Ku Klux Klan

====Activities====
In a 1933 interview, William Sellers, born enslaved in Virginia, recalled the post-war "raids of the Ku Klux, young white men of [[Rockingham County, Virginia|Rockingham County]] who would go into the huts of the recently freed negroes or catch some negro who had been working for thirty cents a day on his way home from work...and cruelly whip him, leaving him to live or die."<ref>{{Cite news |date=1933-07-07 |title=Former Negro Slave Resident of Shippenberg |pages=6 |work=The News-Chronicle |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-news-chronicle-former-negro-slave-re/129748355/ |access-date=2023-08-10 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> Seemingly random whipping attacks, meant to be suggestive of previous condition of servitude, were a widespread aspect of the early Klan; for example in 1870–71 in Limestone Township (now [[Cherokee County, South Carolina|Cherokee County]]), South Carolina, of 77 documented attacks, "four were shot, sixty-seven whipped and six had had [[Cropping (punishment)|their ears cropped]]."<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Simkins |first=Francis B. |author-link=Francis Butler Simkins |date=1927 |title=The Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, 1868-1871 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714040 |journal=The Journal of Negro History |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=606–647 |doi=10.2307/2714040 |jstor=2714040 |s2cid=149858835 |issn=0022-2992 |access-date=August 10, 2023 |archive-date=August 10, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230810230435/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714040 |url-status=live }}</ref>
[[File:Mississippi ku klux.jpg|thumb|upright|Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in [[Tishomingo County, Mississippi]], September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.preachthecross.net/history-of-the-ku-klux-klan/|title=History of the Ku Klux Klan – Preach the Cross|access-date=September 15, 2014|publisher=preachthecross.net|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140916012701/http://preachthecross.net/history-of-the-ku-klux-klan/|archive-date=September 16, 2014}}</ref>]]
{{Wikisource|Why the Ku Klux}}

Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers by voice and mannerisms. "The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night."{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=677–678}} The KKK night riders "sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious Blacks. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously."{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=432}}

The Klan attacked Black members of the [[Union League|Loyal Leagues]] and intimidated Southern Republicans and [[Freedmen's Bureau]] workers. When they killed Black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of Black people.

"Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were killed as whites." Masked men shot into houses and burned them, sometimes with the occupants still inside. They drove successful Black farmers off their land. "Generally, it can be reported that in North and South Carolina, in 18 months ending in June 1867, there were 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault."{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=674–675}}

[[File:George W. Ashburn.jpg|thumb|[[George W. Ashburn]] was assassinated for his pro-Black sentiments.]]
Klan violence worked to suppress Black voting, and campaign seasons were deadly. More than 2,000 people were killed, wounded, or otherwise injured in [[Louisiana]] within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although [[St. Landry Parish]] had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 200 Black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact.{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=680–681}}

In the April 1868 [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] gubernatorial election, [[Columbia County, Georgia|Columbia County]] cast 1,222 votes for Republican [[Rufus Bullock]]. By the [[1868 United States presidential election|November presidential election]], Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for [[Ulysses S. Grant]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 |title=Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era |author=Bryant, Jonathan M |website=[[The New Georgia Encyclopedia]] |publisher=[[Georgia Southern University]] |access-date=August 26, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080919005917/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 |archive-date=September 19, 2008 |url-status=live  }}</ref>

Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in [[Jackson County, Florida]], and hundreds more in other counties including Madison, Alachua, Columbia, and Hamilton. Florida Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies.{{sfn|Newton|2001|pp=1–30|ps=. Newton quotes from the ''Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Enquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States'', Vol. 13. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1872. Among historians of the Klan, this volume is also known as ''The KKK testimony''.}}

[[File:1875.08.23Prophet1A copy.jpg|thumb|upright|Garb and weapons of the [[Ku Klux Klan in Southern Illinois]], as posed for [[Joseph A. Dacus]] of the ''Missouri Republican,'' in August 1875]]
Milder encounters, including some against white teachers, also occurred. In [[Mississippi]], according to the Congressional inquiry:

<blockquote>One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in [[Monroe County, Mississippi|Monroe County]], was visited ... between one and two o'clock in the morning in March 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her "gentlemanly and quietly" but complained of the heavy school-tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county.{{sfn|Rhodes|1920|pp=157–158}}</blockquote>

By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease.{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=375}} Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential Southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it.{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=102}} There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian [[B. H. Hill]] stating "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain."{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=375}}