Domestic terrorism carried out against lawmakers by white “militias” was extensive during Reconstruction, largely as a backlash against black freedom and civil rights. 1/

In Georgia, freedman Abram Colby was elected to the Georgia legislature in 1866, and got reelected in 1868. White people in Greene County tried bribing him to switch parties or resign. 2/

Colby refused, so in 1869, the Klan dragged him out of his bed in the middle of the night and beat him within an inch of his life in front of his wife and children. 3/

In 1870, Klansmen in Alabama targeted freedman and state legislator Richard Burke because he was politically organizing freedpeople. After spreading a rumor that he was encouraging Black people to arm themselves in self-defense… 4/

The Klan rode out to Burke’s house. Burke was later found “shot all to pieces. 5/

White legislators deemed overly concerned with the rights of Black people were targets too. James Hinds was a white man in Arkansas who pushed for voting rights for freedmen and public education for Black and white children. 6/

Early in 1868, he was elected to Congress. Four months into his term, he and another Republican politician were ambushed en route to a campaign event for Ulysses Grant. 7/

Both men were shot in the back by a Klansman, and Hinds died, making him the first Congressman in American history assassinated while in office. 8/

These are just a few stories among dozens, and they do not even begin to account for hundreds of instances of beatings, whippings, threats, and intimidation of lawmakers who dared to stand against white supremacy after the Civil War. 9/

In 1871, Congress convened hearings to investigate Klan violence and then passed the Third Enforcement Act, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. 10/

The law empowered the president to intervene in individual states and, if necessary, to use the military and suspend the right of habeas corpus to enforce the equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. 11/

The Klan Act was an important tool in breaking the back of the first Klan in the 1870s. Its provisions have been modified, but it remains federal law. 12/

It still gets called into play, invoked recently, for example, in a lawsuit against white supremacists who organized events in Charlottesville in 2017. 13/

Significant tools to fight domestic terrorism and racist conspiracies exist, should federal officials choose to use them. 14/14