Extended Summary
Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group is an overview of the Ku Klux Klan’s early history written for a young adult audience. Bartoletti explains that the Ku Klux Klan’s origins can best be understood within the context of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The Civil War led to Abraham Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” as well as the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery in America. However, the South’s plantation economy relied on slavery. Furthermore, Southerners believed that God had created blacks to serve whites. When the Northern armies defeated the South, they united the country and nominally freed the slaves, but they also disrupted the economic and social customs of the South.
President Abraham Lincoln famously intended that Reconstruction take place with “malice toward none, with charity toward all.” However, President Lincoln was assassinated before that vision could be made a reality. His successor, Andrew Johnson, quickly set out to rebuild the South. Bartoletti explains that he encouraged the Southern states to create the Black Codes, a set of laws that cruelly undermined the freedom of Southern blacks. Johnson’s actions were later put in check by the American Congress, which passed the Civil Rights Act to counter the Black Codes. Unfortunately, the passing of an ideal could not instantly overcome the reality of racial prejudice. For many Southern whites, the Civil War was now lamented as the Lost Cause. Many feared that the freed blacks would overturn traditions of racial stratification, and worse.
Against this background, six Tennessee men—John Lester, Calvin Jones, Richard Reed, James Crowe, Frank McCord, and John Kennedy—decided to form a club. Bartoletti explains that the group’s creation was inspired by Kuklos Adelphon, a Southern college fraternity that disbanded during the war. The group was originally to be named “Kuklos,” which is Greek for “circle.” However, in the hope of adding mystique, they adapted “kuklos” to “ku klux” and then added “klan,” which also means circle. Bartoletti concludes:
The name Ku Klux Klan was cobbled together, a redundant, alliterative name that meant, simply and ridiculously, “circle circle.”
Fashioning for themselves titles like “Grand Cyclops” and “Grand Magi,” the six men began dressing as ghosts in bed sheets and riding their horses at night.
Before long, the Klansmen began to associate themselves with the Lost Cause. The Klansmen did not dress as simply any ghosts—they were the ghosts of Confederate soldiers. Their early antics moved from crashing parties to patrolling the roads, where they terrorized freedmen. Bartoletti includes testimony from blacks whose houses were invaded by the Klan. Meanwhile, the controversies of the Southern restoration—which included blacks being able to vote in the South but not the North and the South remaining under martial law—fueled Southern resentment against the North and against the freedmen. Within a year, the Ku Klux Klan had become a gathering place for Confederate soldiers. It had also become a place that brought together and mobilized racial prejudice against blacks.
The Klan rapidly became organized with new titles and positions and even a constitution created at a conference. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was given control of the organization. People quickly joined the Klan, though many claimed to have been coerced into it. Before long, Klansmen had begun to see themselves as law enforcers rather than lawbreakers. Their “law enforcement” resulted in their anonymously traveling at night and beating people who opposed the Klan’s aims. Many blacks were beaten for attempting to vote. Bartoletti explains that white Republicans who pushed for equality were beaten as well—one man was even pistol whipped by a...
(This entire section contains 1860 words.)
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group of Klansmen. Bartoletti concludes that most men joined the Ku Klux Klan out of fear, either of the Klan or that the Southern Reconstruction would cause them to lose their jobs.
As the conflict between Klansmen and those they terrorized escalated, so too did the political battle between Congress and President Andrew Johnson. Johnson was impeached, and the following election, which saw Union General Ulysses S. Grant become president, was a divisive and violent time in the South. Freed blacks were forming leagues to learn how to vote and to learn about politics. Meanwhile, the Ku Klux Klan was attacking blacks and whites who promoted equality. Although many Southern whites feared that blacks would take over the South, Bartoletti points out that blacks were elected in proportion to their electorate and whites continued to be the elected majority. After Grant was elected President, Nathan Bedford Forrest attempted to disband the Ku Klux Klan, which he apparently felt had gotten out of his control. Unfortunately, Ku Klux Klan dens had indeed gotten out of control, and Klansmen continued to harass the South.
Life for the freed people was difficult, but it went on. With the support of the Freedman’s Bureau, Bartoletti explains, many blacks were able to bargain for better deals. For example, they could refuse to work in labor gangs under an overseer. For someone like the freed man George Taylor, sharecropping was a practical compromise during the Reconstruction. Sharecropping allowed willing white landowners to share the profits of their crops with the blacks, thus providing blacks with an income and white landowners with a workforce. But George Taylor was attacked by a group of Klansmen one night, and he fled. Ironically, the white supremacists were driving away black workers.
