Monday Floyd | |
---|---|
Member of the GeorgiaHouseofRepresentatives from the Morgan County district | |
In office 1868 –1868 Original 33 | |
Member of the GeorgiaHouseofRepresentatives from the Morgan County district | |
In office 1870–? | |
Personal details | |
Political party | Republican |
Monday Floyd was a carpenter and Republican State Representative,who was elected to two terms in the Georgia House of Representatives during the Reconstruction Era. As one of several emancipated African Americans who were elected to public office,Floyd faced considerable resistance. He received a threatening note from the Ku Klux Klan promising that there would be no more "Negro" legislators in Georgia,and requesting him to leave town. [1]
Elected in 1868,he was among the 25 of 29 African American legislators in Georgia who were blocked from taking office. After federal intervention he was able to be seated after the 1870 election. In December 1870 he was threatened and shot,while in his home in Madison,Georgia,by the Ku Klux Klan. Three days later the Klan returned and Floyd fled to Atlanta. [2] [3]
He testified before the U.S. Congress in 1871 on the threats he had received. [4]
Albert Pike was an American author,poet,orator,editor,lawyer,jurist and Confederate States Army general who served as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in exile from 1864 to 1865. He had previously served as a senior officer of the Confederate States Army,commanding the District of Indian Territory in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A prominent member of the Freemasons,Pike served as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council,Scottish Rite from 1859 to 1891.
The Ku Klux Klan,commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan,is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist,far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. The Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets are African Americans,Hispanics,Jews,Latinos,Asian Americans,Native Americans,Italian Americans,Irish Americans,and Catholics,as well as immigrants,leftists,homosexuals,Muslims,atheists,and abortion providers.
Amos Tappan Akerman was an American politician who served as United States Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant from 1870 to 1871. A native of New Hampshire,Akerman graduated from Dartmouth College in 1842 and moved South,where he spent most of his career. He first worked as headmaster of a school in North Carolina and as a tutor in Georgia. Having become interested in law,Akerman studied and passed the bar in Georgia in 1850;where he and an associate set up a law practice. He also owned a farm and enslaved eleven people. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861,Akerman joined the Confederate Army,where he achieved the rank of colonel.
The grand wizard is the national leader of several different Ku Klux Klan organizations in the United States and abroad.
Thomas William Hardwick was an American politician from the U.S. state of Georgia who served as governor of Georgia,a United States Senator from Georgia,a member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia,and a member of the Georgia House of Representatives.
George Washington Gordon was a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. After the war,he practiced law in Pulaski,Tennessee,where the Ku Klux Klan was formed. He became one of the Klan's first members. In 1867,Gordon became the Klan's first Grand Dragon for the Realm of Tennessee,and wrote its "Precept," a book describing its organization,purpose,and principles. He was also a member of the United States House of Representatives for the 10th congressional district of Tennessee.
Benjamin Harvey Hill was a politician who is credited with helping inaugurate Georgia's Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta on July 23,1868,in a speech that invoked the use of violence against the governor,the legislature,and freed people during Congressional Reconstruction. His career spanned state and national politics,and the Civil War. He served in the Georgia legislature in both houses. Although he had opposed secession in 1860,he represented Georgia as a Confederate senator during the conflict.
At the end of the American Civil War,the devastation and disruption in the state of Georgia were dramatic. Wartime damage,the inability to maintain a labor force without slavery,and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production. The state's chief cash crop,cotton,fell from a high of more than 700,000 bales in 1860 to less than 50,000 in 1865,while harvests of corn and wheat were also meager. The state government subsidized construction of numerous new railroad lines. White farmers turned to cotton as a cash crop,often using commercial fertilizers to make up for the poor soils they owned. The coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war.
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) nomenclature has evolved over the order's nearly 160 years of existence. The titles and designations were first laid out in the original Klan's prescripts of 1867 and 1868,then revamped with William J. Simmons's Kloran of 1916. Subsequent Klans have made various modifications.
The National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a Klan faction that has been in existence since November 1963. In the sixties,the National Knights were the main competitors against Robert Shelton's United Klans of America.
Alfred Richardson (1837?–1872) was a member of the Georgia Assembly in the U.S. State of Georgia,representing Clarke County. An African American,he entered government service after the U.S. Civil War during the Reconstruction era. Richardson faced hostility,intimidation,and physical attacks representing Clarke County. Richardson survived two shooting attacks by the Ku Klux Klan. In 1872 Richardson testified to a congressional committee that it was not safe for him to go home so he was staying in Athens,Georgia,and that many other "Colored" people had been forced to flee their farms in fear. He also spoke about being attacked and shot at at his house by men in disguise and said that he had been threatened,told of many instances of whippings,and that fellow "Colored" people were told that they should vote for Democrats or not vote at all.
