was likely inspired by a local popular college fraternity known as the Kyklos Adelphon or the Circle of Brothers. They established complicated initiation rites, which often included blindfolding new recruits and taking them deep into the local woods where they would then compel them to swear an oath of secrecy. In Fergus Bordewich’s review of the Klan and its initial downfall, Klan War, he describes how the original initiation also involved agreeing to a document referred to as the Prescript. From Bordewich, quote: “In its original form, this consisted of eight pages of dense mumbo jumbo with excerpts from Shakespeare, the poetry of Robert Burns, and a flotsam of puzzling Latin quotations,” end quote. 

The earliest activities of Klan members were rather benign and included things like hosting parades or musical performances. But despite its initial apolitical origins, the Klan quickly developed a politically and racially charged agenda aimed at undercutting Republican gains throughout the south and intimidating Black Americans who were seen as not minding their place. This of course was all in the eyes of the beholder and Klan attacks were provoked for infractions such as being too quote unquote uppity. Black participation in groups like Union Leagues proved to be at least partially the reason many men decided to join or establish local bands of the Klan. By April 1867, the Prescript was used as a governing document that led to the Klan’s eventual emergence as a political organization opposed to black enfranchisement and dedicated to strengthening white political power. As Bordewich outlines, part of the oath members took included promises quote: “never to vote for any man for office who was in favor of the civil or political advancement of the Negro race, and to resist by force the civil and political advancement of the Negro,” end quote. 

According to scholar William F. Pinar before 1868, the Klan was primarily limited to Tennessee and parts of Northern Alabama. However, in just the first few months of 1868, the Ku Klux Klan exploded from quote: “a half dozen or so counties in middle Tennessee to every southern state between the Potomac and the Rio Grande, plus Kentucky,” end quote. While membership totals are hard to verify, it is estimated that at its peak, anywhere between 300,000 and 550,000 people were members of a Ku Klux Klan group. The expansion was rapid and largely in response to the quote unquote radical state governments cropping up throughout the former confederacy. Despite the desire to have a singular, coordinated organization, the Ku Klux Klan remained a decentralized entity. This was due, in part, to the reality that each state across the Confederacy had varied political situations meaning coordinating a single response was near impossible. Combining the varied environments with the fact that unlike today, communication was fairly difficult and what is left is a series of local organizations that fell under one name and pursued many of the same goals, albeit in various ways. As historian Elaine Parsons explains, the Klan quote: “became an amorphous movement that included a range of clandestine groups in many parts of the south that exploited postwar political, social, and economic disorganization for various ends,” end quote. 

Thus, Klan groups varied widely in their membership, motivations, and specific goals, but there were trends which primarily focused on undercutting the popularity of Republican legislators and ensuring white supremacy through the terrorizing of Black Americans. As Manisha Sinha asserts in her analysis of Reconstruction, quote: “Southern conservatives claimed that they fought against “Negro domination” and “Negro supremacy,” when in truth their fight was against black equality,” end quote. While not the only methods at their disposal, murder and sexual assault seemed to be the preferred tools in the Klan toolbox - all in an effort to depress the vote and maintain white supremacy in state governments. 

While actual figures are hard to verify, scholars estimate that in the state of Arkansas, more than 2,000 murders were committed by the Klan ahead of the 1868 elections. In Louisiana, that estimate stands at 1,000 Black Americans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when election results came in, both states went for the Democrats. Again from historian Manisha Sinha quote: “the message southern rebels were sending to Washington was perfectly clear: Any attempt to secure black rights would meet political terror and violence,” end quote. Yet another one of the preferred methods of terror involved the nighttime raid where Klan members would surround the house of their preferred target and either force themselves inside or drag the occupant outside where they performed any number of heinous acts including, but unfortunately not limited to, whipping them with tree branches, beating them with pistols, or tying people to trees and abandon them to the elements. 

United States Army officer Lewis Merrill later testified in front of Congress where he estimated the Ku Klux Klan was responsible for between 300 and 400 beatings in the previous year alone. Merrill listed the names of several of the impacted individuals including Creecy Adams, Martha Woods, Tony Wallace, Addison Woods, Elias Hill, Sylvester Baron, and Jerry Clowney. Descriptions of their punishments included everything from being quote: “beaten with clubs and pistols” end quote to quote “greatly beaten and abused,” end quote. Merrill also explained that the torment was not limited to Black residents; white Republican leaders and voters were also subject to torment including Dick Wilson, John Wilson, and Dr. John Winsmith, who was shot on the porch of his home for the simple act of voting the republican ticket.  

Before I get into some specific cases, I am going to put one more warning that the content I am about to share may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. 

In the case of one freedman in Georgia, Henry Lowther, he was given the choice of saving himself only if he agreed to castration. His crime? He was too successful. Twenty members of the Klan surrounded his home one evening when he was absent, apparently angry that he had taken quote “too great a stand” end quote against the other members in his community by becoming a member of the Republican party. As far as my research goes, the Lowther household managed to escape that night without having to withstand physical violence. That all changed a few nights later when an estimated 200 members of the Klan surrounded Henry’s property again, successfully kidnapping him from his home. He was then taken to a local swamp where they asked him if he was quote “willing to give up your stones to save your life,” end quote. He was then castrated. 

