History Minute (075): KKK, White Supremacy, domestic terrorism

The Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups were organized by the southern white oligarchy, leveraging their economic power to persuade politicians to vote for business legislation that favored white supremacy. Constitutional Amendments and laws calling for equal treatment were rendered meaningless in the face of actual and threatened violence that began almost immediately after the war ended.

• May 1866 in Memphis, Tennessee: 46 Black men, mostly veterans of the Union army, and 2 White sympathizers were murdered by rampaging Whites, and 5 women were raped. 90 homes, 12 schools, and 4 churches were burned.
• Summer 1866 in New Orleans: A riot against Blacks resulted in the deaths of 35 Blacks and 3 Whites. 
• Between 1867 and 1871 in Kentucky: 116 acts of violence including:
• multiple men hung after being taken by mobs
• a disguised mob beats a 60 year-old.
• killings by Ku Klux Klan
• 1875: Mississippi Senator and former enslaved person, Charles Caldwell, was shot by a White gang.

Read more! 

A People's History of the United States 

Howard Zinn 

Get your copy — Support your local bookstores by shopping Bookshop.org — https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-people-s-history-of-the-united-states-1492-to-present-revised-and-updated-edition-howard-zinn/7e243f9bc6464a2e?ean=9780062397348&next=t 

 — or — 

find it at Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/a-peoples-history-of-the-united-states/id1046889377