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When Was Jackie Robinson Born?

Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, to a family of sharecroppers. He was the youngest of five children.

After his father abandoned the family in 1920, they moved to Pasadena, California, where his mother, Mallie, worked a series of odd jobs to support herself and her children. Though Pasadena was a fairly affluent suburb of Los Angeles at the time, the Robinsons were poor, and Jackie and his friends in the city's small Black community were often excluded from recreational activities.

That began to change when Jackie enrolled at John Muir High School in 1935. His older brother Mack, a silver medalist in track and field at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, inspired him to pursue his interest in athletics, and the younger Robinson ultimately earned varsity letters in baseball, basketball, football and track while at Muir.

After graduating high school, Jackie attended Pasadena Junior College for two years, where he continued to have success in all four sports. Following the death of another older brother, Frank, in a motorcycle accident, Jackie decided to honor his memory by enrolling at UCLA in 1939.

There, he became the first Bruin to earn varsity letters in four sports - the same four in which he starred in high school - and he won the NCAA long jump championship in 1940. Jackie also met his future wife, Rachel, while at UCLA.

Did you know? In 1997, 50 years after Robinson integrated baseball, his number, 42, was permanently retired by every team in Major League Baseball.

Jackie Robinson in the U.S. Army

Jackie ultimately left college in the spring of his senior year, just a few credits short of his graduation. He accepted a job as an athletic administrator, but his dreams remained focused on the field of play.

He spent two years playing semi-professional football for integrated teams in leagues in Hawaii and California before being drafted into the U.S. Army in the spring of 1942, during World War II, although he never saw combat.

He was accepted into Officer Candidate School and was assigned to segregated Army units, first in Kansas and then in Texas. During this time, however, he remained close to Rachel, with whom he became engaged in 1943.

In 1944, Jackie was nearly court-martialed after he boarded a bus at Fort Hood in Texas and refused the driver's order to sit in the back, as segregationist practices in the United States dictated at the time.

He was acquitted on all the charges and court-martialed, but it has been said that his experiences during the proceedings likely shaped his response to the racist taunts he received, a few years later, from fans and fellow players at the start of his professional baseball career.

Jackie was honorably discharged from the Army in November 1944, and he took a job coaching basketball at a college in Austin, Texas.

Jackie Robinson's Professional Sports Career

In early 1945, Jackie Robinson was signed by the Negro League team the Kansas City Monarchs, where he starred for one season, hitting .387.

At the time, Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey was scouting the Negro Leagues, looking for players who not only had the talent but the demeanor to withstand the pressures associated with integrating Major League Baseball. Robinson was one of several players Rickey interviewed in August 1945 for assignment to the Dodgers' farm team in Montreal, the Royals.

It is said that during the interview, Rickey demanded that Robinson not respond when on the receiving end of racial abuse. Robinson reportedly said, "Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?" To which Rickey replied that he was looking for a person "with guts enough not to fight back."

Once Robinson agreed to "turn the other cheek," a Biblical phrase used by the religious baseball executive, he was assigned to the Royals for the 1946 season, where he was embraced by Montreal fans and batted an impressive .349. His performance both on and off the field earned him a call-up to Brooklyn the following season.

Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers

His debut with the Dodgers in 1947 was greeted with a lot of attention-not all of it positive. Although Robinson quickly proved he belonged as a player, the color of his skin was an issue for opposing teams and fans.

Hearing racist taunts from fans and players prior to a game, Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese is said to have put his arm around Robinson on the field to indicate that he was accepted by those wearing a Brooklyn uniform. Still, Robinson endured racist obscenities, hate mail and death threats for much of his career.

It was his play in the field that ultimately silenced his critics. In 1947, his first year with the Dodgers, he earned the inaugural "Rookie of the Year" award. Despite having been signed by the Dodgers at the relatively old age of 28, Robinson would go on to hit .311 over a 10-year career. He became the first Black player to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949, when he led the league in hitting with a .342 average, most stolen bases (37) and achieving a career-high 124 RBI. Robinson was an All-Star every year from 1949-1954. He led Brooklyn to a World Series championship over the rival New York Yankees in 1955.

Robinson retired after that season, and thus didn't follow the Dodgers when the club moved to Los Angeles following the 1957 campaign.

Jackie Robinson Quotes

"I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me ... all I ask is that you respect me as a human being."

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."

"Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead."

"Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life."

"There's not an American in this country free until every one of us is free."

"As I write these words now I cannot stand and sing the National Anthem. I have learned that I remain a Black in a white world."

"Above anything else, I hate to lose."

Jackie Robinson: Legacy and Death

After retiring from the Dodgers, Robinson acted as a sportscaster, worked as a business executive at Chock full o'Nuts and was active in the NAACP and other civil rights groups.

Weakened by heart disease and diabetes, Robinson died in 1972 at the age of 53 from a heart attack suffered at his home in Stamford, Connecticut.

Thousands attended his funeral service, including former teammates and other professional athletes. His eulogy was delivered by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who declared, "When Jackie took the field, something reminded us of our birthright to be free."

Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship

Following his death, his wife Rachel, by then an assistant professor in the Yale School of Nursing, established the Jackie Robinson Foundation. In addition to recognizing other trailblazers in sports, the foundation awards the Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship to minority students.