And despite the party line from Klan members that they were simply avenging the lawlessness of Black Americans, many whites were caught in the crossfire, including white women. In one particularly disgusting example, an interracial couple in Georgia were targeted by the Klan. The man was castrated and the woman was forced to the ground where the men quote: “cut a slit on each side of her orifice, put a large padlock in it, locked it up, then threw away the key,” end quote. To be clear, white women were not the only ones who faced sexual assault at the hands of the Klan. In fact, in most cases the victims of sexual violence were Black women, some who were not yet 10 years old. These violations included everything from forcing girls and women to strip naked and be beaten, to being sexually violated, sometimes by the male members of their own family, all at the threats of the Klan. As Fergus Bordewich stated, quote: “put in the starkest terms, Black bodies, male and female, were always fair game for white men long accustomed to owning the flesh of the people they had enslaved,” end quote. 

Klan members were so bold in their actions, and perhaps so confident in the belief that they would never be held accountable, that even law enforcement officers were targeted, including one Deputy Sheriff, William Dollar, who was kidnapped from his home in the middle of the night, secured with a rope tied around his neck, with the other end attached to a Black man named Fred Reeves. Both men were then shot and their dead bodies were posed in a state of embrace where they were then left to sit along the road for two days. The Dollar’s supposed infraction? He was too favorable toward Black people. 

Why did they feel so immune from punishment? Well, largely because they were. Despite committing crimes - including murder - sometimes without donning the identity-shielding white robes, members of the Klan went uncharged. Even when members donned the garb meant to evoke memories of the Confederate ghosts, victims frequently knew their perpetrators. But it all seemed to not matter. City and state law enforcement were either unmotivated or insufficiently resourced to take action. Reporting the crime in any official capacity meant risking unwanted attention by local police, who may decide to arrest the victim on a bogus charge. Reports also meant risking word getting back to the Klan who would almost certainly pay their victim another visit. When possible, Black families picked up and left town - usually one of the demands of the Klan - even if it meant leaving their homes and businesses. When moving was not an option, families took to some extreme measures to avoid being quote unquote Ku Kluxxed - such as the man of the house choosing to sleep outside the family home. Targeted men would come home and have dinner with their families, only to leave before it got too dark to quote unquote lay out in a marsh or field nearby. This was all done as a mechanism to avoid Klan retaliation or violence, and with the hope that their absence from the home would extend some sort of protection for their families should the Klan pay them a visit. 

Again from Manish Sinha, quote: “White terror was designed to discipline black labor, discourage black men from voting, remove Republican officeholders, and otherwise undermine the region’s incipient democracy,” end quote. And their efforts proved largely successful, at least in areas where the Black and White population was close to evenly matched. Interestingly enough, the Klan did not typically operate in areas where either race dominated the other, but the rumors and stories of their terror campaigns spread far and wide, instilling a sense of fear for any Black man wishing to cast a ballot, or public officials hoping to run for office on the Republican ticket.  

One of the most well known members of the Klan is Nathan Bedford Forrest. Although he would later try to distance himself from the Ku Klux Klan, there is sufficient evidence to indicate he was an early leader of the group. Giving testimony to Congress in 1871, Forrest tried to assert that the Klan was nothing more than a political organization and that the group had long been dormant. While Forrest was not involved in with the Klan for long, he made quite the impression, teaching the group Guerilla warfare tactics and was elected the Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire shortly after his initiation in the summer of 1867. 

Born in Tennessee in 1821, Nathan Bedford Forrest grew up in poverty. After growing up to become a successful planter and one of the largest slave traders before the Civil War, Forrest later joined the Confederate Army where as Lt. General he led the assault on Fort Pillow, which was described by a congressional committee as a quote “indiscriminate slaughter,” end quote. Described by Fergus Bordewich as a quote “white massacre of disarmed Black men,” end quote, the events at Fort Pillow led to the death of 277 soldiers, 195 of whom were Black. Forrest was happy with the results of the campaign, telling his superiors that Fort Pillow demonstrated that Black soldiers were no match for southerners. Once the war was over, Forrest no longer had the money or influence he previously enjoyed and he bounced from one scheme to the next until he learned of and joined the Ku Klux Klan. Due to the pervasive secrecy of the organization, and Forrest’s attempts at reforming his image before his death in 1877 from diabetes, his exact influence remains muddled. However, many historians agree that Forrest was involved at the earliest stages of the Klan and that, despite his stated ignorance, was much more embedded with the organization than he admitted. 

White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan spread throughout the former Confederacy just as Black men were asserting their political rights and seeking equality and justice before the law. Unwilling to view their neighbors as equals deserving of full participation in the American dream, these groups implemented a reign of terror that sought to intimidate voters and politicians alike, all in an effort to ensure the newly established governments stayed under the firm grasp of the white man. Despite the Ku Klux Klan’s acts of domestic terrorism going largely unchecked for several years, they would eventually prompt a response from the federal government once 18th president Ulysses S. Grant took office. The former Union leader would spend much of his first time trying to ensure Black equality and worked with Congress on the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871. However, I’ll save that story for a future episode. 

Thanks, peeps. I’ll see you next week.

Thanks for tuning and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Civics & Coffee. If you want to hear more small snippets from american history, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening and I look forward to our next cup of coffee together. 

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