During Reconstruction, African Americans formed committees to record the violation of human rights by various white supremacist organizations like the Knights of the White Camelia (KWC), the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and the White League. Henry Adams was a former slave who became a free Black laborer after Emancipation. He lived in Louisiana for most of his life where the KWC and the White League were actively using terrorism to stamp down African American political action and end Black voting. Adams works with a large number of other Blacks to record instances of violence and threats of violence by these paramilitary groups against the formerly enslaved African Americans.
In 1880, Adams received a subpoena to testify before a Senate Select Committee on the violence faced by Blacks in the South, how Adams had gathered accounts of it, and what the plans were among Blacks to flee the South. Below is testimony by Henry Adams in response to questions from two senators. Adams gave two days of testimony, so just a segment is reprinted below.
This testimony is on pages 20-41 in The Testimony of Henry Adams, Freedman: Hope, Terror, and Exodus in the Post-Civil War South by Henry Adams publisher Library of America (2026). It is excerpted in part.
Testimony before the Senate Select Committee
to Investigate the Causes which have led to
the Emigration of Negroes from the Southern
to the Northern States, Washington, D.C.,
March 12–13, 1880
BY MR. WINDOM:[1]
Question. State your full name.—Answer. Henry Adams.
Q. What is your residence?
A. Shreveport, Caddo Parish, Louisiana.
Q. How long have you lived there, Mr. Adams?
A. I first went there in 1865—the latter part of 1865.
Q. Where were you born?
A. In Georgia.
Q. Did you go from Georgia to this place in 1865?
A. No, sir.
Q. Where did you live?
A. In De Soto Parish, Louisiana…
Q. What is your business, Mr. Adams?
A. I am a laborer. I was raised on a farm and have been at hard work all my life.
Q. Now tell us, Mr. Adams, what, if anything, you know about the exodus of the colored people from the Southern to the Northern and Western States; and be good enough to tell us in the first place what you know about the organization of any committee or society among the colored people themselves for the purpose of bettering their condition, and why it was organized. Just give us a history of that as you understand it.
A. Well, in 1870, I believe it was, or about that year, after I had left the Army—I went into the Army in 1866 and came out the last of 1869—and went right back home again where I went from, Shreveport; I enlisted there, and went back there. I enlisted in the Regular Army, and then I went back after I came out of the Army. After we had come out a parcel of we men that was in the Army and other men thought that the way our people had been treated during the time we was in service—we heard so much talk of how they had been treated and opposed so much and there was no help for it—that caused me to go into the Army at first, the way our people was opposed. There was so much going on that I went off and left it; when I came back it was still going on, part of it, not quite so bad as at first. So a parcel of us got together and said that we would organize ourselves into a committee and look into affairs and see the true condition of our race, to see whether it was possible we could stay under a people who had held us under bondage or not. Then we did so and organized a committee.
Q. What did you call your committee?
A. We just called it a committee, that is all we called it, and it remained so; it increased to a large extent, and remained so. Some of the members of the committee was ordered by the committee to go into every State in the South where we had been slaves there, and post one another from time to time about the true condition of our race, and nothing but the truth.
Q. You mean some members of your committee?
A. That committee; yes, sir.
Q. They traveled over the other States?
A. Yes, sir; and we worked some of us, worked our way from place to place and went from State to State and worked—some of them did—amongst our people in the fields, everywhere, to see what sort of living our people lived; whether we could remain in the South amongst the people who had held us as slaves or not. We continued that on till 1874.
Q. Now, before you come to 1874, let me ask how extensive was the operation of your committee? Did they go into almost all the Southern States?
A. Nearly all of the States we could get reports from as to how our race was living there.
Q. Whom did you report to?
A. To the committee; we reported to the committee there.
Q. To the committee at Shreveport?
A. Yes. The reports were sent, and our committee met, so that they would be read at the meeting.
Q. Were they addressed to the committee or to some individual?
A. They were addressed to some individual of the committee—just addressed to the members or ones that we knowed belonged to the committee, and knowed would get the letters we would write to them.
