Climbing Up to Glory (32 page)

The sight of black men holding political office and making important decisions was so intolerable to Southern whites that they took vicious and illegal measures against blacks. The Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by Confederate war veterans, stepped up its attacks. Working together with other white supremacists, such as the White League of Louisiana, the Klan set out to intimidate blacks so that they would fear for their lives and stop supporting the Republican Party. Hooded Klansmen broke into the homes of blacks at night and terrorized them, and many blacks lost their lives at the hands of the Klan. Gender was no exception; black women were often brutalized and raped.

The Klan was often successful in reaching its goal. As F. H. Brown, a freedman, testified, “They kept the Negroes from voting. They would whip them. They put up notices: ‘No Niggers to come out to the polls tomorrow.' They would run them off of government land which they had homesteaded.” At other times, Klansmen tried verbal intimidation. They told Brown's father, “ ‘Now, Brown, you are too good to get messed up, and we don't want to see you get hurt. So you stay ‘way from the polls tomorrow.' And, tomorrow my father would stay away.”
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Eli Davison explained to an interviewer that he never voted, “cause them KKK was always at the voting places for a long time after the negro was freed.”
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Many blacks, however, continued to go to the polls and vote the Republican ticket. Former slave Bill McNeil, for example, although he was scared by the Klan, kept on voting for the Republicans. “I sticks out to de end wid de party dat freed me,” he said.
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Around election time, white bosses on the different farms where freedman Morgan Ray worked would tell him to vote Democratic. He ignored them, he said, because “I knew de Republican Party was on de side of de cullud man. So I just went to de polls on election day and put my cross under de eagle.”
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Although the Klan concentrated on preventing blacks from voting, it intimidated and murdered them for reasons other than the franchise. Freedwoman Millie Bates recounted the story of former slave Dan Black, who never bothered anyone. After the Klan shot Black, “dey took dat nigger,” she said, “and hung him to a ‘simmon tree. Dey would not let his folks take him down either. He jus' stayed dar, till he fell to pieces.”
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Former slave Brawley Gilmore remembered as a young boy seeing the Klansmen come along at night “a-ridding de niggers like dey was goats. Yes sir, dey had 'em down on all fours a-crawling, and dey would be on deir backs. Dey would shoot ‘em offen de banisters into de water.”
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Pierce Harper knew of Klansmen murdering industrious blacks and burning down black schoolhouses. “Dey'd go to de jails an' take de colored men out, an' knock deir brains out, an' break deir necks, an' throw 'em in de river.”
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The threat of violence against black Republican politicians was especially real. The case of Richard H. Cain, the prominent South Carolinian, illustrates this point. Cain's adopted daughter Ann Edwards vividly described what life was like for her father during Reconstruction to WPA interviewers in the 1930s. “From the moment he became a candidate for a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, a guard was necessary night and day to watch our home.” She added that “he was compelled to have a bodyguard everywhere he went. We, his family, lived in constant fear at all times.” Despite the armed guards, “several attempts were made to either burn the house or injure some member of the family.” Edwards concluded: “If it had not been for the fact that the officials of the city and county were afraid of reprisal from the Federal government, which gave aid in protecting him, the mob would have succeeded in harming him.”
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Cain went on to establish an excellent record of public service. Many other black politicians, however, were not so fortunate as Cain. Some were beaten and run out of town, while others were murdered.
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Many blacks, particularly those who had been Union soldiers, responded to the random terror and violence by organizing themselves into militia groups. They were well armed and confronted the Klan fearlessly. According to Pierce Harper, “dey'd hide in de cabins, an' when de Klu Kluxes come, dere dey was. Den's when dey found out who a lot of de Klu Kluxes was, 'cause a lot of ‘em was killed.”
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George Washington Albright helped to organize a volunteer militia against the organized attacks of the landlords and former slave owners. He recalled that “we drilled frequently—and how the rich folks hated to see us, armed and ready to defend ourselves and our elected government.”
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Other freedmen fought back as individuals. For example, one man shot it out one night with Klansmen who visited his house to teach him a lesson. He “told dem dat he had done nothin' wrong, an' fo' dem to go 'way, or he would kill dem.” And when the shooting stopped, two members of the Klan were dead.
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In another case, a black man in Memphis, Tennessee, killed a member of the Klan for constantly harassing him.
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Reconstruction also ushered in a period of intense political violence between black Republicans and black Democrats. While most freedmen were fiercely Republican, there were some who became loyal Democrats. Spencer Taylor proudly asserted: “I never voted anything but the Democratic ticket.”
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Ike Pringle became a Democrat when he first was enfrancized,
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and Adam Smith noted that “we have always been Democrats and we still are, me and my ole woman.”
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And Mat Fowler explained, “I allus voted Democratic till they cut us niggers out the primary.”
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Moreover, a largely untold story of African-American history brings out the fact that some freedmen exhibited so much loyalty to the Democratic Party that they joined the Red Shirts in South Carolina in the 1870s. The Red Shirts, a terrorist organization akin to the Klan, intimidated, harassed, and beat blacks in efforts to curtail voter participation. They were especially active and effective during South Carolina's 1876 gubernatorial race between Republican Daniel Chamberlain and Democrat Wade Hampton, so much so that they became known as “Hampton's Red Shirts.” George Fleming explained that “de Democrats done got scared ‘cause so many niggers gwine to vote fer de other side, so dey formed a s'ciety called de Red Shirts. Dat was jes' to scare de niggers frum coming to de polls. I was young, but I jined right up wid dem and wore a red shirt, too.”
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During the Reconstruction period when Hampton was stumping the region in an effort to redeem South Carolina for the Democrats, Richard Mack followed him all over the state. Mack maintained that he led five hundred men in this endeavor and “wore my red jacket and cap and boots. I had a sword, too.”
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Prince Johnson joined “the Democrat club, put on the red shirt, and heped them run all of the scalawags away from there.”
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Why black men would join a terrorist group such as Hampton's Red Shirts is difficult to discern. Some men such as Asbury Green, Aaron Mitchell, and other black Red Shirt leaders were attracted to the paternalistic appeal of Wade Hampton, a future South Carolina governor. They searched for a solution to hard economic times, increasing turbulence that led to the loss of black lives, and Republican corruption. They sincerely hoped that Hampton and the Democrats would be the answer to their prayers. As Green asserted, “I will have to try another party, and see if they will make it no better, and if they don't I don't know what in the world to do.”
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Some of the black Red Shirts shared the class and anti-Yankee bias of their former owners. They saw themselves as uniquely South Carolinian, sharing with white conservatives the perception of the Yankees as outsiders. As such, they did not trust Northerners.
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Furthermore, men such as Madison Griffin never forgot the destruction Lincoln and the Yankees had wrought. Griffin recalled that Lincoln “had us all scared to death, took our mules and burned our places.”
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Whatever the rationale of the black Red Shirts, historian Edmund Drago is on the mark in maintaining that these black conservatives “fit into a larger theme in African-American history, namely, a stream of blacks who have supported conservative regimes from the colonial period to the present.”
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Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Robert Woodson, Larry Elder, Ken Hamlin, Thomas Sowell, and Armstrong Williams are representative of a small, yet growing, number of black conservatives today.

