Category: Ku Klux Klan
“A Lodge of That Famous Klan Will Soon Be Formed In Every Village” Tenn. March, 1868
As the Ku Klux Klan garnered national headlines for its terrorism in 1868, many white-owned Southern newspapers took the side of the Klan. They were…
Ku Klux Parade With a Supernatural Element Tennessee February 1868
The Memphis Daily Avalanche was a conservative newspaper that often appeared to support the Ku Klux Klan. Like other papers that gave aid to the…
Torturing a Black Man: The First New York Times Article on the Klan January 1868
On January 20, 1868 The New York Times published its first article on the KKK, which it referred to as the “Kuklux Klan”. Members of…
Black Troops Engage in Anti-Klan Operations in Tennesee in February 1868
The Klan did not simply run roughshod over the countryside in 1868. Army detachments, including black U.S. soldiers, were sent to combat the Klan. One…
“Threats Against Teachers of Colored Schools” by the Klan Tennessee March 1868
Freedmen’s schools were an early and frequent target of the Ku Klux Klan. This article reports that the teachers of black children were being expelled…
Negro School Burned by White Men-Outrages of the KuKlux Klans Tennessee Feb. 1868
A particular target of white terror groups were black schoolhouses. The schoolhouse and the church were often the most visible outward signs of the free…
The First Time the Ku Klux Klan Was Covered in a National Newspaper Was for a Murder Jan. 18, 1868
While the Ku Klux Klan would later claim that it had begun life on Christmas Eve, 1865, historians now believe it started six months later….
Ku Klux Klan Appeared at 1867 Version of a Renaissance Faire in Tennessee
One of the odder events one encounters in reading Southern newspapers of the Reconstruction Era is the propensity of elite whites to organize Medieval–style tournaments…
KKK Raiders Defeated by “Negroes” in Livingston, Tenn. Dec. 30, 1868
The Ku Klux Klan rampaged through Tennessee in 1868, but as this article demonstrates, the local African American communities were ready to risk everything to…
John B. Gordon to Black Voters “We opposed your freedom…because we had bought you” Sept. 1868
Former Confederate General John B. Gordon “reached out” to Black voters during the 1868 campaign to assure them that he and other whites had opposed…