this juncture. But when Congress intervened by its reconstruction measures to defeat the reactionary program of the South, there swept over that section a crime-storm of devastating fury. The old master class organized their purpose in respect to the Negro, and their hatred of everything Northern into a secret society known as the “Ku Klux Klan,” which was nothing else than a gigantic conspiracy for the commission of crime. Lawlessness and violence filled the land, and terror stalked abroad by day and night. The “Ku Klux Klan” burned and murdered by day, and it burned and murdered by night. The Southern states had actually relapsed into barbarism. During that period a new generation was conceived and born to the South by both races—a generation that was literally conceived in lawlessness and born into crime-producing conditions. Lawlessness was its inheritance and the red splotch of violence its birthmark.

[Pg 6]

The period covered by this crime-storm was a bad way to begin the education of the Negroes in respect for law, in self control and in civilization. For they found no law strong enough to protect them in their lives or property or freedom from the murderous attacks of that terrible secret organization. Education in self-control, and in respect for constituted authority became impossible where the dominating feeling of the Negroes was one of terror. And as for civilization it was beaten down by the red hand of violence. The blacks during these years were crushed between two irreconcilable forces, two antagonistic governments which were locked in a death grapple for possession of that section. The one government was open and regular, while the other was secret and lawless. The first was supported by a few native and Northern whites and by the great body of the blacks, and the second was upheld by the great body of the native whites under the trained and ruthless leadership of the old master class, who would have no government, no social order which was not set up by themselves.

During those dark years the blacks were much more sinned against than sinning. They were sinned against by their white leaders, who in the main used them to advance their personal and party interest, and who employed the positions they thus gained to steal the people’s money, to enrich themselves at the expense of the states. There were colored leaders who followed closely in the footsteps of the white leaders in perverting public trusts to corrupt ends, but the chief malefactors, the biggest scoundrels were members of the white race. In these circumstances the blacks were the helpless victims of the misrule of their own 

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