Nelson Green Gill was a state legislator and school organizer in Mississippi. [1] He organized a school for African American students in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Mrs. Gill was also involved with the school. [2] He represented Marshall County, Mississippi in the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1874 and 1875. [3] [4] He was white. He was a Republican. [5]
From Illinois, Gill served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. [6] He lived in Mississippi after the war and was appointed sheriff and to the board of supervisors. He represented Marshall County, Mississippi in the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1874 and 1875 and as sergeant at arms. [7] [8]
He served as a Freedmen's Bureau agent in Holly Springs, Mississippi after the American Civil War. [9] A Democratic Party spokesman passed a death threat to him from the Ku Klux Klan. [10] but assassination attempt against him by the Klan failed. [10] He worked to organize African Americans in Oxford, Mississippi into a Loyal League. [11] [8] [12]
Gill was critical of abuses of apprenticeship laws including the binding of a teenager to her former slaveowner instead of letting her live with her mother. [13]
Gill was targeted for his political activities and because he fraternized with African Americans. [14]
He served as president of the board of supervisors from 1869 to 1871. [15]
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, Southern Jurisdiction from 1859 to 1891.
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of an American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organization and hate group. Various historians, including Fergus Bordewich, have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist group. There have been three distinct iterations with various targets relative to time and place, including African Americans, Jews, and Catholics.
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.
Oscar Wilder Underwood was an American lawyer and politician from Alabama, and also a candidate for President of the United States in 1912 and 1924. He was the first formally designated floor leader in the United States Senate, and the only individual to serve as the Democratic leader in both the Senate and the United States House of Representatives.
John Tyler Morgan was an American politician who was a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and later was elected for six terms as the U.S. Senator (1877–1907) from the state of Alabama. A prominent slaveholder before the Civil War, he became the second Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama during the Reconstruction era. Morgan and fellow Klan member Edmund W. Pettus became the ringleaders of white supremacy in Alabama and did more than anyone else in the state to overthrow Reconstruction efforts in the wake of the Civil War. When President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched U.S. Attorney General Amos Akerman to prosecute the Klan under the Enforcement Acts, Morgan was arrested and jailed.
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.
This is a partial list of notable historical figures in U.S. national politics who were members of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan, or was supported at the polls by Klan members.
Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. was an American white supremacist who co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Previously, he was a Grand Dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed to his position by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Bowers was responsible for instigating and planning the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by members of his Klan chapter near Philadelphia, Mississippi, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, 32 years after the crime. He also was accused of being involved in the 1967–1968 bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian. He died in prison at the age of 82.
Henry Lowndes Muldrow was an American politician who served as the First Assistant Secretary of the Interior in the first Cleveland administration. Prior to this he served as U.S. Representative from Mississippi's 1st congressional district, a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives and as an officer of the Confederate States Army who commanded a cavalry regiment in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. He was "Grand Cyclops" of the Oktibbeha County Ku Klux Klan den.
George Washington Albright was an American farmer, educator, and politician who was born enslaved in the U.S. state of Mississippi. A Republican, Albright represented the 25th District in the Mississippi State Senate from 1874 to 1879 during the end of the Reconstruction Era. In 1873, Albright won his Senate seat by defeating the Democrat E. H. Crump, a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. Albright served in the 1874-1875 session and the 1876-1877 session.
Ephraim S. Fisher was a justice of the Mississippi High Court of Errors and Appeals from 1852 to 1860. He also served in the Mississippi Senate in the 1840s and was a candidate for governor after the Civil War.
Alexander Stone was a member of Georgia's constitutional convention held in 1867 and 1868 and was an elected member of the Georgia Legislature in 1868. He was a Republican.
Oscar Haywood was an American Baptist preacher, orator, and politician from North Carolina. He was a pastor at Baptist churches in Tennessee, Connecticut, and New York City and then travelled widely giving speeches advocating for the Ku Klux Klan. He was also a book collector and had first editions and correspondence with various influential people in his collection at the Haywood Plantation house.
Samuel Fleischman, sometimes spelled Fleishman, was a clothing merchant murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the Florida Panhandle in 1869. Fleischman swore out an affidavit about the threat he received from a local Klan leader and store proprietor James Coker. Fleischman went to Tallahassee to seek protection but refused to stay out of Marianna, Florida as instructed by the Klan and was murdered during his return trip. The killing was part of a wave of attacks and unrest during the Reconstruction Era known as the Jackson County War.
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.
Orange Brunt was an American state legislator in Mississippi. He served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1874 to 1875 representing Panola County. He had a wife named Thursday and children.
Urbain Ozanne was a French-born American political organizer, sheriff, and businessman. He was a Republican Party organizer and served as sheriff in Panola County, Mississippi during the Reconstruction era. He later became a businessman in Nevada operating a mail route and hotel.
Harrison H. Truhart. was a blacksmith and state legislator in Mississippi serving as a representative from 1872 to 1875. In 1872 he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives to represent Holmes County, Mississippi along with Perry Howard and F. Stewart. In 1874, again with Perry Howard and Tenant Weatherly replacing Stewart, he represented Holmes County in the House.
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.
The First Klan is a neologism or a retronym which is used to describe the first of three distinct operational eras in the history of the Ku Klux Klan, a White supremacist domestic terrorist group in the United States. The First Klan, or the Reconstruction Klan, was followed by the Second Klan, which reached its peak in the 1920s, and finally, it was followed by the Third Klan, which has been extant since the 1960s. According to historian Carl N. Degler, "Aside from the name, about the only common trait that the three Klans possess is vigilantism."