Southern Politics

The KKK

Cycle of Poverty

New Forces in Southern Politics• White Southern Republicans

– Some white businessmen were concerned only with rebuilding the south

– Scalawags – white southern Republicans who wanted to forget the war and rebuild

• Northerners– Carpetbaggers – northerners who came to the

South after the war• Southerners claimed they just wanted to get rich off the

South’s misfortune and were in such a hurry all they had were small bags

• African Americans– Voted in large numbers and ran for public office

Conservatives Resist• White southerners who had power before

the Civil War resisted reconstruction (known as conservatives).– Wanted the South to change as little as possible– Many white Southerners were Democrats who

wanted to force African Americans to be slaves again.

The KKK• The Ku Klux Klan worked to keep African

Americans and white Republicans out of office.• Originally formed as a political group.• Dressed in white robes and hoods to hide their

identities.• Burned crosses and shouted threats, sometimes

turned to violence – lynching• Many moderate southerners did not approve of the

Klan but there was little they could do to stop them.– In 1870, Congress made it a crime to use force to keep

people from voting (Enforcement Acts)

                                              

Harper's Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast depicting the plight of African Americans in the Reconstruction South

http://www.berea.edu/faculty/browners/chesnutt/classroom/pictures3.html

• Watch the video clip regarding the rise of the KKK:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO8kaemKlF0

The Invisible Empire