An ominous anniversary

An article in Palmetto Politics, a newsletter published by the Post and Courier and written by Thomas Novelly, notes that the year 2021 is the 150th anniversary of federal attempts to prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan who were terrorizing freed Blacks in South Carolina. In April of 1871, President Grant sent federal troops to arrest those who sought to deprive former enslaved Africans of their newly attained constitutional rights. Initially, large numbers of the paramilitary groups were arrested and 1,300 people were indicted. Only 23 ended up being convicted, and the effort served only to infuriate those who opposed federal intervention. In the article, Walter Edgar is quoted as saying, “Instead of suppressing the white insurgency, the feeble federal show of force encouraged it.” Thus these paramilitary groups, largely known as the Ku Klux Klan, grew in numbers and escalated their violence against Blacks.

To read more about the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, you might want to read the following:

State of rebellion: reconstruction in South Carolina, Richard Zuczek

The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 1971-1872, Lou Falkner Williams

Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy, Edward Ball

(note–while this book is not set in South Carolina, its author is a descendent of Isaac Ball, a fifth generation of the Ball family that inherited a planation near Charleston, SC and owned 571 enslaved people. His book Slaves in the Family won the National Book Award in 1998.)