KKK was not created for ‘law and order’ (GA)
Posted by Mike Buffington
Wednesday, February 10. 2016
... In the summer of 1883, a group of 40-50 masked Klan members began a campaign of terror in Banks and Jackson counties. One Banks County black man was beaten for allegedly having pushed a white woman off a railroad track. A black woman near Commerce was whipped because she didn’t keep her cotton clean. A black boy near Commerce was shot in the mouth by the Klan. Other blacks in the Banks-Jackson area were beaten as well ...
Eight Jackson County men were arrested for the violence and charged by federal officials for “kukluxing” ...
The eight Jackson County “kukluxers” petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to free them, arguing that Congress had no right to pass laws governing state voting regulations. But in early 1884, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions and in doing so affirmed — for the first time ever — that under the 15th Amendment, blacks had a right to vote in Federal elections and that Congress, not individual states, had the power to protect and enforce that right ...
... contrary to Rep. Benton’s sympathetic comments of Klan history, the group represented a violent strain of racial hatred. It was condemned by average citizens, as evidenced at the Maysville meeting of August 1883. And it was condemned by the courts, as happened in this landmark Klan case from Jackson and Banks counties ...
http://www.barrowjournal.com/archives/10571-BUFFINGTON-KKK-was-not-created-for-law-and-order.html
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