Crimes Charged: Conspiracy to prevent blacks from voting; conspiracy to oppress, threaten, and intimidate blacks who had exercised their right to vote in 1870
Chief Defense Lawyers: Reverdy Johnson, Henry Stanbery, James F. Hart, C. D. Melton, W. B. Wilson and F. W. McMaster
Chief Prosecutors: Daniel H. Chamberlain, David T. Corbin
Judges: Hugh L. Bond, George S. Bryan
Place: Columbia, South Carolina
Date of Trial: December 1871-January 1872
Verdicts: Guilty
Sentences: Robert Hayes Mitchell: 18 months imprisonment and a $100 fine; John W. Mitchell: 5 years imprisonment and a$1,000 fine; Whitesides: 12 months imprisonment and a $100 fine; Millar: 3 months imprisonment and a $20 fine; Avery: fled before sentencing and later pardoned by President Ulysses S. Grant
SIGNIFICANCE: With the arrest and later trials of several Ku Klux Klan members in the South, particularly South Carolina, the federal government attempted to demonstrate the lengths it would go to in order to preserve the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
Six bored Confederate veterans founded the original Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as a social club on December 24, 1865, in Pulaski, Tennessee. The organization existed less than 10 years, but for decades it was glorified as the instrument by which northern carpetbaggers and Radical Republicans were driven out of the South, illiterate and "savage" blacks were put down, and whites were restored to their "rightful place" in southern society. This myth reached its height in the early twentieth century with the 1905 publication of Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansmen, and the release 10 years later of D. W. Griffith's movie The Birth of a Nation; its truth is a fundamental tenet to every modern Klansman.
In reality, the original KKK was a brutal terrorist movement that lynched and shot hundreds and beat, whipped, raped, and mutilated thousands more. While most of its victims were black, other targets included northern whites who moved south after the Civil War, southern whites who supported the federal government's Reconstruction policy, and anyone who violated what the Klan considered the proper social order. A reign of terror existed throughout much of the former Confederacy, and in many places the state and local authorities could do nothing to stop it.
Ku Klux Klan attacking black family inside their home.
User Comments Add a comment…
about 1 month ago
i think that racism is not the answer or solvent to anyone asnwer.. The KKK is nothing but a group thats only job is to spread hatred and racism.. the treated blacks as trash like an animal and if they didnt want blacks to be able to have freedom then why did u bring them here to the united states. im not racist and i have many black friends but the south made the decision to bring them here and for them to think that slavery was gonna last forever there wrong. The KKK is a horrible group and they should not be allowed to bring down people and spread racism and thats the only reason they are doing it!
about 1 month ago
hello. i believe that these white people weremean to tha black people
2 months ago
I don't like the way the Ku Klux Klan treated Blacks. In the inside we all look the same. I am doing a reasearch paper and this website is helping me alot. Thank You.
7 months ago
i think that the ku klux klan is not right by attacking black families because its not right. i feel that they won't like it if we came after the like that. iwant to know what did we ever do to them to make them come aftre us we are not niggers either we are African Amaericans and i don't care what they say about our race we all have problems we are no different than white people. so why they treat us like that we want our freedom oh i forgot we got freedom. our ancestors fought to hard for thjis to be still going on in this world. The ku klan talking about "White Power" I'm here to say "Black Power" we stand to our race and we should not be treated like this they call us niggers m but how you like thje word crackers