?These combinations were at first purely political in their character, and many good citizens were induced to join them. But gradually under the leadership of ambitious and discontented politicians and under the pretext that society needed to be regulated by some authority outside or above the law, their character was changed, and those secret Klans began to commit murder, to rob, whip, scourge, and mutilate unoffending citizens? They met in secret, in disguise, and arms, in a dress of a certain kind intended to conceal their persons and their horses, and to terrify those whom they menaced or assaulted. They held their camps, and under leaders they decreed judgment against their peaceable fellow-citizens from mere intimidations to scourgings, mutilations, the burning of churches, schoolhouses, mills, and in many cases to murder. This organization, under different names but cemented by a common purpose, is believed to have embraced not less than 40,000 voters in North Carolina.? (DuBois, 533-534)
By 1871, their membership grew to 550,000 and their heinous and corrupt activities began. It has been documented that they lynched 34 African American women for being ?sassy? during this period but this is just the written evidence. The real evidence of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan is in the decline in the strides for equality that African Americans made during this era. The KKK, as they are called, is considered the invisible government of the South which coexisted with the developments of legal methods of segregation and disenfranchisement to keep African Americans in a racially subordinate status. This was the primary goal for the KKK and this purpose would have been defeated had it not have been for support from the Federal government. After legal segregation was placed into law in the South, the KKK experienced a high decline in membership primarily because many of its members felt that the goal of the organization had been fulfilled. The remaining members made certain that the goals of the KKK stayed in place for as long as possible.
The stage was set during Reconstruction to keep African Americans in a subordinate position in American society. No matter how many accomplishments we seem to produce, there is always something established by the White power structure to offset or counter our achievements. I believe that no matter what we say or do to contribute to this society, they will not be satisfied until we return to our original positions as slaves because that is the primary reason we were brought to this unyielding land. Yet, as Maya Angelou so eloquently stated, ?still we rise?. There must be something distinguished about a race to have endured what we have and still have survived when the odds were against us. We have already won the war here in America but it is up to them to abandon denial of this fact so we can all uplift society under a new reconstruction called true equality.
476
DuBois, William Edward Burghardt. Black Reconstruction
in America. Russell and Russell: New York, 1963.
Franklin, John Hope. Reconstruction after the Civil War. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1961.
Franklin, V.P. Black Self-Determination. Lawrence Hill and
Company: Connecticut, 1984.