Q. Was the object of that committee at that time to remove your people from the South, or what was it?
A. O, no, sir; not then; we just wanted to see whether there was any State in the South where we could get a living and enjoy our rights.
Q. The object, then, was to find out the best places in the South where you could live?
A. Yes, sir; where we could live and get along well there and to investigate our affairs—not to go nowhere till we saw whether we could stand it.
Q. How were the expenses of these men paid?
A. Every one paid his own expenses, except the one we sent to Louisiana and Mississippi. We took money out of our pockets and sent him, and said to him you must now go to work. You can’t find out anything till you get amongst them. You can talk as much as you please, but you have got to go right into the field and work with them and sleep with them to know all about them.
Q. Have you any idea how many of your people went out in that way?
A. At one time there was five hundred of us.
Q. Do you mean five hundred belonging to your committee? A. Yes, sir.
Q. I want to know how many traveled in that way to get at the condition of your people in the Southern States?
A. I think about one hundred or one hundred and fifty went from one place or another.
Q. And they went from one place to another, working their way and paying their expenses and reporting to the common center at Shreveport, do you mean?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What was the character of the information that they gave you?
A. Well, the character of the information they brought to us was very bad, sir.
Q. In what respect?
A. They said that in other parts of the country where they traveled through, and what they saw they was comparing with what we saw and what we had seen in the part where we lived; we knowed what that was; and they cited several things that they saw in their travels; it was very bad.
Q. Do you remember any of these reports that you got from members of your committee?
A. Yes, sir; they said in several parts where they was that the land rent was still higher there in that part of the country than it was where we first organized it, and the people was still being whipped, some of them, by the old owners, the men that had owned them as slaves, and some of them was being cheated out of their crops just the same as they was there.
Q. Was anything said about their personal and political rights in these reports, as to how they were treated about these? A. Yes; some of them stated that in some parts of the country where they voted they would be shot. Some of them stated that if they voted the Democratic ticket they would not be injured.
Q. But that they would be shot, or might be shot, if they voted the Republican ticket?
A. Yes, sir.
BY MR. VANCE:[2] Q. What year was that in?
A. When the reports was made, do you mean?
Q. Yes, sir.
A. From 1870 to 1874.
BY MR. WINDOM:
Q. During that period, from 1870 to 1874, was that what was known as the ku-klux period in the South?
A. The ku-klux was raging there in 1865, ’66, ’67, ’68, and ’69.
Q. Well, what followed that—what organization as enemies of your race, as you regarded them, followed the ku-klux, as you remember?
A. The white league.
Q. Were there any other organizations of that kind?
A. Any other bull-dozing organization?
Q. Yes; any other white organizations that were abusing or murdering the colored people, that you know of ?
A. I don’t know of none, only the white league; still there was the same connection—they had other names besides the “white league,” but they had so many kind of names.
Q. Do you remember any other names they went by?
A. Except ku-klux?
Q. Yes. A. Well, since that time, of course it has passed as “bulldozing.”
Q. I am speaking now of the period from 1870 to 1874, and you have given us the general character of the reports that you got from the South; what did you do in 1874?
A. Well, along in August sometime in 1874, after the white league sprung up, they organized and said this is a white man’s government, and the colored men should not hold any offices; they were no good but to work in the fields and take what they would give them and vote the Democratic ticket. That’s what they would make public speeches and say to us, and we would hear them. We then organized an organization called the colonization council.
Q. What was the difference between that organization and your committee, as to its objects?
A. Well, the committee was to investigate the condition of our race.
Q. And this organization was then to better your condition after you had found out what that condition was?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. The result of this investigation during these four years by your committee was the organization of this colonization council. Is that the way you wish me to understand it?
A. It caused it to be organized.
Q. It caused it to be organized. Now, what was the purpose of this colonization council?
A. Well, it was to better our condition.
Q. In what way did you propose to do it?
A. We first organized and adopted a plan to appeal to the President of the United States and to Congress to help us out of our distress, or protect us in our rights and privileges.
