The KKK, President Grant and the origins of voter suppression in Mississippi

The curious relationship between the state of Mississippi and famed Civil War general and later President U.S. Grant, highlighted in this article in The Mississippi Independent, will be the focus of a History is Lunch talk at the state’s Two Museums at noon on Oct. 2, 2024.

Fergus Bordewich, author of the book Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, will present “Grant, the KKK, and the War for Reconstruction in Mississippi.” Details about the event, including how to attend in person or livestream the discussion, are here.

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which hosts History is Lunch, notes in its announcement that the years of Reconstruction following the Civil War “were a time of social and political revolution in the former Confederate states—especially Mississippi, one of three states with a Black majority. The federal government, along with the newly empowered former slaves and the embryonic Republican party, set out to create a new order based on biracial democracy, economic opportunity, and racial equality. Formerly enslaved people built schools and churches, acquired property, voted, and held elected office at the local, state, and national levels.”

Opposition to Reconstruction coalesced in the Ku Klux Klan, which Bordewich describes as America’s first organized terrorist movement. He notes in the MDAH announcement that the KKK, founded in 1867, “was dedicated to destroying the Republican Party by assassinating officeholders, frightening Black voters away from the polls, and reestablishing what the Klan proudly called ‘white supremacy’ over freed people.”

MDAH also notes that in 1871, Grant, as president, armed with congressional legislation, “dispatched troops to hunt down the Klan, charged federal prosecutors with prosecuting its members, and sent congressional investigators to gather firsthand testimony from the Klan’s victims. Confronted by federal power, the Klan collapsed as thousands of its members were arrested and confessed to their crimes.”

Despite that, Bordewich notes, Reconstruction “failed to regain its early momentum as Mississippi and other southern states returned political control to white supremacist ‘Redeemers.’”

As noted in The Mississippi Independent article, Grant reportedly did not continue to aggressively pursue Reconstruction efforts due to concern about losing southern support in Congress.

Bordewich has been an independent writer, historian and journalist since the early 1970s and is the author of eight previous nonfiction books. The hourlong History is Lunch programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook (links listed on the MDAH site). Copies of Klan War will be for sale at the program.