Phil Vischer, Jim Crow, and the KKK
Do you ever watch the news, hear the craziness coming from all sides, and feel paralyzed about what it is you are supposed to be doing to be on the “right side of history?” Believe it or not, this is not a new phenomenon. This has happened to every generation at various times. History is filled with countless heroes, villains, and bystanders. Often the only commonality between the heroes and the villains is that they both think they are on “the right side of history.”
Phil Vischer talks rightly about Jim Crow laws in his recent video. A good summary of these laws can be found here. Unfortunately, he leaves out a lot. It’s going to take me several posts to talk about this since I don’t expect you to read a novel all at once, and since they can be broken up by subject. Hang with me.
Often when we hear depictions of history, like Vischer’s, we unconsciously judge people based on the set of circumstances that WE live in, not the set of circumstances THEY lived in. Don’t worry, this is not going to be a justification of Jim Crow. Believe me, I have no desire to make that case. But this is going to be an examination of some of the factors that made Jim Crow possible. One of these factors is the Ku Klux Klan. You can read an extensive history of the Klan on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website. I disagree with the SPLC on many fronts, but not this one. They have done an excellent job chronicling this history. It’s pretty long so I will try to summarize.
The Klan was an organization quite literally started as a joke in 1865 in Pulaski, TN by six Civil War veterans. Bored with small town life, these well-educated men got together and started a fraternal organization whose name was taken from the Greek “kuklos” (where we get “circle” and “cycle”). They made silly outfits, gave themselves silly titles, and paraded through town doing silly, harmless things. But as this comical group grew, it attracted members who slowly turned it into a terrorist organization.
The South prior to and after the Civil War was a sort of Wild West compared to how we think of it today. Thomas Sowell examines this in his book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Revisionist history has given us the picture of the genteel way of life we often link to the Antebellum era. There is some truth to this for a few very wealthy members of Southern society, but they were in the minority even among whites. Many Southern states, such as Alabama and Mississippi, were still basically considered frontier. They were much newer and rougher lands than North Carolina and Virginia, which were part of the original thirteen colonies and much more established. Life in the South could look very different from state to state and even town to town.
The SPLC article gives a good summary of the conditions that gave rise to the KKK:
“Today, it seems incredible that an organization so violent, so opposed to the American principles of justice and equality, could twice in the nation’s history have held such power. How did the Ku Klux Klan — one of the nation’s first terrorist groups — so instantly seize the South in the aftermath of the Civil War? Why did it so quickly vanish? How could it have risen so rapidly to power in the 1920s and then so rapidly have lost that power? And why is this ghost of the Civil War still haunting America today with hatred, violence and sometimes death for its enemies and its own members?”
“The answers do not lie on the surface of American history. They are deeper than the events of the turbulent 1960s, the parades and cross burnings and lynching’s of the 1920s, beyond even the Reconstruction era and the Civil War. The story begins, really, on the frontier, where successive generations of Americans learned hard lessons about survival. Those lessons produced some of the qualities of life for which the nation is most admired — fierce individualism, enterprising inventiveness, and the freedom to be whatever a person wants and to go wherever a new road leads.
But the frontier spirit included other traits as well, and one was a stubborn insistence on the prerogative of “frontier justice” — an instant, private, very personal and often violent method of settling differences without involving lawyers or courts. As the frontier was tamed and churches, schools and courthouses replaced log trading posts, settlers substituted law and order for the older brand of private justice. But there were always those who did not accept the change. The quest for personal justice or revenge became a key motivation for many who later rode with the Ku Klux Klan, especially among those who were poor and uneducated.”
Did you catch this sentence: “But the frontier spirit included other traits as well, and one was a stubborn insistence on the prerogative of “frontier justice” — an instant, private, very personal and often violent method of settling differences without involving lawyers or courts.” Does that sound familiar today? If we are fair, we should see in that quote the deaths of Ahmaud Arbury and George Floyd, the activities of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, the movement to defund the police, and the desire to tear down of statues of all sorts by mob rule, including a statue of Abraham Lincoln that was erected by freed slaves.
Back to the KKK. I think very few of us have truly studied the horrors of this organization. We know about it broadly from history class, but I seldom hear about the particulars. In the book Atticus Finch: The Biography, Joseph Crespino gives an account of the real history surrounding the life of Amasa Coleman Lee, Harper Lee’s father and inspiration for her character Atticus Finch. He examines the incredible complexity of living in the Jim Crow South as a truth-loving newspaper reporter trying to find the best path forward. The book also tells the story of the lynching of Claude Neil. This is a story worth telling. However, I’ll warn you; If you have a weak stomach or are prone to nightmares, you might think carefully before reading accounts of his murder.
The KKK ruled the South with an iron fist through terror, misinformation, and by infiltrating local and state governments. They capitalized on people’s fears and used a mixture of facts and fantasy to cause division and suspicion in order to gain power. Any act they saw as traitorous to racial purity or their idea of decency could be used to justify a night ride targeting victims both black and white. Living in this time period, you might very well decide that separating races in order to “keep the peace” sounded like a reasonable idea. Phil Vischer mentions nothing of the reasons why people were afraid to stand up for equality (a Christian ideal that had never before existed broadly in reality in all of human history throughout the world and seemed very nebulous to many) during this time period.
Think about the times we are living in today. Are you ever afraid to speak up, either because you aren’t sure what’s going on, aren’t sure what’s the right thing to do, and don’t feel like you have all the facts? Are you afraid of retribution from people who would shut you down for asking questions or even threaten you with violence? Do you see the chaos on the streets and wish someone would stand up for what’s right, wondering why politicians and leaders let this mayhem continue? If so, you probably have a lot in common with many people of all colors living in the American South under Jim Crow.
Thankfully, these laws are no longer in existence because there were brave men and women who fought them, often at the expense of their own lives, not that Vischer mentioned any of that. Before you accuse me of being blind to current injustices, I assure you I will talk about them soon.