As expected, most blacks regarded black Democrats as traitors to the race. Indeed, how could they lack race consciousness? What could possibly be wrong with these individuals? How could they align themselves with former slaveowners? Did they not know that the Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments as well as the Freedmen's Bureau, Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, and the 1870 and 1871 Enforcement Acts? In South Carolina, black men who had voted the so-called Reform ticket in Newberry and Barnwell County were attacked by their fellows and beaten. Similar incidents took place in Charleston, Mount Pleasant, and Beaufort, South Carolina. In some areas, freedmen were told that they would be shot by the black militia if they voted Democratic.
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Moreover, when the first black man in James City, North Carolina, voted Democratic, he was burned in effigy and run out of the town. One member of the all-black community explained: “We made a tar man and burned it up.... We felt he was set up by the white man.”
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Black women figured prominently in the efforts to prevent men from voting for Democrats. For instance, black women in Alabama formed political clubs and in some instances denied their would-be Democratic husbands the pleasures of the bedroom.
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On the Sea Islands of South Carolina they followed the same course during the state's 1876 gubernatorial contest. According to Robert Smalls, “when John went to Massa Hampton and pledged his word to vote for him and returned back home his wife told him she would not give him any of that thing if you vote for Hampton.” As a result, John returned to Hampton and said, “Massa Hampton, I can't vote for you, for woman is too sweet, and my wife says if I vote for you she won't give me any.”
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The wife of a starving freedman allegedly struck the poor fellow with an ax when he sold his vote to Democrats in exchange for food.
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One man who wanted to vote for a white Democratic candidate was whipped on the street by his wife. In an effort to prevent her husband from voting the Democratic ticket, another woman threw his clothes out of the house and locked the door.
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Further, on Election Day in South Carolina in 1876 the women armed themselves. According to a witness, “women had sticks; no mens were to go to the polls unless their wives were right alongside them; some had hickory sticks; some had nails—four nails driven in the shape of a cross—and dare their husbands to vote any other than the Republican ticket.” The witness further noted, “my sister went with my brother-in-law to the polls and swear to God if he voted the Democratic ticket she would kill him dead in his sleep.”
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The Republican Party had always been divided into factions, especially among its Northern white members, but blacks were also divided. Those Southern black Republicans who were free before the war—often mulatto and owners of property—had on some occasions held interests different from their darker brothers in the party, many of whom had been slaves before the war and owned little or no property. Some former black slaves were suspicious of the intentions of mulattoes and loathed mulatto Republicans with a passion. William Nash, a black state senator from South Carolina, asked, “To what race do they belong—I know that my ancestors trod the burning sands of Africa, but why should men in whose veins run a great preponderance of white blood seek to specially, ally themselves with the black man, ... when they are simply mongrels?”
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Furthermore, there were also tensions between some Northern and Southern black members of the party. To many Southern blacks, their Northern counterparts tended to look down upon them. The superior racial attitudes of some Northern and Southern white Republicans further exacerbated tensions within the party. Several white Northerners treated black members in paternalistic ways and believed fervently that blacks should not hold important political offices. After all, in their opinion, blacks were political neophytes and lacked not only political maturity but also intellectual capability. Of course, black Republicans resented this view. Moreover, Southern white Republicans harbored even more racist views than their Northern counterparts and were not reluctant to reveal them.

