They Called Themselves the K.K.K.
Page 14
“I was pressed . . .” Junius Tyndall, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1988.
“There was no way . . .” William Owens, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1396.
“The slave went free . . .” W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Atheneum, [1935] 1975), 30.
“These human beings . . .” Du Bois, 677–78.
“I loved the old government . . .” Forrest, 33.
5. “They Say a Man Ought Not to Vote”
“Your days are numbered . . .” “A Memento of Reconstruction,” Cleveland Gazette, February 8, 1890, 1.
“I do believe it . . .” Elias Hill, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1412.
“endeavor to administer . . .” Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction (Washington D.C.: James Chapman, 1880), 365–66.
“The laws of this State . . .” Charles H. Pearce, KKK Report, Florida and Miscellaneous, 165–66.
“He handed one to me . . .” Burton Long, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 2, 1149–50.
“Mister, you can’t call . . .” Long, 1150.
“I do not think . . .” Augustus Wright, KKK Report, Georgia, vol. 1, 93.
“Realizing that the vote . . .” Isaiah Green, Slave Narratives, Georgia, vol. 4, part 2, 55.
“We call them enemies . . .” Robert Gleed, KKK Report, Mississippi, vol. 2, 725.
“[They] have dishonored . . .” As quoted in James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: McGraw Hill, 2000), 557.
“the meanest, most detestable . . .” Letter written by Milus S. Carroll in 1924, Manuscript Collection, York County Historical Society, South Carolina.
“My political crime is . . .” William Wyatt, The Ku Klux Klan in Middle and West Tennessee (September 2, 1868), 17.
“They whipped me very hard . . .” Charles Belefont, The Ku Klux Klan in Middle and West Tennessee, 23.
“I have no powder . . .” Forrest, 34.
“My daddy charge with . . .” Lorenza Ezell, Slave Narratives, Texas, vol. 16, 30.
“If we are to be . . .” New York Times, September 8, 1868, 1.
“A man can kill . . .” Henry Lipscomb, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 2, 683.
“The white people of our state . . .” Walter Fleming, ed., Documentary History of Reconstruction, vol. 1 (Cleveland, Ohio: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1907), 455–56.
“As soon as they found . . .” Henry Johnson, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 1, 324.
“They say a man . . .” Robert Meacham, KKK Report, Florida and Miscellaneous, 102.
“an institution of Chivalry . . . laws of the land” Lester and Wilson, 88.
“Have you ever been rejected . . .” Prescript, Lester and Wilson, 171–72.
“I was trying . . .” Forrest, 8.
“We was a-sitting . . .” Gabe Hines, Slave Narratives, Alabama, vol. 1, 179.
6. “I Am Going to Die on This Land”
“I worked night and day . . .” George Taylor, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 1, 575.
“A gentleman who commits . . .” John Schofield, Harper’s Weekly, March 23, 1867, 184.
“In the months of August . . .” Robert Meacham, KKK Report, Florida and Miscellaneous, 101.
“Old marse said . . .” Fred James, Slave Narratives, South Carolina, vol. 14, part 3, 15.
“They listened to every sort . . .” P. T. Sayre, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 1, 357.
“He was as fine a man . . .” George Taylor, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 1, 574.
“I had a bargain . . .” Taylor, 573.
“just out of the moon” Taylor, 574.
“My losses . . .” Taylor, 573.
“I worked and labored hard . . .” Taylor, 574.
“If they find a Negro . . .” W. L. Bost, Slave Narratives, North Carolina, vol. 11, part 1, 144.
“The running off . . .” George Garner, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 1, 397.
“I tell you this [kukluxism]. . .” Mack Tinker, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 2, 1362–63.
“They told him that darkeys . . .” Allen P. Huggins, KKK Report, Mississippi, vol. 1, 277–78.
“They did not intend . . .” John Tayloe Coleman, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 2, 1051.
“There is no intention . . .” Joseph W. Gelray, Report of the Secretary of War (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868), 181.
“They beat my breath . . .” Doc Roundtree, KKK Report, Florida and Miscellaneous, 279.
“I am going to die . . .” Hannah Tutson, KKK Report, Florida and Miscellaneous, 61.
“You can tell your old man . . .” Tutson, 62.
“In the red times . . .” Tutson, 60.
“I had been working . . .” Tutson, 60.
“They whipped me . . .” Tutson, 60.
“I told them to . . .” Tutson, 61.
“My little daughter . . .” Tutson, 61.
“Negroes had to go to school . . .” Jefferson Franklin Henry, Slave Narratives, Georgia, vol. 4, part 2, 191.
