Category: Ku Klux Klan
Confederate Veteran William Simkins Describes His Role in the Ku Klux Klan
William Simkins was a professor of law at the University of Texas in Austin on Thanksgiving in 1914 when he decided to use his speech…
How Did American History Textbooks Remember the Ku Klux Klan?
The recent book Remembering Reconstruction has an essay titled “The Cultural Work of the Ku-Klux Klan in US History Textbooks, 1883–2015” by Elaine Parsons. The…
When Grant Literally Decapitated Seymour (at least Cartoon Grant did)! Nov. 1868
By the evening of November 3, 1868 it was pretty clear to most informed observers that Ulysses S. Grant had been elected president. If you…
When Black and White Refugees Fled to Atlanta to Escape the Klan May 1869
Political and racial violence in the Reconstruction Era South was a factor in setting Southerners, Black and white, into motion as refugees. Ku Klux attacks…
Ku Klux Kard Game January 1869
By the end of 1868 the Ku Klux Klan, unknown just a few years earlier, was so widespread in the South that its name was…
Taking Practical Steps Against Miscegenation: John Walthall’s Murder in Georgia 1871
On October 21, 1871 Maria Carter, an African American woman, testified before the Joint Select Committee of Congress on the killing of John Walthall in…
Ku Klux Flour? Kooking With The Klan in 1868
So I was reading the daily farm report a while ago and I saw the report on commodities and darn if there wasn’t something called…
April 1867 First Ku Klux Klan Convention Held in Nashville’s Maxwell House
The founding of America’s oldest terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, is shrouded in myth and legend. While Klan lore places its first meeting on…
“They hung three or four negroes nearly dead” The Ku Klux in Florence, Ala. Nov. 26, 1868
This account of a Ku Klux Klan occupation of Florence comes from the Democratic newspaper the Daily Phoenix. It was originally published in the Memphis…
Smithsonian Magazine on the St. Landry Parish Massacre Louisiana September 1868
Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article on the St Landry Massacre of 1868. The article is a good overview of the mass murder of African…









