U.S. Congress. Senate. Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States. Mississippi, Vol. II. 42nd cong., 2nd sess., 1872. S.Rpt. 41, pt. 12, serial 1495, illustration following p. 1158. Via HathiTrust.
"Over the course of seven months in 1871, Congress did something extraordinary for the time: It listened to Black people."
Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, and Jade W.P. Gasek. "Truth and Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings of 1871 and the Genesis of Section 1983." Dickinson Law Review 126, no. 3 (Spring 2022): 685.
Please be aware that this guide points to materials that portray and defend racism, oppression, and the brutality of oppression.
"The proceedings and debates in Congress show that, whatever other causes were assigned for disorders in the late insurrectionary States, the execution of the laws and the security of life and property were alleged to be most seriously threatened by the existence and acts of organized bands of armed and disguised men, known as Ku-Klux.
"Inquiring, as our primary duty, into the truth of these allegations, in those States where such acts have most recently been committed, the investigation necessarily assumed a wider range. Not only has inquiry been made as to the commission of outrages, as to the execution of the laws by the superior courts and inferior magistrates, but bad legislation, official incompetency, corruption, and other causes, having been assigned as accounting for, if not justifying disorders, they, too, have, to a large extent, entered into the statements and opinions of witnesses.
"There is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the effect that, in those of the late rebellious States into whose condition we have examined, the courts and juries administer justice between man and man in all ordinary cases, civil and criminal; and while there is this concurrence on this point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress cannot be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise and at night. The reasons assigned are that identification is difficult, almost impossible; that when this is attempted, the combinations and oaths of the order come in and release the culprit by perjury either upon the witness-stand or in the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their acts, as well as the public sentiment in their favor in many localities, paralyzes the arm of civil power."
Source: U.S. Congress. House. Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States. 42nd cong., 2nd sess., 1872. H.Rpt. 22, pt. 1, serial 1529, pp. 2-3. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b655882.
Concurrent resolution
Source: U.S. Congress. House. Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States. 42nd cong., 2nd sess., 1872. H.Rpt. 22, pt. 1, serial 1529, pp. 1-2. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b655882.