Joseph Adkins was a minister and state senator in Georgia during the Reconstruction Era after the American Civil War. He was a Republican who represented Warren County,Georgia. He supported civil rights for African Americans and reported racially motivated violence by the Ku Klux Klan. He was murdered in May 1869,after having led a delegation to Washington,D.C. to obtain military protection against widespread acts of violence by the Klan.
The "Original 33" were the first 33 African-American members of the Georgia General Assembly. They were elected to office in 1868,during the Reconstruction era. They were among the first African-American state legislators in the United States. Twenty-four of the members were ministers. Upon taking office,white Democrats,then a minority in the Assembly,conspired with enough white Republicans to expel the African-American legislators from the Assembly in September 1868. The next year,the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that African Americans had the right to hold office in Georgia. The expelled legislators were reinstated and took office in January 1870.
Josiah Sherman was a Georgia state senator during the Reconstruction era. He was from Vermont. He sat in the 80th Georgia General Assembly from 1869 to 1870. Emma Spaulding Bryant boarded with Sherman and his wife on the outskirts of Atlanta.
Thomas Housch Benton is an American Republican politician who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from the 31st district from 2005 to 2023. He has been repeatedly criticized for neo-Confederate comments.
David Timothy Corbin was a Reconstruction era lawyer,officer in the Union Army,prisoner of war,U.S. Attorney,state senator,U.S. Senator-elect,and judge in South Carolina. He was from Vermont and came south with the Freedmen's Bureau to Charleston,South Carolina.
On October 17,1871,U.S. President Ulysses Grant declared nine South Carolina counties to be in active rebellion,and suspended habeas corpus. The order allowed federal troops,under the command of Major Lewis Merrill,to execute mass-arrests and begin the process of crushing the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan in federal court. Merrill reported 169 arrests in York County before January 1872. Numerous Klansmen fled the state,and more were quieted by fear of prosecution. Nearly 500 men surrendered to Merrill voluntarily,gave confessions or evidence,and were released. At the Fourth Federal Circuit Court session in Columbia,South Carolina beginning November 1871,United States District Attorney David T. Corbin and South Carolina Attorney General Daniel H. Chamberlain convicted 5 Klansmen in trial court,and secured convictions based on confession from 49 others. In the next Fourth Federal Circuit Court session in Charleston,South Carolina in April 1872,Corbin convicted 86 more Klansmen. Klan activities vanished while prosecutions were ongoing and publicized,but,by the end of 1872,federal will dissolved in the face of waning Republican support for Reconstruction. At the end of 1872 some 1,188 Enforcement Act cases remained to be tried. White Northern interests began to seek a more conciliatory relationship with Southern states,and lamented Southern papers' exaggerated tales of "bayonet rule." During the summer of 1873,President Grant announced a policy of clemency for those Klansmen who had not yet been tried,and pardon for those who had. The remaining cases were not tried,and prosecutions under the Enforcement Acts were all but abandoned after 1874.
The House Select Committee on Reconstruction was a select committee which existed the United States House of Representatives during the 40th and 41st Congresses with a focus related to the Reconstruction Acts. The 39th Congress had had a similar joint committee called the United States Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction.
On the evening of October 20,1870,Wade Perrin,a Republican Party member of the South Carolina House of Representatives,was assassinated by a group of white men affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. The murder took place in present-day Joanna,South Carolina,in rural southeastern Laurens County. Perrin had been re-elected to a second term in the legislature the day before,but riots in and around Laurens County on the day of the election spurred violence towards at least a dozen Republican members-elect,most of them African Americans. After being caught by the men and being made to dance,sing,and pray,they ordered Perrin to run away,at which point he was shot dead. He was found lying in the street with his pockets turned inside out. Perrin was honored with a funeral service held in the House chambers on January 31,1871,with the House and State Senate both present. A total of six men were ultimately charged for Perrin's murder,as well as the murders of several other black legislators under similar circumstances.
Allen Pardee Huggins (1839-1916) was a Union Army soldier,Freedmen’s Bureau official,sheriff,county school superintendent,tax official,and state legislator in Mississippi.