Figure 6

Citation

Robinson and Murphy (Hunstville, Alabama). “Man in Ku Klux Klan uniforms.” 1868. Greg French Collection. Mirror of Race, 11 Feb. 2021, mirrorofrace.bc.edu/items/show/132. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.

Title

Man in Ku Klux Klan uniforms

Subject

Man in Ku Klux Klan uniforms

Creator

Robinson and Murphy (Hunstville, Alabama)

Date

1868

Type

Studio Portrait

Identifier

Figure 6

Rights Holder

Greg French Collection

Original Format

Carte de visite (albumen print)

Factual Commentary

This photograph shows the third Ku Klux Klan outfit and weapons captured on the night of October 31, 1868, after the raid on Huntsville, Alabama. The previous slide shows the other two. The success of the raid itself in breaking up a politidal meeting, that the local white authorities would not cooperate with the Federal troops but instead let the captured KKK men go, shows how easily the KKK could operate with impunity to murder without consequences and terrorize free Blacks so as to reestablish white supremacy after the Civil War. Violence trumped law, and when Reconstruction failed, Jim Crow laws finished the process that terrorist violence had begun: to reestablish a system of racial dominance after a brief period of hope for equality.