7. “A Whole Race Trying to Go to School”
“I was inclined . . .” Cornelius McBride, KKK Report, Mississippi, vol. 1, 333.
“I went to school . . .” Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, Slave Narratives, Missouri, vol. 10, 135, 136.
“The schools are firmly . . .” Harper’s Weekly, May 25, 1867.
“We should teach . . .” Avary, 320.
“Every little negro . . .” Letter from A. W. Moore to E. H. Dabbs, April 30, 1870, as quoted in Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 489.
“The piling up . . .” “The Ku Klux Movement,” Atlantic Monthly 87, no. 523 (May 1901), 635–36.
“We have nothing . . .” American Missionary 12, no. 3 (March 1868), 60.
“If the freedmen . . .” Schurz, 50.
“If we have social equality . . .” David Macrae, The Americans at Home: Pen-and-Ink Sketches of American Men, Manners, and Institutions, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, Scotland: Emerson and Douglas, 1870), 19.
“Whenever it is written . . .” Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Co., 1919), 58, 62.
“That was the only place . . .” Oscar Judkins, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 3, 1043, 1047.
“There is the man . . .” William H. Forney, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 1, 470.
“Could not be whipped . . .” Joseph Speed, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 1, 429.
“I know I’ve done . . .” William Luke, as quoted in Gene L. Howard, Death at Cross Plains: An Alabama Reconstruction Tragedy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984), 90.
“My Dear Wife . . .” William C. Luke, U.S. Congress, Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 1st session (1871), 477.
“They took every book . . .” Caroline Smith, KKK Report, Georgia, vol. 1, 401.
“All its flaming tail . . .” Tuskaloosa Independent Monitor, September 21, 1869, 2.
“When I gather my posse . . .” John Minnis, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 1, 559.
“1st quarter, 8th Bloody moon . . .” American Missionary 12, no. 8 (August 12, 1868), 183.
“I did not pay . . .” Cornelius McBride, KKK Report, Mississippi, vol. 1, 329.
“You God damned Yankee . . .” McBride, 326.
“Shooting is too good . . .” McBride, 327.
“They swore terribly . . .” McBride, 327.
“The blood was running . . .” McBride, 329.
“It was a whole race . . .” Washington, 30.
“The strongest chains . . .” as quoted in Gladys-Marie Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001), 41.
“Our white folks . . .” Susan Merritt, Slave Narratives, Texas, vol. 16, part 3, 77.
8. “They Need Somebody to Guide Them”
“It is impossible to separate . . .” Charles H. Pearce, KKK Report, Florida a
nd Miscellaneous, 171.
“De colored preachers . . .” Mack Taylor, Slave Narratives, South Carolina, vol. 14, part 4, 159.
“You are not to preach . . .” Dennis Rice, KKK Report, vol. 2, 1182.
“When they have confined . . .” H. D. D. Twiggs, KKK Report, Georgia, vol. 2, 1055–56.
“The preacher made frequent . . .” New Orleans Tribune, September 9, 1865, 1.
“Some of them said . . .” James Grant, KKK Report, North Carolina, 235–36.
“Nearly every colored church . . .” William Dougherty, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 2, 1025.
“There was scarcely a night . . .” Carroll, letter, 2.
“Headquarters K.K.K.” Columbia (South Carolina) Daily Phoenix, February 1, 1871, 1.
“I thought my pitiful condition . . .” Hill, 1411.
“Haven’t you been preaching . . .” Hill, 1407.
“Don’t pray against us . . .” Hill, 1408.
“Those whites that professed . . .” Hill, 1411.
“I don’t preach political sermons . . .” R. E. Cooper, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1956–57.
“We proudly point . . .” A. B. Osgood, KKK Report, Florida and Miscellaneous, 171.
9. “Forced by Force, to Use Force”
“They insulted white people . . .” William Simpson, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1304.
“Theire is great excitement . . .” Mary Davis Brown diaries, January 30, 1871, film book 0299, reel 3, Special Collections, Ellis Library, University of Missouri.
“Folks were pretty much scared . . .” James Long, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1764.
“kill from the cradle up . . .” See KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1758–60, 1763–65, 1781–89, 1797, 1809, 1815, 1817, 1835, 1900.
“He always felt at liberty . . .” Julia Rainey, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1750.
“He and his company . . .” Carroll, letter, 4.
“I was scared . . .” Rosy Williams, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1721.
“He died cursing . . .” Carroll, letter, 8.
“The intelligent, honest white people . . .” Yorkville Enquirer, March 9, 1871, as quoted in KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1347–48.
“It requires great patience . . .” Lewis Merrill, May 19, 1871. RG 393, part 5, Post of Yorkville, SC, entry 1, letters sent, vol. 1, 22. National Archives.
