Ku Klux Klan Secrets Exposed Part 2

REPORT OF OFFENSES VARIES

The report of the congressional committee is a recital varying from mirth to murder. In one county the victim of the hooded Klan might be an itinerant minister who had offended by teaching a negro mammy to pray. Next door a Ku-Klux sign, with a coffin painted in blood, might be hung over the dead body of a "bad" negro whose freedom had made him officious.

One negro was whipped for stealing a beef. Another was tarred and feathered because his daughter ran away from the white man who had employed her.

Colored cooks were beaten for talking saucily to their southern mistresses. Northern white women were threatened for hiring colored cooks.

IGNORES NOTE, DIES

When a negro ignored a note carrying the Ku-Klux skull and cross bones and voted "republican" instead of "conservative," his body, ornamented with skull and bones in blood, might be found the next morning in the middle of the road--lifeless.

The congressional minutes report a bold, public display of the Klan's official orders. They might appear in a whisk of the wind on the post office window. They might be pinned on a tree or pole or building. On one occasion, when a member of the Klan was on trial in a county court, a band of white masquers, riding through the courtyard on horse, dropped a note addressed to the court, grand jury and sheriff.

"Go slow," it commanded. At the bottom was a drawing of a coffin and on each side a rope. The signature was "K.K.K."

Ku-Klux rule in the south half a century ago was an attempt to govern by masque.

Secret covenants arrived at by a sheeted brotherhood, veiled signs, orders written in blood and posted at midnight on the victim's door--by such means did the Klan subst.i.tute the masque for the ballot.

Congressional investigating committees who stripped the night-riding organization of secrecy during the administration of President Grant, were entertained during a session of congress by tales of lares and lemures howling at night in fields or on crossroads, bad luck omens for the negroes.

UNDER MARTIAL LAW

In organization the Klan was military, and its town, county and state rule, as recorded in the Congressional Globe, operated as under martial law.

As the revolt of the white southerner to colored and northern domination reared itself into giant-size, towns under Klan domination came to take their rule and law from the K.K.K. note, flapping in the wind on a tree or fencepost, with the coffin on its signature, urging that it be obeyed.

WARN CARPET BAGGERS

In South Carolina, according to the report of the federal committee, townsfolk journeyed to the postoffice, not to get their mail, but to read the daily Ku-Klux bulletin. One such, reprinted in the ten-volume report of the committee which examined southern outrages, was a warning against further "carpet bagger" administration. It is as follows:

Headquarters, Ninth Division, S.C.

Special Orders, No. 3, K.K.K.

Ignorance is the curse of G.o.d.

For that reason we are determined that members of the legislature, the school committee and the county commissioners of Union county shall no longer officiate.

Fifteen days' notice from this date is given, and if they, and all, do not at once and forever resign their present inhuman, disgraceful and outrageous rule, then retributive justice will as surely be used as night follows day.

By order of the Grand Chief, A.O., Grand Secretary.

THREATEN NEGROES FOR FIRES

Another "special order," this one warning that the colored race in general would be punished for all malicious fires in particular, was made public in the Charleston News, Jan. 31, 1871.

Headquarters, K.K.K.

January 22, 1871.

Resolved: That in all cases of incendiarism, ten of the leading colored people and two white sympathizers shall be executed.

That if any armed bands of colored people are found hereafter picketing the roads, the officers of the company to which the pickets belong shall be executed.

Southern speakers on the floor of the house in the debates which preceded the pa.s.sage of the "act to enforce the fourteenth amendment,"

traced the origin of the Ku-Klux to the Union league, an a.s.sociation in the south composed chiefly of northerners. Charges were also made by statesmen once in the confederate army that "Tammany Hall" in New York furnished arms to the Klanists, in order that they might murder southern republicans.

SUPPRESSED IN 1871

When the act suppressing the Klan was approved by President Grant on April 20, 1871, it was estimated that the night riders were operating in eleven states of the south. Six months later, in October, President Grant issued a proclamation calling on members of illegal a.s.sociations in nine counties in South Carolina to disperse and surrender their arms and disguises in five days.

Five days afterwards, another proclamation was issued suspending the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus in the counties named. More than 200 persons were arrested within a few days. It is believed that the Ku-Klux Klan was practically overthrown by the middle of the following January.

CHAPTER II

THE NEW KU KLUX KLAN

_Must Every Citizen be a Slave of Fear Spread by Masked Night-Riders, or Will He Live under the Protection of the Const.i.tution of the United States?_

Are you a citizen of the United States? If you are it is to your interest to inform yourself about the Ku-Klux Klan. As a citizen you are under the protection of the const.i.tution of the United States. The Ku Klux Klan has set itself above the const.i.tution. It has made laws of its own. Its members have inaugurated a reign of lawlessness that may drag you out of your bed at midnight and submit you to a coat of tar and feathers through the whims of some neighbor who does not like the country in which you were born, or who objects to your religion, your color, your opinions, your personal habits or anything else about you that does not suit his fancy.

The const.i.tution guarantees that your house, your person and your papers and effects are free from unlawful search and seizure; that you cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, which law must be publicly enforced in G.o.d's suns.h.i.+ne by persons legally chosen; that when you are accused of any delinquency or crime you shall have a speedy, public trial before a judge and an impartial jury; that you may be a member of any religious denomination or sect with whom you may wors.h.i.+p as you please; that you have the right of free speech; that you cannot be held in involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime, for which you have been found guilty in a legal way; that you cannot be denied the right to vote on account of your color.

MASKED MEN DEFY CONSt.i.tUTION

Masked riders of the night disagree with these guarantees of freedom.

They break into your house under cover of darkness unlawfully seize your person and ride away with you, depriving you of liberty without due process of law. They accuse you of charges that may or may not be true, without giving you the opportunity of knowing the ident.i.ty of your accusers, because they are masked. They try you without giving you a chance to defend yourself. They make themselves accuser, judge, jury and executioner. They deny that you have the right to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d as you please. They deny your right to free speech, because they forbid you to criticise what they do.

The Ku Klux Klan clamps involuntary servitude on its own members by making them take oaths to uphold their leaders, even when they violate the const.i.tution. It aims to place those whom it opposes under its heel. It openly defies the article of the const.i.tution that guarantees race equality, by binding its members to put the black race under the supremacy of the white.

The American const.i.tution says that if you were born abroad, but have become a naturalized citizen of the United States, you have as many rights here as though you were actually born here. The Ku Klux Klan is against the const.i.tution on that point. The Ku Klux Klan wants to make the foreigner a serf.

The Ku Klux Klan has set itself up as a regulator of morals. Persons against whom there has been neighborhood gossip have been tarred and feathered. Thanks to the _New York World_, court records have been published showing that some of the highest persons in the Ku Klux have been involved in proceedings as disgraceful as those for which tar and feather parties have been organized by the Klan or persons masquerading as Ku Klux.

MISTREAT WHITES AND BLACKS

Men and women, white and black--have been mistreated by masked men.