When the Ku Klux Rode

In a proclamation which issued on May 10, 1865, the president of the United States declared the Civil War at an end. April 9, the date of General Lee's surrender, was recognized...

But meanwhile, having announced his policy in reorganizing the southern states, President Johnson in the summer of 1865 appointed Lewis E. Parsons, of Talladega, provisional gov...

March 2, 1867, after two years of peace, Congress passed over President Johnson's veto a bill relegating the southern states to the condition of conquered provinces. A military...

At the termination of the war between the sections, the southern people had thrust upon them for solution the gravest and most difficult problem with which the white race on thi...

Meanwhile, the Freedmen's Bureau had been established. General Swayne promulgated an order recognizing as agents of the bureau former civil magistrates who could and would obtai...

Another cause of irritation was the offensive conduct of soldiers composing the garrisons, which provoked collisions with the more impetuous citizens. In 1865 the federal soldie...

In pursuance of their schemes which culminated at the election in 1868, the carpetbag adventurers early in 1867 organized everywhere in Alabama branches of the Union League, a s...

This narrative is now brought again to the point at which it digressed, the election on the constitution, but before resuming that subject a few words of comment here will not b...

The negroes had exercised without hindrance their new privilege of the suffrage. Their incapacity as voters was illustrated in the character of the men who assumed office after...

Only misrule could be expected from such officials. Nothing was sacred from their greedy grasp. The most cherished institutions were debased to their purposes. In time the unive...

The people of the Black Belt had borne with all possible patience the multiplied grievous wrongs recited in the foregoing pages. During the transition from master and slave to t...

Before proceeding with the narrative, an explanation of the origin and purposes of the Ku Klux Klan may interest the reader. The facts mentioned were derived from authentic and...

There were some miscarriages in the operations of the klan. A memorable one of this character is recalled. A cavalcade, supposed to have started from the western side of the War...

Throughout the reconstruction period there was perhaps more turbulence in Choctaw than in any other county of the district, but, after all, the climax in the struggle for restor...

January 19, 1871, in the wee sma' hours, a cyclops and his retinue of seventy unceremoniously called at Judge Blackford's apartments to pay their respects. The call was intended...

Two young men belonging in the hills of Tuscaloosa county, were journeying in a wagon, bound homeward from a trading trip to Northport (across the river from Tuscaloosa). Passin...

In Sumter county affairs were approaching a climax when Enoch Townsend, a negro, about dark one evening waylaid and repeatedly stabbed Mr. Bryant Richardson, a planter, and fled...

Price was the most turbulent and desperate character among the radicals. One of his own ilk declared that Price had not brought with him even so much as a carpetbag, but was soo...

In the campaign of 1870, a former slave owner was one of the Republican candidates for office in Marengo county, and made what was regarded as an inflammatory speech to negroes...

In 1870 Eutaw, the seat of government of the rich county of Greene, contained a population of 1,800 or 2,000, and prospered greatly in trade with farmers in the surrounding coun...

The state election in 1870 resulted in a victory for the Democratic and Conservative party, but there was a persistent effort to deprive that party of the fruits of victory. The...