Table Of ContentFreedom on Trial
Also by Scott Farris
Inga: Kennedy’s Great Love, Hitler’s Perfect Beauty, and J. Edgar Hoover’s
Prime Suspect
Kennedy & Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure
Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation
Freedom on Trial
The First Post–Civil War Battle Over
Civil Rights and Voter Suppression
Scott Farris
GUILFORD, CONNECTICUT
Dedicated to those Americans who have been abused and
killed while seeking to exercise their right to vote
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200
Lanham, MD 20706
www.rowman.com
Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 2020 Scott Farris
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Information available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020942269
ISBN 978-1-4930-4635-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4930-4636-2 (electronic)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Chapter 1: “The dismal hour draws nigh” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Chapter 2: “No special privileges or peculiar favors” . . . . . . . . . . 23
Chapter 3: “Pray that God may forgive Ku Klux” . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Chapter 4: “All kindness [is] evidence of timidity”. . . . . . . . . . . 66
Chapter 5: “Such a state of social disorganization”. . . . . . . . . . . 86
Chapter 6: “Teach the negro his duty to be quiet”. . . . . . . . . . 104
Chapter 7: “We will not be able to control the court” . . . . . . . . 126
Chapter 8: “The Constitution is on trial”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Chapter 9: “The right to bear arms is not a right” . . . . . . . . . . 163
Chapter 10: “It has got to be a bore”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Chapter 11: “After they got done with me, I had no sense” . . . . . 200
Chapter 12: “I had [no] right to preach against [such] raids” . . . . 218
Chapter 13: “The shortest cut is the ‘shanghaiing process’ ” . . . . . 235
Chapter 14: “Freedom is not safe while we have a Supreme Court”. . 250
Chapter 15: “Jim Williams’s truth is marching on”. . . . . . . . . . 276
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Preface
All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history.
—James Baldwin
Freedom on Trial, the already vital and important story of the
Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials of 150 years ago, was given an
urgent new relevance by the events of the spring and summer of 2020. In
the middle of a global pandemic, there were an extraordinary number of
spontaneous demonstrations for racial justice aroused by the death of a
Black man named George Floyd at the hands of local police in Minne-
apolis, Minnesota. What the tangible results of these demonstrations will
be is, as of now, unknown, but the history of the Ku Klux trials offers a
cautionary tale for those expecting meaningful change to happen rapidly.
Like the horrified reaction to George Floyd’s death, the Ku Klux trials
were another moment in American history pregnant with hope for a better
future. Initially supported with great fervor by the public and our national
government, the trials destroyed the Ku Klux Klan but could have achieved
more. They might have been an extraordinary inflection point where Ameri-
can race relations could have gone in a vastly different direction, sparing this
nation and many of its citizens much grief. But that opportunity was lost
due to increasing public indifference, a weariness with the struggle when
faced with stubborn intransigence, and the failure of institutions that did
not view justice as the primary purpose of the law. The struggle for racial
equality requires constancy. It is the work of generations.
Also in 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic added another layer of
complexity to the ongoing concern around voter access. To a large degree,
Freedom on Trial is about what people are willing to do to achieve political
power for themselves while denying it to others. Racism was at its core, but
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Preface
the primary purpose of the nightly raids of the Ku Klux Klan was voter
suppression as they sought to disarm African Americans and intimidate
them into not exercising their newly won right to vote. Voter suppression
has become far subtler over the years, but the aim is the same: the quest for
political power.
The protests of 2020 also challenged how our history is remembered
and memorialized. Statues honoring heroes of the Confederacy and others
were pulled down from their pedestals, flags were lowered or banned, and
names for streets, schools, sports teams, and much else were changed in an
attempt to avoid honoring those deemed responsible for past racial injustice
and division. Such changes may seem more symbolic than substantive, but
how we remember our history shapes what we do in the present and expect
of the future.
Freedom on Trial highlights forgotten civil rights pioneers, Black and
white, whose memorialization would change our understanding of the past
and thereby influence our present and future. Some of these heroes refute
the axiom that we cannot judge those of the past by the morality of today,
for there are always those who stand on the right side of every question,
and that was as true in 1871 as it is today. This book also celebrates the
devout patriotism and love of country expressed by those who certainly
had the least reason to love America, the formerly enslaved. Once free, they
intensely desired to fully participate in the ongoing American experiment.
When new memorials are raised, it should be in their spirit, which is a love
of America not just for what it has been but for what we hope it will yet be.
Finally, many white Americans in 2020 began a serious contemplation
of their own personal role in ending racism in America. Some heeded
the call by historian Ibram X. Kendi in his book How to Be an Antiracist
(2019) and began a process of self-examination. This examination can go
beyond the individual. In this book, I weave in the story of my own great-
grandfather’s crimes as a Ku Klux Klan member. One hope for this book is
that it will inspire others to take a closer and harder look not only at their
own behavior and attitudes, but at their own family’s role in the history of
racism in America. It is a humbling experience.
In an interview the brilliant writer James Baldwin gave to Esquire mag-
azine in July 1968 (another tumultuous year) he said something that was a
lodestar in shaping this book:
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Preface
All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history
. . . which is not your past, but your present. Your history has led you to
this moment, and you can only begin to change yourself by looking at
what you are doing in the name of your history.
Scott Farris
July 2020
ix
