Violence and Intimidation

• Attempts to settle former slaves on confiscated land had been met with brutal opposition. In Memphis 1866, 46 AA were killed in race riots, and 35 died in New Orleans.
• In the early 1900s, it was possible to practically segregate residential areas by intimidation and refusal to rent or sell. This occurred throughout the north as well as the south.
• By the 1890s, on average, and AA was brutally killed every two days.
• The murder of 14 year old Emmet Till by two white men in Mississippi in August 1955, and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury after an hour’s deliberation shocked the USA.
• Pictures of southern mobs abusing a black school girl at Little Rock in 1957 were bad for America’s image.
• High unemployment, poverty, poor schools and unfair treatment by police led to race riots in the summer of 1965. The worst were in Watts, LA where 34 people died.
• There were 1700 AA deaths between 1885 and 1894.
• The KKK was a secret society formed in Tennessee in December 1865.
• The KKK used intimidation methods such as white hoods, flaming crosses and secret oaths, as well as physically attacking, beating, lynching and murdering AA.
• The KKK spread the myth of ‘savage’ black men and played into fears of black men raping white women.
• The KKK targeted Freedmen’s Bureau members in the 1860s and civil rights workers in the 1950s and 60s.
• The Klan caused considerable violence, with 2000 deaths and injuries in Louisiana alone in the run up to the 1868 presidential election.
• The Klan’s methods actually encouraged Republicans and AA to unite against them. Indictments by federal courts began to have their effect by the early 1870s and the Klan was not strong enough to resist federal powers.
• The Klan was reborn in 1915 as a result of the film ‘The Birth of a Nation’ which portrayed the Koan as part of a heroic struggle against northern and black domination.
• After the Klan’s 1915 revival, it attracted anti-urban, anti-immigrant Protestant racists. It’s enemies now included Jews, Catholics, foreigners and opponents to prohibition, as well as AA. This meant it’s effects on AA civil rights were much less.
• By the mid 1920s, the Klan was in decline. Attacks continued but violence was sporadic.
• Klan membership fell from 4 million in 1920 to 30,000 in 1930.
• There were attacks on the homes of NAACP members in Florida in 1951.
• The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed in 1963, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. However, the continued violence encourage greater energy into law enforcement.
• The White Citizen’s Council formed in the South after the 1954 Brown decision. Their membership was more middle class than Klan but also wanted to intimidate AA into not claiming their rights. They used violence but also economic power e.g. pressuring insurance companies to cancel policies of AAs.