Robinson's jersey number 42 was retired by all big-league teams in 1997, meaning it could no longer be worn by any player. Those players already wearing the number were allowed to keep it.

The gesture was meant to honor Robinson's legacy and the historic impact he had on professional baseball, sports in general and, by extension, American society, and in recognition of the difficulties the athlete faced in breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier.

Jackie Robinson Movies: 'The Jackie Robinson Story' and '42'

In 1950, Robinson played himself in a movie on his life called " The Jackie Robinson Story." And in 2013, a movie about Robinson's life called " 42 " was released to critical acclaim, with his widow involved in the production.

Sources

Baseball Hall of Fame. "Jackie Robinson." BaseballHall.org.
Lamb, C. (2019). "How Jackie Robinson's wife, Rachel, helped him break baseball's color line." TheConversation.com.
Breslin, Jimmy. (2011). Branch Rickey: A Life. Penguin Random House.
Jackie Robinson: 7 memorable quotes. ABC7NY.com.
Jackie Robinson. Baseball Reference.

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Jackie Robinson, the first Black athlete to play Major League Baseball, joined the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, a date now famous as Jackie Robinson Day.

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A majority of Americans say racism remains a major problem in American society and politics, according to the latest NBC News| SurveyMonkey poll.

Overall, 64 percent said racism remains a major problem in our society. Thirty percent agreed that racism exists today, but it isn't a major problem.

The poll coincided with an MSNBC town hall airing Tuesday night titled "Everyday Racism in America," where hosts Joy-Ann Reid and Chris Hayes addressed the complex issue of racial bias in America and what can be done to address it. The town hall took place in Philadelphia, where two black men were arrested while waiting for someone in a Starbucks last month, prompting days of protests and accusations of racism against the coffee chain, and on the same day the chain closed 8,000 stores nationwide for "racial bias training."

The Starbucks arrests were just one in a string of high-profile episodes in recent weeks involving minorities who appeared to have been racially profiled while doing something innocuous - sitting in a coffee shop, barbecuing in a park, or taking a nap in a Yale common room. These incidents, which caught fire on social media, have set off a wave of protests and prompted a national conversation about facing racism in everyday life.

Pluralities of Americans said race relations in the United States are getting worse (45 percent) and think that too little attention is paid to race and racial issues (41 percent).

Overall, a 30 percent plurality think race is the biggest source of division in America today, up from 26 percent in February. Racial tensions can be tied to large national events, but the poll also finds stark differences by race focused on everyday experiences.

Four in 10 African-Americans say they have been treated unfairly in a store or restaurant because of their race in the last month, compared to a quarter of Hispanics and only 7 percent of whites.

Earlier this month, three black Airbnb guests in Southern California were detained after a white neighbor called the police. About a week later, a white Yale University student called the police when she found a black student napping in the common room of their dorm. Also in May, a video of a white woman who called the police on a black family barbecuing by a lake in Oakland, California, went viral.

In February, the restaurant chain Applebee's apologized and fired three employees for their involvement in racially profiling two African-American customers, falsely accusing them of not paying their check. A video of the incident went viral, prompting the apology.

In April, another viral video showed two black men in Philadelphia being arrested after Starbucks employees called 911 to say the men were trespassing. The company apologized and is closing stores for the afternoon on May 29 for racial sensitivity training.

Other recent incidents include ordinary citizens being harassed or questioned for speaking Spanish, such as the Manhattan attorney who berated restaurant employees on camera for speaking the language and threatening to call immigration authorities, and the Border Patrol agent who detained two women for speaking it at Montana gas station.

Racial discrimination isn't just felt in public spaces. Just under a quarter of Americans said they have experienced discrimination in the workplace based on their race, but blacks are more likely than any other racial subgroup to experience it. About half (48 percent) of African-Americans said they've experienced workplace discrimination based on their race compared to 36 percent of Hispanics and only 14 percent of whites.

There are further divides among racial subgroups when asked specifically about how each race is perceived in society. A whopping 72 percent of Americans think that racial discrimination against blacks is a serious problem in this country. While 89 percent of blacks and 81 percent of Hispanics share that sentiment, 68 percent of whites said it's a serious problem and 30 percent said it's not a serious problem.

Overall, a majority think white people benefit from advantages in society that black people do not have. Among blacks, 84 percent said white people benefit a great deal or fair amount. Among Hispanics, 71 percent said white people benefit and 25 percent said they do not. But half of white people said they don't enjoy any advantages, as compared to 47 percent of white people who said they did.

Day-to-day, overwhelming majorities of blacks (71 percent) and Hispanics (69 percent) said they interact with a mix of people from different races at work or school. A majority of whites also said they interact with a mix of different races (59 percent), but 20 percent of whites said they interact with mostly whites.

Majorities across all racial subgroups also said that during social activities in person, including time with friends, they interact with a mix of people from different races. However, 39 percent of whites said they socially interact with mostly whites.

