From the KKK to the Modern Day: How an Accurate Understanding of History can Inform the Proper Standard for Punishing Civil Rights Conspiracies Under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3)

Following the Civil War, Congress passed the Reconstruction Amendments, which secured political rights for newly freed slaves and ushered in a new era for the United States. The Union defeated white Southerners on the battlefield and removed former Confederates from the halls of political power. But white Southerners were still Confederates in spirit. Full of racial hatred, they did not perceive a new era of freedom, but a world twisted into an unnatural order where African Americans walked freely amongst white people and participated in the political process of Southern society. In response to the extension of basic freedoms to African Americans, or, as some saw it, the imposition of “Yankee values,” the Ku Klux Klan (“KKK”) was born. Night-riders terrorized Black Americans and white allies in the Klan’s attempt to murder, torture, and intimidate its way back into political power. To quell the violence and assure the newly guaranteed constitutional rights of the freed-men, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, including what became known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.