Q. Your council appealed first to the President and to Congress for protection and relief from this distressed condition in which you found yourselves, and to protect you in the enjoyment of your rights and privileges?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Well, what other plan had you?
A. And if that failed our idea was then to ask them to set apart a territory in the United States for us, somewhere where we could go and live with our families.
Q. You preferred to go off somewhere by yourselves?
A. Yes.
Q. Well, what then?
A. If that failed, our other object was to ask for an appropriation of money to ship us all to Liberia, in Africa; somewhere where we could live in peace and quiet.
Q. Well, and what after that?
A. When that failed then our idea was to appeal to other governments outside of the United States to help us to get away from the United States and go there and live under their flag…
Q. Did you make any appeal to Congress and to the President?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Who, in your association, authorized that appeal; how was it gotten up?
A. It was gotten up by resolution.
Q. By resolution?
A. Yes, sir; and just passed by the organization.
Q. Well, by “the organization,” what do you mean?
A. I mean the members of it.
Q. Did they have meetings?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. How were these meetings held and where did they hold them?
A. We held them in rooms and houses.
Q. Were they secret meetings or public?
A. We didn’t allow nobody in there but our friends. If he was not a member he couldn’t get in until we came out in public. When we called a public meeting we came out to the park or anywhere, and didn’t care who heard. Then anybody could participate who believed in our movement. There was no meetings held of our members that allowed anybody but our members unless it was somebody that wanted to give us some of their views.
Q. Now, let us understand more distinctly, before we go any further, the kind of people who composed that association. The committee, as I understand you, was composed entirely of laboring people?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did it include any politicians of either color, white or black?
A. No politicianers didn’t belong to it, because we didn’t allow them to know nothing about it, because we was afraid that if we allowed the colored politicianer to belong to it he would tell it to the Republican politicianers, and from that the men that was doing all this to us would get hold of it, too, and then get after us.
Q. So you did not trust any politicians, white or black?
A. No; we didn’t trust any of them.
Q. That was the condition of things during the time the committee were at work in 1870 to 1874?
A. Yes, that was the condition.
Q. Now, when you organized the council what kind of people were taken into it?
A. Nobody but laboring men.
Q. You did not extend the kind of membership; you did not take in the politicians?
A. Nobody that had held an office by the votes of the neighborhood could become a member.
Q. No one who held office could become a member?
A. No, sir; none of them.
Q. Did any prominent, active politician become a member of it?
A. No, sir; not if he was seeking an office he could not….
Q. To whom did you first appeal?
A. We first appealed to General Grant, when he was President.
Q. When was that; about what year?
A. That was in September, 1874. We told him our condition—how we was living there; and told him, if there was no other chance, why we wanted to leave. I will give you a little bit of a sketch of some few things we said to him….
Q. After you had appealed to General Grant, to whom did you next appeal; did you send anything to Congress?
A. O, yes, sir; we sent something to Congress. I don’t exactly remember the date that we sent to Congress. It was some time in 1874; but I know at other times we sent to Congress.
Q. Well, what was the nature of the appeal?
A. We told them our condition, and asked Congress to help us out of our distress and protect us in our lives and property, and pass some law or provide some way that we might get our rights in the South, and so forth.
Q. Well, you got no relief or any adequate protection, you say, under the appeal to the government, did you?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you mean to say you did or did not?
A. We did not.
Q. You did not get any relief ?
A. No, sir.
Q. Did you appeal again?
A. After the appeal in 1874, we appealed when the time got so hot down there they stopped our churches from having meetings after nine o’clock at night. They stopped them from sitting up and singing over the dead, and so forth, right in the little town where we lived, in Shreveport. I know that to be a fact; and after they did all this, and we saw it was getting so warm—killing our people all over the whole country…
[1] William Windom was a Republican Senator from Minnesota.
[2] Zebulon Vance had been a Know Nothing from North Carolina before the Civil War. He served as an officer in the Confederate army during the war and spent the last two years of the Civil War as the Conservative governor of North Carolina. After the war, he joined the Democratic Party and was chosen to be the governor again and by the time of this hearing he was senator.
Henry Blair was a Republican senator from New Hampshire.
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