The poll also found that Americans are split on how often they personally engage in discussions about race with family and friends. A bare majority of Americans (51 percent) say they often or sometimes talk with their friends and family about race relations, while 47 percent say they rarely or never have these types of discussions with friends and family.
The NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll was conducted May 14-21, 2018 among a national sample of 6,518 adults. Respondents for this nonprobability survey were selected from the nearly 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Results have an error estimate of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. For full results and methodology, click here.

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Poll: 64 percent of Americans say racism remains a major problem

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A majority of Americans say racism remains a major problem in American society and politics, according to the latest NBC News| SurveyMonkey poll. Overall, 64 percent said racism remains a major problem in our society. Thirty percent agreed that racism exists today, but it isn't a major problem.

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Jim Crow Laws

During Reconstruction, Black people took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for equality and the right to vote.

In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they'd once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.

To marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they'd made during Reconstruction, " Jim Crow " laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century. Black people couldn't use the same public facilities as white people, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn't vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.

Jim Crow laws weren't adopted in northern states; however, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. To make matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.

Moreover, southern segregation gained ground in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could be "separate but equal."

World War II and Civil Rights

Prior to World War II, most Black people worked as low-wage farmers, factory workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most Black Americans weren't given better-paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military.

After thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.

Black men and women served heroically in World War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the racial barrier to become the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans were met with prejudice and scorn upon returning home. This was a stark contrast to why America had entered the war to begin with-to defend freedom and democracy in the world.

As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military. These events helped set the stage for grass-roots initiatives to enact racial equality legislation and incite the civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks found a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Parks complied.

When a white man got on the bus and couldn't find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus driver instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.

As word of her arrest ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the "mother of the modern-day civil rights movement." Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr., a role which would place him front and center in the fight for civil rights.

Parks' courage incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. On November 14, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional.

Little Rock Nine

In 1954, the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school.

On September 4, 1957, nine Black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, arrived at Central High School to begin classes but were instead met by the Arkansas National Guard (on order of Governor Orval Faubus) and a screaming, threatening mob. The Little Rock Nine tried again a couple of weeks later and made it inside, but had to be removed for their safety when violence ensued.

Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine to and from classes at Central High. Still, the students faced continual harassment and prejudice.

Their efforts, however, brought much-needed attention to the issue of desegregation and fueled protests on both sides of the issue.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass.

Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the South, the Eisenhower administration pressured Congress to consider new civil rights legislation.

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a commission to investigate voter fraud.

Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter

Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter without being served.

Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known as the Greensboro sit-ins. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth's lunch counter where they'd first stood their ground.

Their efforts spearheaded peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities and helped launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to encourage all students to get involved in the civil rights movement. It also caught the eye of young college graduate Stokely Carmichael, who joined the SNCC during the Freedom Summer of 1964 to register Black voters in Mississippi. In 1966, Carmichael became the chair of the SNCC, giving his famous speech in which he originated the phrase "Black power."

Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, 13 " Freedom Riders"-seven Black and six white activists-mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.

Facing violence from both police officers and white protesters, the Freedom Rides drew international attention. On Mother's Day 1961, the bus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a bomb into it. The Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus but were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the group could not find a bus driver to take them further. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (brother to President John F. Kennedy) negotiated with Alabama Governor John Patterson to find a suitable driver, and the Freedom Riders resumed their journey under police escort on May 20. But the officers left the group once they reached Montgomery, where a white mob brutally attacked the bus. Attorney General Kennedy responded to the riders-and a call from Martin Luther King Jr.-by sending federal marshals to Montgomery.

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders reached Jackson, Mississippi. Though met with hundreds of supporters, the group was arrested for trespassing in a "whites-only" facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) brought the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were drawn to the cause, and the rides continued.

In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals

March on Washington

Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.

More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march was King's speech in which he continually stated, "I have a dream..."

King's " I Have a Dream" speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and freedom.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964-legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination -into law on July 2 of that year.

King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities to ensure public facilities were integrated.

Bloody Sunday

On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.

As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama state and local police sent by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of desegregation. Refusing to stand down, protesters moved forward and were viciously beaten and teargassed by police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.

The entire incident was televised and became known as " Bloody Sunday." Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, but King pushed for nonviolent protests and eventually gained federal protection for another march.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.

It also allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966.

Part of the Act was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, holding that the constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated.

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late 1960s. On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room's balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through additional civil rights laws.

Fair Housing Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King's assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.

The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans. The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.

Sources

A Brief History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation.
Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library.
Document for June 25th: Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry. National Archives.
Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In. African American Odyssey.
Little Rock School Desegregation (1957). The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks.
Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965). BlackPast.org.
The Civil Rights Movement (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center.
The Little Rock Nine. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.
Turning Point: World War II. Virginia Historical Society.

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Civil Rights Movement: Timeline, Key Events & Leaders | HISTORY

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The civil rights movement was a struggle for justice and equality for African Americans that took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Among its leaders were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Little Rock Nine, Rosa Parks and many others.

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The ink had barely dried on the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War I, when recently returned black veterans grabbed their guns and stationed themselves on rooftops in black neighborhoods in Washington D.C., prepared to act as snipers in the case of mob violence in July of 1919. Others set up blockades around Howard University, a black intellectual hub, creating a protective ring around residents.

