a group of kentucky blacks provided what description of the kkk in an 1871 letter to congress

Webisode 7. Segment 5
A Failed Revolution

Stevens had helped write the Fifteenth Amendment, which was passed in 1869. It gives black men all across the country the right to vote . In the South social reforms are now spreading quickly. Integrated legislatures are creating free public schools. Presently black boys and blackness girls are enrolled in iv,000 new schools in the Southward. At least nine black colleges are opened . In the near future Congress volition pass a civil rights bill prohibiting discrimination in hotels, theaters, and amusement parks. Information technology is a civil rights revolution. A freedom movement. But it volition not last.

Economical atmospheric condition in the Due south are dreadful. Cotton fiber prices are low, the weather is poor, and so are the harvests. The white farmers are wearied and angry: their sons are dead—killed in the war—and their savings are gone. They take no money to hire workers or buy equipment and seeds, and most of the black farmers accept no country. Before the war there were no lynchings of blacks. Slaves were valuable possessions. Now hate groups, like the masked Ku Klux Klan, begin waging war on former slaves. Lynchings become increasingly common . Ben Johnson, a southern black, becomes a witness to one of their crimes. He writes: "Information technology was on a cold night when the Ku Kluxers comed and drug the niggers Ed and Cindy outa bed. They carried 'em downwards in the woods and whup them, then they throws 'em in the pond, their bodies breaking the water ice. Cindy ain't been seen since ."

In 1871, the black citizens of Frankfort, Kentucky, send a petition to Congress. It reads: "We believe yous are not familiar with the Ku Klux Klan'south riding nightly over the state and in the county towns, spreading terror wherever they go past robbing, whipping, ravishing, and killing our people without provocation. Nosotros have been law-constant citizens, pay our tax, and, in many parts of the country, our people have been driven from the polls—refused the right to vote."

Near of the South'southward big landowners are Democrats. Those Democrats are determined to bring back equally much of the former S as possible, using whatever it takes: blackness codes, murderous Klansmen, or unfair and unconstitutional poll taxes and literacy laws that finish poor blacks from voting. The Democrats who oppose Reconstruction phone call themselves Redeemers. In the 1870s they are busy "redeeming" ane state after some other, driving Republicans from ability. Emmanuel Fortune is a one-time slave living in Florida who is among those driven out by the Klan. He writes, "Their object is to impale out the leading men of the Republican political party—men who have taken a prominent stand."

In Washington Andrew Johnson is the incorrect human for the task. And his Republican successor, the onetime Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant , isn't right either. Being a general fabricated him pop, just it didn't set him for the presidency. He is too trusting and many of those men he appoints are untrustworthy. They steal millions and millions of dollars in public lands and resource. The President and the people are their victims. The Grant presidency is a time of appalling abuse. A newspaper editor writes, "It is a political position and he knows zip of politics ."

By the time Grant enters the final year of his presidency, the North'due south citizens are tired of hearing well-nigh the need for a simply society in the South. They have problems enough worrying near fair regime in Washington. Then in 1876 at that place comes a controversial presidential ballot. The votes for Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes are so closely divided information technology all comes down to some disputed returns in Florida and two other states. There are reports that blacks accept been kept away from the polls in Florida, and that ballots there were confusingly printed. A special Electoral Commission is created to determine who should be the next president. Finally, when Republican candidate Hayes promises to pull federal troops out of the South if he is elected, he gets the job in what many see as a political deal. Hayes keeps his promise. Soldiers exit the South; and no one is left there to enforce civil rights for blacks. Reconstruction is over. Hayes has been willing to sacrifice blacks' constitutional rights to gain the presidency .

Subsequently 1876 the old guard in the Southward—the Redeemers—begin to accept power again. They pass laws that brand voters pay a poll tax: that means most blacks can no longer vote. They make it impossible for blacks to get a decent education or buy land. They volition not let blacks to take off-white trials. Presently many Southern blacks are not much better off than they had been when they were slaves. Some are worse off. James Garfield is a congressman and quondam clergyman who will before long go president. He asks: "What is liberty? Is it the bare privilege of not being chained? If this is all, then liberty is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion."

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