These troubles came to the surface when it was time to cast ballots on such issues as unionization, land redistribution, and disfranchisement of Southern planters who had supported the Confederacy. A large number of Northern and Southern white Republicans with a sizable minority of black politicians (particularly mulatto) refused to support these three issues, all of the utmost importance to the black masses. Yet the majority of black politicians did vote in favor of these issues. In addition, although most Northern white members of the Republican Party joined black members in supporting civil rights legislation, many of the Southern whites in the party did not. Given these serious divisions, it is remarkable that the Republican Party was able to remain in power in the South as long as it did and to accomplish so much. By the early to mid-1870s its fortunes were clearly waning.

The fortunes of the Republican Party in the South continued to diminish throughout the 1870s as the Democrats began to recapture the political machinery in one state after another. In this atmosphere, Republicans in Congress made one final effort to ensure the rights of freedmen by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which applied primarily to public accommodations. Blacks were given equal access to the same hotels, restaurants, theaters, and railroads as whites. But to many white Americans the measure was too progressive. Reflecting this attitude, the U.S. Supreme Court declared one year later that parts of the 1870 and 1871 laws enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were unconstitutional in the
U.S. v. Cruikshank
and
U.S. v. Reese
decisions, and in 1883 it declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional.

As soon as the conservatives were in control of the machinery of government, they began minimizing the black vote. Their methods were devious and often illegal. They deliberately withheld information from registered blacks about where ballots could be cast, arrested blacks on trumped-up charges the day before an election and released them once it was over, and stuffed ballot boxes and doctored election returns. Some whites even voted several times in one election.
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The physical and economic intimidation that had been successfully employed by Southern whites to regain political control was also continued. Thousands of African Americans were informed that if they insisted upon voting for Republican candidates, employers could no longer retain them. And, of course, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups continued to randomly attack, beat, and murder scores of African Americans.
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Numerous black men and women were lynched in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s.
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In fact, in the 1880s and 1890s black lynchings averaged about 100 per year, reaching their zenith in 1892 when 161 were hanged.
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These figures represent moderate estimates, and it is likely that the actual number was considerably higher.

For a time after the Civil War, the Radical Republicans, always a minority in the party, persuaded the Northern electorate that the ultimate purpose of Southern white men was to rob the North of the fruits of victory and to reestablish slavery. Therefore, Federal intervention was essential. Their task had not been easy, for a considerable number of Northern whites, in the belief that blacks were inferior to whites, preferred to keep them in a subordinate position. No wonder that by the mid-1870s, when Northerners ceased to worry about the possibility of another Southern rebellion, there was little support within their ranks for the rights of freedmen. By this time, even some Radical Republicans had lost interest in the freedmen and began turning their attention to other crusades or choosing to retire and write their memoirs. Blacks had also lost two of their most adamant and influential supporters in Congress: Pennsylvania's Congressman Thaddeus Stevens died in 1868, and Massachusetts's Senator Charles Sumner died six years later in 1874.

In addition, the industrialism of the post-Civil War period signaled a retreat from idealism. People became more interested in making as much money as they could than in helping the less fortunate.
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Moreover, innumberable Americans were hit hard by the depression of 1873, and, as usual, the political party in control during an economic crisis received the blame. Accordingly, the hatchet fell on the Republican Party. Democrats made a convincing argument that the exorbitant spending of Republicans had contributed substantially to the depression. They were also able to tie Republicans to the political corruption that permeated local and state governments as well as the national government in the latter nineteenth century. In a shocking reversal of political fortunes, the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives in the elections of 1874, the first time in nearly twenty years. Thus, after 1876, the Republican Party no longer needed blacks. Eastern industrialists who had a great deal of influence within the party were now looking to the Southern markets. Because a peaceful climate was necessary in the Southern states if they were to tap into these markets, they reasoned that they should adopt a “hands-off” policy on the question of black rights and let the South deal with its black population as it saw fit.
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The wishes of the business community were reflected in the behavior of the Republican Party. The so-called Hayes Bargain ushered in the hands-off policy. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden were involved in 1876 in one of the closest presidential elections in this country's history. The electoral votes for four states—Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon—were in dispute and would determine the winner. A specially created electoral commission decided in favor of Hayes, but in order to prevent Southern Democrats from contesting the decision, the Republicans, with Hayes's blessing, struck a deal. Hayes would withdraw Federal troops from the South, appoint a Southerner to his cabinet, and support Federal aid to bolster economic and railroad development, which many of the conservatives who controlled the Democratic Party in the South greatly desired. Hayes's and the Republican Party's message was clear: they would not enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; and once they had removed troops from the South, Southerners would have a free hand to deal with blacks as they wanted to.
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Republicans thus officially abandoned blacks and were ready to downplay any association with them in order to attract Southern white voters. Their abandonment of freedmen at this critical stage is one of the greatest tragedies of Reconstruction.
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