White sailors recently home from the war had been on a days-long drunken rampage, assaulting, and in some cases lynching, black people on the capitol's streets. The relentless onslaught proved contagious, escalating in dozens of cities across the U.S. in what would become known as the The Red Summer.

The racist attacks in 1919 were widespread, and often indiscriminate, but in many places, they were initiated by white servicemen and centered upon the 380,000 black veterans who had just returned from the war. "Because of their military service, black veterans were seen as a particular threat to Jim Crow and racial subordination," notes a report by the Equal Justice Initiative.

Indeed, many African American soldiers returned from the war armed with a renewed determination to fight segregation and a near-constant barrage of brutality.

A postal official wrote at the time that "As far back as the first movement of the American troops to France the negro publicists began to avail themselves of the argument that since the negro was fit to wear the uniform he was, therefore, fit for everything else." In Texas, a federal agent reported, "One of the principal elements causing concern is the returned negro soldier who is not readily fitting back into his prior status of pre-war times."

At the same time, cities across the north were being reshaped by the Great Migration. By the end of 1919, about 1 million African Americans had fled segregation and a total lack of economic opportunities in the south for northern cities. Between 1910 and 1920, the black population in Chicago grew by 148 percent and in Philadelphia by 500 percent, creating massive anxiety among white people in northern cities that black people were taking jobs, housing, and security from them.

During the Red Summer, massive anxiety became mass violence. Between April and November of 1919, there would be approximately 25 riots and instances of mob violence, 97 recorded lynchings, and a three day long massacre in Elaine, Arkansas during which over 200 black men, women, and children were killed after black sharecroppers tried to organize for better working conditions. The Ku Klux Klan, which had been largely shut down by the government after the Civil War, experienced a resurgence in popularity and began carrying out dozens of lynchings across the south.

Just a few years earlier, many young black men had heeded Wilson's call to make the world " safe for democracy " and gone off to fight for America in one of history's bloodiest wars. Now they had come back to a country that recognized neither their service nor their humanity. Having just returned from battle, however, black veterans were not inclined to take the abuse lying down. Across the country, former soldiers used their government-provided weapons training to defend their neighborhoods against vicious white mobs.

"Black people [formed] ad hoc self-defense organizations to try to keep white folks from terrorizing their communities," says Simon Balto, a Professor of African American History at The University of Iowa and author of Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. "Black veterans are instrumental in that."

Black veterans were a large part of what made the summer of 1919, in the words of historian David F. Krugler, the year that African Americans fought back.

"This is the country to which we Soldiers of Democracy return. This is the fatherland for which we fought!" W.E.B DuBois, a civil rights activist and prominent intellectual, wrote in Crisis Magazine in May 1919, a month after the earliest event of the Red Summer, a riot in Georgia where six people-two white officers and four black men-were killed at a church. "But by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land."

Riots at the Steps of the Capitol

Washington D.C had 5,000 black veterans and for many of them, self-defense was a last resort after weeks-and indeed decades-of government inaction.

One of the first people killed in Washington D.C.'s violence was a 22-year-old black veteran named Randall Neal. At a high point of the mayhem, one Washington newspaper reported that the city had "passed through its wildest and bloodiest night since Civil War times." Many of the city's white-owned newspapers fanned the flames of terror, reporting on fabricated instances of black men assaulting white women. In one case, The Washington Post ran a front page story advertising the location for white servicemen to meet and carry out further attacks on black people in the city.

Washington D.C. had a vibrant black middle class that in many ways epitomized black people's slow but expanding economic and social advances. The cities' black population was growing rapidly thanks to the Great Migration and in 1919, they made up a quarter of the population. They also held many jobs in the federal government and at the country's first black-owned bank, the Industrial Savings bank. It was a limited but steady march forward-one that many white people felt needed to be stopped.

"I knew it to be true, but it was almost an impossibility for me to realize as a truth that men and women of my race were being mobbed, chased, dragged from street cars, beaten and killed within the shadow of the dome of the Capitol, at the very front door of the White House," wrote James Weldon Johnson, who coined the term " Red Summer," in Crisis Magazine.

As the situation escalated, Wilson refused to act. He worried that the riots would damage the image he was cultivating of the United States as a global paragon of justice. Wilson also had a demonstrated record of racism (including, among other things, tacit support of the Ku Klux Klan).

After four days of racist mob violence in Washington D.C., an estimated 40 people were killed and dozens more were injured. The chaos was only quelled when 2,000 federal troops were deployed onto the city streets at the end of the month-just in time for the riots to spread to Chicago.

A Murder in Chicago Ignites a City

Just two days after federal troops withdrew from Washington D.C., a Black teenager was killed by a white man in Chicago, lighting the match that would kick off a week of violent riots. By the end, 15 white people and 23 black people would be dead, over 500 people would be injured, and over 1,000 black families would be homeless after their homes were burned down.

The teenager, 17-year-old Eugene Williams, was floating on a homemade raft off the shores of Lake Michigan, trying to escape the city's oppressive summer heat, when a white man named George Stauber started pelting him with rocks. Williams had unwittingly drifted past the line that divided the white beach from the black beach.