Other blacks were denied their profits by whites, but that was hardly the worst of what happened to blacks during this time. Bartoletti tells the story of freed woman Hannah Tutson, who bought three acres of land with her husband, Samuel. Klansmen threatened her and demanded that she give up the land, but she remained resolute. At night, a group broke in their home, beat her husband, brutalized her children, and finally whipped and raped Hannah. Hannah reported the men responsible to the authorities, but they were acquitted. Finally, Hannah was arrested and fined for filing a false report.
The law in the South may have been all too willing to acquit rapists as men who were just playing a “good joke” on blacks, but progress continued to be made. The Freedman’s Bureau began organizing public education for the freed persons. Bartoletti explains that many of the teachers were white missionaries and abolitionists from the North but that by 1879 fifty percent of the teachers were black. Considering that just 150,000 out of 4,000,000 former slaves were literate at the end of the Civil War, the Freedman’s Bureau had plenty of work to do. Complicating things, many whites, both in the North and especially in the South, felt that literacy was not necessary for the lower classes or blacks. Bartoletti explains that public education robbed Southern plantation owners of workers. Others objected to the curriculum, arguing that it “undermined the notion of white supremacy.”
Once more, the Klansmen surfaced to terrorize anything they felt promoted racial equality. In Alabama, America Tramblies was murdered for boarding a white woman. The Klansmen appear to have been opposed to whites spending time with blacks. However, Bartoletti explains that many teachers who came to the South were harassed and denied board to drive away outsiders who would promote equality. The Klan took the law into their own hands and hanged one teacher, William Luke, out of fear that he was leading a black rebellion. The Klan went on to attack blacks who could read for being “uppity,” and they burned down schoolhouses. Although the violence continued, Bartoletti notes that by 1872, when the Freedman’s Bureau was disbanded, 250,000 black children were attending school. It was just twelve percent of the black population in the South, but the number is nearly as high as the number of white children attending school at that time and place.
The public school was not the only means of social reform active during the Reconstruction. Bartoletti explains:
To the Black community, the church was more than a church: It was a movement to transform the mind and the spirit of the former slaves.
Before Emancipation, slaves were required to listen to sermons promoting obedience and loyalty to their masters. Now preachers like Elias Hill promoted equality and political action. As Southern whites saw more black churches formed, they recalled the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831. Throughout the South, the Klan began attacking black community churches, churchgoers, and ministers. Before long, hundreds of terrified South Carolina blacks fled their cabins to hide in swamps.
In an effort to restore order, Robert K. Scott, Republican governor of South Carolina, chartered black militia groups. Some blacks “waged a war of retribution.” Fires became commonplace. Before long, the Klan posted a notice that
in all cases of incendiarism, ten of the leading colored people and two white sympathizers shall be executed in that vicinity.
The blacks tried to broker a peace, but the Klan attacked them nevertheless. Although they faced continued beatings and murders at the hands of the Klan, the black clergy continued to call for freedom and equality for all Americans.
With reports of injustices such as hangings and lynchings going unpunished throughout the South, President Ulysses S. Grant was forced to respond. In 1871, he signed an act that would become known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which enforced the Fourteenth Amendment and made it a federal offense to interfere with a person’s rights to vote, hold office, serve on a jury, or be protected by the law. It also made it illegal for groups to conspire or wear disguises to intimate or harm or obstruct justice. Most importantly, it made it possible for the federal government to intervene. Now it was possible for people like Samuel and Hannah Tutson to obtain justice. Federal raids on Ku Klux Klan dens were made; however, many Klan leaders, including Nathan Bedford Forrest, were granted immunity in exchange for their testimony. Although he actually refused to cooperate as a witness, he was set free.
Historians are divided over the consequences of the Ku Klux Klan trials. Some argue that they restored order to the South, while others argue that they allowed thousands of crimes to be swept under the rug. When Rutherford B. Hayes was elected in 1876, he removed federal troops from the South, ending the Reconstruction. Over time, the Democrats gained control in the South and passed a series of laws that became known as the “Jim Crow laws,” which were designed to erode black rights and segregate the black population. Meanwhile, the Lost Cause began to be portrayed as a noble defense of the South, and even the Klan was revised as a collection of noblemen in D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation, which led to a resurgence of Klan activity in the 1920s. The Ku Klux Klan continued to resurface during the 1960s. Bartoletti points out that the Klan and other white supremacist groups survive today
at the fringes of the conservative right or as a separate political party or with no political affiliation at all.
Thankfully, their influence has never again reached the power they had during the Reconstruction.
