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 at various times have been African Americans, as well as Jews and Catholics.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
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.
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that the U.S. Bill of Rights did not limit the power of private actors or state governments despite the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reversed the federal criminal convictions for the civil rights violations committed in aid of anti-Reconstruction murders. Decided during the Reconstruction Era, the case represented a major defeat for federal efforts to protect the civil rights of African Americans.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended, in the wake of the American Civil War, to protect the civil rights of persons of African descent born in or brought to the United States.
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.
The Enforcement Acts were three bills that were passed by the United States Congress between 1870 and 1871. They were criminal codes that protected African Americans’ right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. Passed under the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the laws also allowed the federal government to intervene when states did not act to protect these rights. The acts passed following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which gave full citizenship to anyone born in the United States or freed slaves, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which banned racial discrimination in voting.
The grand wizard is the national leader of several different Ku Klux Klan organizations in the United States and abroad.
The Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, Third Enforcement Act, Third Ku Klux Klan Act, Civil Rights Act of 1871, or Force Act of 1871, is an Act of the United States Congress which empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other terrorist organizations who had terrorized and murdered innocent African Americans, public officials, and white sympathizers in the previous Confederate States of America. The act was passed by the 42nd United States Congress and signed into law by United States President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20, 1871. The act was the last of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks upon the suffrage rights of African Americans. The statute has been subject to only minor changes since then, but has been the subject of voluminous interpretation by courts.
David Perley Lowe was an American lawyer and politician who served two terms as a representative from Kansas from 1871 to 1875.
The Naturalization Act of 1870 was a United States federal law that created a system of controls for the naturalization process and penalties for fraudulent practices. It is also noted for extending the naturalization process to "aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent" while also maintaining exclusion of the process to naturalized Chinese Americans and other groups.
The Freedmen's Bureau bills provided legislative authorization for the Freedmen's Bureau, which was set up by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 as part of the United States Army. Following the original bill in 1865, subsequent bills sought to extend its authority and lifespan. Andrew Johnson tried to derail the bill's intention to aid freed slaves during his presidency.
Samuel Shellabarger was an American lawyer and politician who served three different stints as a Republican U.S. Representative from Ohio in the mid-19th century.
Robert Hale was a U.S. Representative from Maine, and first cousin of U.S. Senator Frederick Hale, also of Maine. A conservative, internationalist, and self-described reactionary, he was known for his unwavering advocacy of civil rights and opposition against the Ku Klux Klan.
The Enforcement Act of 1870, also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1870 or First Ku Klux Klan Act, or Force Act, is a United States federal law that empowers the President to enforce the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment throughout the United States. The act was the first of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress in 1870 and 1871, during the Reconstruction Era, to combat attacks on the voting rights of African Americans from state officials or violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
During Ulysses S. Grant's two terms as president of the United States (1869–1877) there were several executive branch investigations, prosecutions, and reforms carried-out by President Grant, Congress, and several members of his cabinet, in the wake of several revelations of fraudulent activities within the administration. Grant's cabinet fluctuated between talented individuals or reformers and those involved with political patronage or party corruption. Some notable reforming cabinet members were persons who had outstanding abilities and made many positive contributions to the administration. These reformers resisted the Republican Party's demands for patronage to select efficient civil servants. Although Grant traditionally is known for his administration scandals, more credit has been given to him for his appointment of reformers.
The Ku Klux Klan is an organization that expanded operations into Canada, based on the second Ku Klux Klan established in the United States in 1915. It operated as a fraternity, with chapters established in parts of Canada throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The first registered provincial chapter was registered in Toronto in 1925 by two Americans and a Canadian. The organization was most successful in Saskatchewan, where it briefly influenced political activity and whose membership included a member of Parliament, Walter Davy Cowan.
Civil rights have been part of the Constitution of the United States of America, but in order to be received equally by all the population required to made amendments to the United States Constitution, this allowed to end of slavery with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, followed by women's suffrage, among other rights,
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.
Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 (1884), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States involving Congress's power to punish individuals who interfere with the right to vote in federal elections. The Court sustained the convictions of Jasper Yarbrough and seven others, who had been found guilty of beating and injuring an African-American man to prevent him from voting. The decision marked one of the few times that the post-Reconstruction Court upheld Congress's ability to protect civil rights.