A rock hit Williams in the head, knocking him unconscious. His body went limp and slipped into the lake. No one got to Williams in time to save him.

A white police officer refused to arrest Stauber, despite a growing crowd of angry witnesses to the murder. By the time Williams' lifeless body had been removed from the lake, a crowd of around a thousand black people had gathered, demanding action. For many, Williams' death was a microcosm of the longstanding violence perpetrated against black people without consequence.

In response to the protest, armed white men jumped in cars and tore through the city streets, firing into black homes and businesses. A white mob marched down the street, assaulting black pedestrians and torching black homes. Still, police refused to act.

"When the riot explodes it's not so much some kind of a spontaneous event as it is a culmination," Balto explains. In the two previous years, white supremacists had bombed over 25 black homes in an effort to keep black people out of the city. The police never intervened.

Veterans in Chicago formed militias to defend black homes, neighborhoods, and families when the police and government refused. In the time following Williams' death, one group of black veterans broke into an armory and stole weapons they then used to beat back a white mob. "Because many of them have actually seen battlefield combat, they are willing and capable of using violence for the purpose of self-defense," says Balto.

Throughout the summer, black veterans around the country took inspiration from the actions of their brethren in Washington D.C. and Chicago and followed suit. In a riot in South Carolina, one preacher reportedly said of the black self-defense units: "The males carried their guns with as much calmness as if they were going to shoot a rabbit in a hunt, or getting ready to shoot the Kaiser's soldiers."

For Veterans, a Broken Promise

As bloodshed spread nationally-to South Carolina, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, among others-veterans continued to be targeted. At least 13 veterans were lynched across the United States after the war. Many of them were in uniform which, when worn in public, many white people saw as an affront to America's racial caste system.

It was the opposite of the reception many black soldiers believed they would receive when returning home, their choice to serve in the war spurred on by intellectuals like DuBois who believed it would be a path to equality.

"World War I was very much a broken promise for basically all African Americans, but the people who felt the brokenness of that promise most acutely [were the veterans] who had gone and risked their lives for this supposed war to make the world safe for democracy and then came home to find that the country was still going to deny African Americans the privilege of democracy," says Balto.

This wasn't unique to the Red Summer-or even World War I. A report by the Equal Justice Initiative found that, from Reconstruction to just after World War II, "thousands of black veterans were assaulted, threatened, abused, or lynched following military service...No one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than black veterans who had proven their valor and courage as soldiers during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II."

Despite the events of the Red Summer, 1.2 million black men would enlist in World War II.

The conclusion of the summer of 1919 would not be the end of mass violence against black Americans-far from it. Two years later would see one of the worst instances of racial violence in American history, The Tulsa Race Massacre, during which a white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly black Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa. News reports were largely squelched, despite the fact that up to 300 people were killed and thousands left homeless

It did, however, signal a permanent shift in the way black people responded to white violence in the United States and presaged increasing self-defense tactics, including when black veterans once again mobilized during the violence in Tulsa. For many black people, the way veterans responded to the bloodshed added a sliver of inspiration to the terror of that summer.

Before the war, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had 9,000 members yet by the early 1920s it had 100,000, signaling a growing boldness and cohesion to the organizing that would eventually plant the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement.

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Red Summer of 1919: How Black WWI Vets Fought Back Against Racist Mobs | HISTORY

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When dozens of brutal race riots erupted across the U.S. in the wake of World War I and the Great Migration, black veterans stepped up to defend their communities against white violence.

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US justice is built to humiliate and oppress black men. It starts with the chokehold...

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The author of the acclaimed Chokehold: Policing Black Men writes on how the system treats African Americans with contempt: ‘If police patrolled white areas as they do poor black neighborhoods, there would be a revolution’

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Black Codes

The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.

Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.

These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.

Ku Klux Klan

During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward.

Violence was on the rise, making danger a regular aspect of African American life. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and bands of violent white people attacked, tortured and lynched Black citizens in the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land all across the South.

The most ruthless organization of the Jim Crow era, the Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for Confederate veterans.

The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

Jim Crow Laws Expand

At the start of the 1880s, big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them.

This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.

Jim Crow laws soon spread around the country with even more force than previously. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.

Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows.

Laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.

Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.

It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there.

Ida B. Wells

As oppressive as the Jim Crow era was, it was also a time when many African Americans around the country stepped forward into leadership roles to vigorously oppose the laws.

Memphis teacher Ida B. Wells became a prominent activist against Jim Crow laws after refusing to leave a first-class train car designated for white people only. A conductor forcibly removed her and she successfully sued the railroad, though that decision was later reversed by a higher court.

Angry at the injustice, Wells devoted herself to fighting Jim Crow laws. Her vehicle for dissent was newspaper writing: In 1889 she became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and used her position to take on school segregation and sexual harassment.

Wells traveled throughout the South to publicize her work and advocated for the arming of Black citizens. Wells also investigated lynchings and wrote about her findings.

A mob destroyed her newspaper and threatened her with death, forcing her to move to the North, where she continued her efforts against Jim Crow laws and lynching.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a North Carolina-born, Massachusetts-raised Black woman who returned to her birthplace at the age of 17, in 1901, to work as a teacher for the American Missionary Association.