“That the power to correct . . .” Grant to Congress, KKK Conspiracy, 1.
“White men would be arrested . . .” Avary, 276.
“If the Federal Government . . .” Benjamin Butler, Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 1st session, April 4, 1871, 448.
“And I want to say . . .” Carroll, letter, 3.
10. “The Sacredness of the Human Person”
“Isn’t one of you gentlemen . . .” Samuel Tutson, KKK Report, Florida, 59.
“They are afraid to stay . . .” Daniel Lipscomb, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 1, 430, 432.
“We do not believe . . .” Hill, 1410, 1412, 1415.
“I was the only one . . .” McBride, 331.
“As a general thing . . .” McBride, 339.
“Luke had made himself . . .” Peter Dox, KKK Report, Alabama, vol. 1, 429.
“I think this organization . . .” Forrest, 7.
“The whole statement is wrong . . .” Forrest, 4.
“information from others” Forrest, 6.
“I talked with different people . . .” Forrest, 12.
“I’ve been lying . . .” As quoted in Horn, 316.
“deplorable ignorance” Judge Hugh Bond, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1983.
“I know I done wrong . . .” William Self, KKK Report, South Carolina, vol. 3, 1988.
“unmanly” Bond, 1988.
“Would you not have thought?” Bond, 1974–75.
“None of you seems to have . . .” Bond, 1983.
“They cannot exist together . . .” Bond, 1984.
“Every man has to . . .” Jackson, 189.
Epilogue. “It Tuck a Long Time”
“Masked, armed, and supplied . . .” Harper’s Weekly, October 24, 1874, 878.
“If war among the whites . . .” Frederick Douglass, as quoted in David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 131.
“If there is no struggle . . .” Frederick Douglass, speech given at Canandaigua, New York.
“It seem like it tuck . . .” Freeman, 348.
Bibliography and Source Notes
This highway rolls through the picturesque countryside as it leads into Pulaski, Tennessee.
Photograph by the author
Travel informs my work, and I like to visit the places I write about. One of the places I visited was Pulaski, Tennessee.
As my husband and I rode along Highway 31A that leads into the town, I gazed out the passenger window at the rolling countryside and imagined nightriders thundering under a bright moon, their white robes billowing like wings. I imagined the sound of the horses’ hooves as the riders pounded their way toward a small, dark cabin belonging to a freedman who had dared to vote or exercise his freedom in other ways. The sounds of a whipping, I knew, were known to carry a mile or more. It is natural and human to respond when you hear a cry of distress, and I imagined his neighbors, too terrified to help.
We continued into Pulaski, and just off the picturesque town square, we parked across the street from the low white brick building where more than 140 years earlier, six returning Confederate soldiers had lounged each evening in the months that followed surrender and where John Lester said, “Boys, let us get up a club.”
Nearly fifty years later, in 1916, the Daughters of the Confederacy mounted a bronze plaque on the building, commemorating the Klan’s birth and its six founders, and there it stayed for nearly seventy years. In the early 1990s, after the building changed hands, its new owner reversed the bronze plaque so that only its smooth, green weathered surface shows to passersby.
Still, I wanted a photograph, and as I lifted my camera, an older woman walked past and said, “You thinking of writing a story about that backwards-turned plaque?”
“It’s an interesting story, isn’t it?” I said.
This present day photograph shows the law office where the six Pulaski men lounged in 1866. A bronze plaque commemorating the six men can be seen, turned backwards, here.
Photograph by the author
“We’re about sick of it around here,” she said crisply, and continued across the street.
And so the town of Pulaski is. Pulaski doesn’t ignore its past. In fact, the quaint and friendly Southern town is proud of its role in American history, but its residents disavowed the Klan many years ago. Although Klan members from other states continue to flock to Pulaski to hold “White Heritage Festivals,” the primarily white town repudiates the Klan. The backwards-turned plaque symbolizes that repudiation.
Still, as I walked the Pulaski streets that day, I thought about that plaque and the countless memorials to Confederate war heroes such as Nathan Bedford Forrest that I had seen on this trip and other trips to the South, and I thought about the question that had launched this book during another trip several years earlier: What about the thousands of victims of Klan violence? Where are their memorials?
It was that question that had prompted me to call the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, an organization internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists, and its tracking of hate groups.
I asked if anyone at the center could tell me if any plaques, markers, or statues commemorate the lives of the victims of Klan violence during the Reconstruction years.
I was told there are none.
The sources noted here are intended to refer interested readers to more detailed historical works and to provide helpful information on the various works con
sulted in the research and writing of this book.
This large tribute to Nathan Bedford Forrest stands on private property outside Nashville, Tennessee.