Ku Klux Klan

====Resistance====
There was considerable resistance among African Americans and white allies to the Klan. In 1953, newspaper publishers [[W. Horace Carter]] ([[Tabor City, North Carolina]]), who had campaigned for three years, and Willard Cole ([[Whiteville, North Carolina]]) shared the [[Pulitzer Prize for Public Service]] citing "their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger, culminating in the conviction of over one hundred Klansmen and an end to terrorism in their communities".<ref>"[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Public-Service Public Service]" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131112124907/http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Public-Service |date=November 12, 2013 }}. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 8, 2013.</ref> In a 1958 incident in [[North Carolina]], the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two [[Lumbee]] [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]] for associating with white people, and threatened more actions. When the KKK held a nighttime rally nearby, they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbee. Gunfire was exchanged, and the Klan was routed at what became known as the [[Battle of Hayes Pond]].<ref>Ingalls 1979</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/jan2005/jan05.html |title=January 1958&nbsp;– The Lumbees face the Klan |author=Graham, Nicholas |date=January 2005 |publisher=[[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]] |access-date=June 26, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071024123305/http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/jan2005/jan05.html |archive-date=October 24, 2007 }}</ref>

While the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] (FBI) had paid informants in the Klan (for instance, in Birmingham in the early 1960s), its relations with local law enforcement agencies and the Klan were often ambiguous. The head of the FBI, [[J. Edgar Hoover]], appeared more concerned about Communist links to civil rights activists than about controlling Klan excesses against citizens. In 1964, the FBI's [[COINTELPRO]] program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt civil rights groups.{{sfn|McWhorter|2001}}

As 20th-century Supreme Court rulings extended federal enforcement of citizens' [[civil rights]], the government revived the [[Enforcement Acts]] and the [[Klan Act]] from Reconstruction days. Federal prosecutors used these laws as the basis for investigations and indictments in the 1964 [[murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner]];<ref>{{cite web| url=http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-CivRts2.html |title=The Civil Rights Movement, 1964–1968 |author=Simon, Dennis M. |publisher=[[Southern Methodist University]]  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050827194827/http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-CivRts2.html |archive-date=August 27, 2005 }}</ref> and the 1965 murder of [[Viola Liuzzo]]. They were also the basis for prosecution in 1991 in ''[[Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic]]''.

In 1965, the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]] started an investigation on the Klan, putting in the public spotlight its front organizations, finances, methods and divisions.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|date=1965|title=Ku Klux Klan Probe Begun |url=https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal65-875-26759-1261051|journal=CQ Almanac|edition=21|pages=1517–1525|access-date=August 14, 2017}}</ref>