After funding was withdrawn for that school, Brown began fundraising to start her own school, named the Palmer Memorial Institute.

Brown became the first Black woman to create a Black school in North Carolina and through her education work became a fierce and vocal opponent of Jim Crow laws.

Isaiah Montgomery

Not everyone battled for equal rights within white society-some chose a separatist approach.

Convinced by Jim Crow laws that Black and white people could not live peaceably together, formerly enslaved Isaiah Montgomery created the African American-only town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in 1887.

Montgomery recruited other former enslaved people to settle in the wilderness with him, clearing the land and forging a settlement that included several schools, an Andrew Carnegie-funded library, a hospital, three cotton gins, a bank and a sawmill. Mound Bayou still exists today, and is still almost 100 percent Black.

Jim Crow Laws in the 20th Century

As the 20th century progressed, Jim Crow laws flourished within an oppressive society marked by violence.

Following World War I, the NAACP noted that lynchings had become so prevalent that it sent investigator Walter White to the South. White had lighter skin and could infiltrate white hate groups.

As lynchings increased, so did race riots, with at least 25 across the United States over several months in 1919, a period sometimes referred to as " Red Summer." In retaliation, white authorities charged Black communities with conspiring to conquer white America.

With Jim Crow dominating the landscape, education increasingly under attack and few opportunities for Black college graduates, the Great Migration of the 1920s saw a significant migration of educated Black people out of the South, spurred on by publications like The Chicago Defender, which encouraged Black Americans to move north.

Read by millions of Southern Black people, white people attempted to ban the newspaper and threatened violence against any caught reading or distributing it.

The poverty of the Great Depression only deepened resentment, with a rise in lynchings, and after World War II, even Black veterans returning home met with segregation and violence.

Jim Crow in the North

The North was not immune to Jim Crow-like laws. Some states required Black people to own property before they could vote, schools and neighborhoods were segregated, and businesses displayed "Whites Only" signs.

In Ohio, segregationist Allen Granbery Thurman ran for governor in 1867 promising to bar Black citizens from voting. After he narrowly lost that political race, Thurman was appointed to the U.S. Senate, where he fought to dissolve Reconstruction-era reforms benefiting African Americans.

After World War II, suburban developments in the North and South were created with legal covenants that did not allow Black families, and Black people often found it difficult or impossible to obtain mortgages for homes in certain "red-lined" neighborhoods.

When Did Jim Crow Laws End?

The post-World War II era saw an increase in civil rights activities in the African American community, with a focus on ensuring that Black citizens were able to vote. This ushered in the civil rights movement, resulting in the removal of Jim Crow laws.

In 1948 President Harry Truman ordered integration in the military, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of "separate-but-equal" education.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.

And in 1965, the Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes, followed.

Jim Crow laws were technically off the books, though that has not always guaranteed full integration or adherence to anti-racism laws throughout the United States. Several recent pieces of legislation-such as House Bill 1020 in Mississippi, which aimed to disenfranchise the majority-Black capital city of Jackson by creating a new judicial district overseen by white leaders-are often compared to Jim Crow laws.

Sources

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Richard Wormser.
Segregated America. Smithsonian Institute.
Jim Crow Laws. National Park Service.
"Exploiting Black Labor After the Abolition of Slavery." The Conversation.
"Hundreds of black Americans were killed during 'Red Summer.' A century later, still ignored." Associated Press/USA Today.
"Here's What's Become Of A Historic All-Black Town In The Mississippi Delta." NPR.

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Jim Crow Laws: Definition, Facts & Timeline | HISTORY

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Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Enacted after the Civil War, the laws denied equal opportunity to Black citizens.

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Causes of the Civil War

In the mid-19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country's northern and southern regions.

In the North, manufacturing and industry was well established, and agriculture was mostly limited to small-scale farms, while the South's economy was based on a system of large-scale farming that depended on the labor of Black enslaved people to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco.

Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North after the 1830s and northern opposition to slavery's extension into the new western territories led many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in America -and thus the backbone of their economy-was in danger.

Did you know? Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson earned his famous nickname, "Stonewall," from his steadfast defensive efforts in the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas). At Chancellorsville, Jackson was shot by one of his own men, who mistook him for Union cavalry. His arm was amputated, and he died from pneumonia eight days later.

In 1854, the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essentially opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict. Pro- and anti-slavery forces struggled violently in " Bleeding Kansas," while opposition to the act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party, a new political entity based on the principle of opposing slavery's extension into the western territories. After the Supreme Court's ruling in the Dred Scott case (1857) confirmed the legality of slavery in the territories, the abolitionist John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry in 1859 convinced more and more southerners that their northern neighbors were bent on the destruction of the "peculiar institution" that sustained them. Abraham Lincoln 's election in November 1860 was the final straw, and within three months seven southern states-South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas-had seceded from the United States.

Outbreak of the Civil War (1861)

Even as Lincoln took office in March 1861, Confederate forces threatened the federal-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. On April 12, after Lincoln ordered a fleet to resupply Sumter, Confederate artillery fired the first shots of the Civil War. Sumter's commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered after less than two days of bombardment, leaving the fort in the hands of Confederate forces under Pierre G.T. Beauregard. Four more southern states-Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee-joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter. Border slave states like Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland did not secede, but there was much Confederate sympathy among their citizens.

Though on the surface the Civil War may have seemed a lopsided conflict, with the 23 states of the Union enjoying an enormous advantage in population, manufacturing (including arms production) and railroad construction, the Confederates had a strong military tradition, along with some of the best soldiers and commanders in the nation. They also had a cause they believed in: preserving their long-held traditions and institutions, chief among these being slavery.

In the First Battle of Bull Run (known in the South as First Manassas) on July 21, 1861, 35,000 Confederate soldiers under the command of Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson forced a greater number of Union forces (or Federals) to retreat towards Washington, D.C., dashing any hopes of a quick Union victory and leading Lincoln to call for 500,000 more recruits. In fact, both sides' initial call for troops had to be widened after it became clear that the war would not be a limited or short conflict.

The Civil War in Virginia (1862)

George B. McClellan-who replaced the aging General Winfield Scott as supreme commander of the Union Army after the first months of the war-was beloved by his troops, but his reluctance to advance frustrated Lincoln. In the spring of 1862, McClellan finally led his Army of the Potomac up the peninsula between the York and James Rivers, capturing Yorktown on May 4. The combined forces of Robert E. Lee and Jackson successfully drove back McClellan's army in the Seven Days' Battles (June 25-July 1), and a cautious McClellan called for yet more reinforcements in order to move against Richmond. Lincoln refused, and instead withdrew the Army of the Potomac to Washington. By mid-1862, McClellan had been replaced as Union general-in-chief by Henry W. Halleck, though he remained in command of the Army of the Potomac.

Lee then moved his troops northwards and split his men, sending Jackson to meet Pope's forces near Manassas, while Lee himself moved separately with the second half of the army. On August 29, Union troops led by John Pope struck Jackson's forces in the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas). The next day, Lee hit the Federal left flank with a massive assault, driving Pope's men back towards Washington. On the heels of his victory at Manassas, Lee began the first Confederate invasion of the North. Despite contradictory orders from Lincoln and Halleck, McClellan was able to reorganize his army and strike at Lee on September 14 in Maryland, driving the Confederates back to a defensive position along Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg.

On September 17, the Army of the Potomac hit Lee's forces (reinforced by Jackson's) in what became the war's bloodiest single day of fighting. Total casualties at the Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg) numbered 12,410 of some 69,000 troops on the Union side, and 13,724 of around 52,000 for the Confederates. The Union victory at Antietam would prove decisive, as it halted the Confederate advance in Maryland and forced Lee to retreat into Virginia. Still, McClellan's failure to pursue his advantage earned him the scorn of Lincoln and Halleck, who removed him from command in favor of Ambrose E. Burnside. Burnside's assault on Lee's troops near Fredericksburg on December 13 ended in heavy Union casualties and a Confederate victory; he was promptly replaced by Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker, and both armies settled into winter quarters across the Rappahannock River from each other.

After the Emancipation Proclamation (1863-4)

Lincoln had used the occasion of the Union victory at Antietam to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all enslaved people in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863. He justified his decision as a wartime measure, and did not go so far as to free the enslaved people in the border states loyal to the Union. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side. Some 186,000 Black Civil War soldiers would join the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865, and 38,000 lost their lives.

In the spring of 1863, Hooker's plans for a Union offensive were thwarted by a surprise attack by the bulk of Lee's forces on May 1, whereupon Hooker pulled his men back to Chancellorsville. The Confederates gained a costly victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville, suffering 13,000 casualties (around 22 percent of their troops); the Union lost 17,000 men (15 percent). Lee launched another invasion of the North in June, attacking Union forces commanded by General George Meade on July 1 near Gettysburg, in southern Pennsylvania. Over three days of fierce fighting, the Confederates were unable to push through the Union center, and suffered casualties of close to 60 percent.

Meade failed to counterattack, however, and Lee's remaining forces were able to escape into Virginia, ending the last Confederate invasion of the North. Also in July 1863, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant took Vicksburg (Mississippi) in the Siege of Vicksburg, a victory that would prove to be the turning point of the war in the western theater. After a Confederate victory at Chickamauga Creek, Georgia, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in September, Lincoln expanded Grant's command, and he led a reinforced Federal army (including two corps from the Army of the Potomac) to victory in the Battle of Chattanooga in late November.

Toward a Union Victory (1864-65)

In March 1864, Lincoln put Grant in supreme command of the Union armies, replacing Halleck. Leaving William Tecumseh Sherman in control in the West, Grant headed to Washington, where he led the Army of the Potomac towards Lee's troops in northern Virginia. Despite heavy Union casualties in the Battle of the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania (both May 1864), at Cold Harbor (early June) and the key rail center of Petersburg (June), Grant pursued a strategy of attrition, putting Petersburg under siege for the next nine months.

Sherman outmaneuvered Confederate forces to take Atlanta by September, after which he and some 60,000 Union troops began the famous "March to the Sea," devastating Georgia on the way to capturing Savannah on December 21. Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, fell to Sherman's men by mid-February, and Jefferson Davis belatedly handed over the supreme command to Lee, with the Confederate war effort on its last legs. Sherman pressed on through North Carolina, capturing Fayetteville, Bentonville, Goldsboro and Raleigh by mid-April.

Meanwhile, exhausted by the Union siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Lee's forces made a last attempt at resistance, attacking and captured the Federal-controlled Fort Stedman on March 25. An immediate counterattack reversed the victory, however, and on the night of April 2-3 Lee's forces evacuated Richmond. For most of the next week, Grant and Meade pursued the Confederates along the Appomattox River, finally exhausting their possibilities for escape. Grant accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9. On the eve of victory, the Union lost its great leader: The actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington on April 14. Sherman received Johnston's surrender at Durham Station, North Carolina on April 26, effectively ending the Civil War.

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Civil War - Causes, Dates & Battles | HISTORY

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The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states' rights and westward expansion. Eleven southern states seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy. Ultimately more than 620,000 Americans' lives were lost in the four-year war that ended in a Confederate defeat.

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Table of Contents

1. Founding of the Ku Klux Klan

2. Ku Klux Klan Violence in the South

3. The Ku Klux Klan and the End of Reconstruction

4. Revival of the Ku Klux Klan

5. Great Depression Shrinks Klan

Founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and Black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal-the reestablishment of white supremacy-fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s.

After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, African Americans and organized labor. The civil rights movement of the 1960s also saw a surge of Ku Klux Klan activity, including bombings of Black schools and churches and violence against Black and white activists in the South.

Founding of the Ku Klux Klan

A group including many former Confederate veterans founded the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865. The first two words of the organization's name supposedly derived from the Greek word "kyklos," meaning circle. In the summer of 1867, local branches of the Klan met in a general organizing convention and established what they called an "Invisible Empire of the South." Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or "grand wizard," of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses.

The organization of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the beginning of the second phase of post- Civil War Reconstruction, put into place by the more radical members of the Republican Party in Congress. After rejecting President Andrew Johnson's relatively lenient Reconstruction policies, in place from 1865 to 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act over the presidential veto. Under its provisions, the South was divided into five military districts, and each state was required to approve the 14th Amendment, which granted "equal protection" of the Constitution to former enslaved people and enacted universal male suffrage.

Did you know? At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.

Ku Klux Klan Violence in the South

From 1867 onward, Black participation in public life in the South became one of the most radical aspects of Reconstruction, as Black people won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress. For its part, the Ku Klux Klan dedicated itself to an underground campaign of violence against Republican leaders and voters (both Black and white) in an effort to reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction and restore white supremacy in the South. They were joined in this struggle by similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia (launched in Louisiana in 1867) and the White Brotherhood.

At least 10 percent of the Black legislators elected during the 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven who were killed. White Republicans (derided as "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags") and Black institutions such as schools and churches-symbols of Black autonomy-were also targets for Klan attacks.

By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan had branches in nearly every southern state. Even at its height, the Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership. Local Klan members-often wearing masks and dressed in the organization's signature long white robes and hoods-usually carried out their attacks at night, acting on their own but in support of the common goals of defeating Radical Reconstruction and restoring white supremacy in the South. Klan activity flourished particularly in the regions of the South where Black people were a minority or a small majority of the population, and was relatively limited in others. Among the most notorious zones of Klan activity was South Carolina, where in January 1871 500 masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight Black prisoners.

The Ku Klux Klan and the End of Reconstruction

Though Democratic leaders would later attribute Ku Klux Klan violence to poorer southern white people, the organization's membership crossed class lines, from small farmers and laborers to planters, lawyers, merchants, physicians and ministers. In the regions where most Klan activity took place, local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan or declined to take action against it, and even those who arrested accused Klansmen found it difficult to find witnesses willing to testify against them.

Other leading white citizens in the South declined to speak out against the group's actions, giving them tacit approval. After 1870, Republican state governments in the South turned to Congress for help, resulting in the passage of three Enforcement Acts, the strongest of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

For the first time, the Ku Klux Klan Act designated certain crimes committed by individuals as federal offenses, including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to hold office, serve on juries and enjoy the equal protection of the law. The act authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and arrest accused individuals without charge, and to send federal forces to suppress Klan violence.

This expansion of federal authority-which Ulysses S. Grant promptly used in 1871 to crush Klan activity in South Carolina and other areas of the South-outraged Democrats and even alarmed many Republicans. From the early 1870s onward, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again.

Revival of the Ku Klux Klan

In 1915, white Protestant nativists organized a revival of the Ku Klux Klan near Atlanta, Georgia, inspired by their romantic view of the Old South as well as Thomas Dixon's 1905 book "The Clansman" and D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "Birth of a Nation."

This second generation of the Klan was not only anti-Black but also took a stand against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labor. It was fueled by growing hostility to the surge in immigration that America experienced in the early 20th century along with fears of communist revolution akin to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia in 1917. The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country. At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.

Great Depression Shrinks Klan

The Great Depression in the 1930s depleted the Klan's membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of Black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward.

As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League estimated Klan membership to be around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center said there were 6,000 members total.

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The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is an American white supremacist terrorist hate group founded in 1865. It became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans.