The Man Who Took On The Klan

Summary

Throughline – “The Man Who Took On The Klan”

NPR | Airdate: February 5, 2026
Hosts: Rund Abdelfatah & Ramtin Arablouei
Guests: Bernard Powers, Kidada Williams, Guy Gugliotta

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Episode Overview

This episode of Throughline explores the intense battle between the newly formed U.S. Department of Justice and the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, focusing especially on Amos Ackerman, the Attorney General who led the federal charge against the Klan’s reign of terror in South Carolina in the early 1870s. Through survivor testimonies, historical analysis, and dramatic retellings, the episode examines the aftermath of emancipation, the struggle for Black freedom, the resurgence of white supremacy, and both the promise— and limits — of federal intervention during Reconstruction.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reconstruction’s Fragile Peace & Black Aspirations (07:07–12:40)

• Emancipation brought a “vague and amorphous” freedom. Black Southerners faced tough decisions: reuniting families, securing homes and education, and bargaining for fair labor.
  • “First you go find your loved ones who were sold away from you.” (Kidada Williams, 10:39)
• For Black Carolinians, freedom was a hard-won but resolutely contested reality, with the legal end of slavery quickly shadowed by organized resistance.

Notable Quotes

“We were free. Just like that. We were free.” — Robert Falls, formerly enslaved, NC (08:32)

“The master says we are all free, but it don’t mean we as white, and it don’t mean we as equal.” — George King, formerly enslaved, SC (11:22)

2. Rise of White Supremacy and the Klan (16:02–17:41)

• The Klan, founded in 1866, advanced from “pranks” to full-blown terror, triggered by Black political participation.
• The surge in Black voter registration (from 1% to 80% in 1867) and Black officeholding, especially in South Carolina, instigated unprecedented backlash.
  • “Rather than accept Black political rule, they turned to violence.” (Kidada Williams, 18:37)

Memorable Moment

Congressional testimonies (like those recounting Tom Rountree's murder, 00:39–04:13, 18:47–19:19) revive the horror and fear inflicted by the Klan's campaign.

3. The Federal Response: Amos Ackerman and the Department of Justice (04:55–15:12, 24:01–25:17)

• Amos T. Ackerman, a surprising figure: a former Confederate and slaveholder, now appointed Attorney General.
• Ackerman prioritized Klan prosecutions, believing in the supremacy of law, even above prior loyalties:
  • “We were content that [slavery] should go to the grave in which slavery had been buried.” (Bernard Powers, 14:41)
• The Enforcement Acts, and particularly the Ku Klux Klan Act (April 1871), gave teeth to federal prosecution of racial terror.

Notable Quotes

“He comes in and he's interested in one thing. He's interested in getting rid of the Ku Klux Klan.” — Guy Gugliotta (05:22)

“Some action by Congress is desirable, and that action should be founded upon the power which Congress possesses under the 14th Amendment.” — Ackerman testimony (23:16)

• Ackerman’s outsider status surprised Washington: “At this time, Ackerman was a stranger to the national stage. Nobody knew his name, and he had fought for the Confederacy.” (Rund Abdelfatah, 24:17)

4. Crackdown in South Carolina: Investigations and Trials (35:03–39:59)

• Army officer Lewis Merrill led investigations in York County, rounding up and arresting dozens of Klan members, often on the strength of Black residents’ testimony and confessions by terrified Klansmen.
  • “Merrill’s people, the cavalry, are just riding through York County, just pulling people in by the dozen.” — Guy Gugliotta (36:44)
• The resulting trials in Columbia, SC, featured mostly Black juries. The prosecution hoped to use these cases to define the 14th Amendment’s power and prosecute Klan crimes as violations of civil rights.

Courtroom Testimony Highlight

“Jim Williams wife Rose just describes in detail exactly what happened...walked out into the woods and hung from a pine tree. And this courtroom is just absolutely silent.” — Guy Gugliotta (41:17)

5. Political Resistance, Ackerman’s Dismissal & The Limits of Justice (40:49–47:55)

• Judges hesitated to broadly expand federal powers, so cases focused on conspiracy to obstruct Black voting.
• Despite early successes (approx. 140 convictions), President Grant and Congress soon lost appetite for aggressive enforcement. Ackerman was pressured out over political and business interests.
  • “He became more and more militant as time went on. By the time these trials took place, he was regarded as the most radical member of the Cabinet.” (Guy Gugliotta, 41:40)
  • “Sir, I hereby resign the office of Attorney General...” (Ackerman, 43:02)

Aftermath and Federal Withdrawal

• Grant issued blanket pardons. Most Klan players evaded serious consequences or melted back into local life—white terror persisted, even if the Klan “folded its tents.”

“For all of the people who are arrested, hardly anyone does time. And a lot of that is because of the local communities and ongoing resistance to Black people being free, equal, and secure...” — Kidada Williams (44:44)

6. Legacy: Did Federal Action Succeed or Fail? (47:55–50:22)

• Black political representation was systematically dismantled by violence and new Jim Crow laws post-Reconstruction.
• North and West gradually turned away, unwilling to marshal federal power for Black civil rights.

“I would have to judge the KKK investigations and trials a failure. What they showed, I think unequivocally, is that the federal government was not really willing to marshal the full power...to eradicate white terrorism in the South.” — Bernard Powers (48:30)

“The federal government could have acted. They chose not to. And they chose not to because the larger white American public did not want them to.” — Kidada Williams (49:48)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On freedom that followed emancipation:

  • “We were free. Just like that. We were free.” — Robert Falls (08:32)

• On Reconstruction’s promise:

  • “They decided that if they were free, they could labor in whatever way they [chose].” — Bernard Powers (11:05)

• On the nature of white resistance:

  • “White Southerners coming out of the Civil War...might fear that black people are going to attack them. There is a sense of what will they do to us after what we have done to them.” — Kidada Williams (15:17)

• On the fragility of justice:

  • “Carrying this flag was an increasingly difficult labor.” — Guy Gugliotta, on the loss of Radical Republican will (44:17)

• On the judgment of history:

  • “What happens over time is the memories of the war and what it was about...begin to fade.” — Bernard Powers (47:55)

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:39–04:13: Survivor and witness testimony of Klan murder (Tom Rountree) in York County, SC
• 07:07–12:40: Black hopes and efforts after emancipation—reunion, education, economic independence
• 16:02–17:41: Origins, motivations and early activities of the Klan; the backlash to Black political success
• 23:16–24:44: Ackerman’s constitutional arguments & appointment as Attorney General
• 27:22–29:09: The murder of Jim Williams, Black militia leader
• 30:15–31:53: The Enforcement Acts and federal efforts to hold the Klan accountable
• 35:03–37:18: Lewis Merrill’s investigations and mass arrests
• 38:09–39:59: Klan trials in Columbia; focus on constitutional rights
• 41:02–41:17: Rose Williams’ chilling testimony about her husband’s lynching
• 42:39–43:21: Ackerman forced to resign; political and business pressures trump justice
• 45:07–47:00: White terrorism continues; Jim Crow ascends
• 47:55–50:22: Assessing the failure of the Klan trials and Reconstruction’s end

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Takeaways

• Federal civil rights enforcement had early momentum against white supremacist terror, but ultimately proved fleeting in the face of deep-seated political resistance and waning Northern will.
• Although Amos Ackerman and the early DOJ made history by targeting the Klan, the limited results presaged over a century of struggle for civil rights and the enduring legacy of Reconstruction’s incomplete promises.
• History is shaped not just by laws or charismatic leaders, but by the willingness—or unwillingness—of the nation to back up its ideals with sustained action.

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For more perspectives, listen to the full episode or explore further resources on Reconstruction and its aftermath.

Transcript

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Support for NPR and the following message come from Warby Parker, the One Stop Shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear plus contacts, eye exams and more. For everything you need to see, visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head to warbyparker.com a note before we get started. This episode contains descriptions of racist violence. Yorkville, South Carolina July 27, 1871. Give us your best information with regard.

[Bernard Powers]

To the disturbances in this county at.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The last election by men in disguise.

[Bernard Powers]

Well sir, there is no doubt about the matter. There have been several men killed since the last election.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Can you give me the names and circumstances?

[Bernard Powers]

The first killing I remember was Roundtree.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Tell us something about the raid you were on.

[Bernard Powers]

The first raid I was on was on 2 December, a week or 10 days before the night Ned Turner came over to the shop where I was at work and told me that they were going to make a raid on Roundtree.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Who was Tom Roundtree?

[Bernard Powers]

He was a black man.

[Kidada Williams]

What position in his race?

[Bernard Powers]

He occupied no position at all.

[Kidada Williams]

What was his politics?

[Bernard Powers]

He did not meddle in politics much.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I don't think you're hearing readings of testimony about a murder in York County, South Carolina that happened the year before in 1870. The men were testifying in front of Congress.

[Bernard Powers]

Well, when the night came on, I went down there, Some four or five fellows there. I asked them what they was going to do. They said they was going to kill him. I asked them what they were staying there for. They said they were waiting for some people to come from the other side of the river. He then hollered for them all to form a line in the road and start. They went to about a quarter of a mile of Roundtree's house and got down and hitched the horses.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Roundtree was a cotton farmer who lived in York County. He had just come back from selling his cotton in Charlotte, North Carolina with $200 in his pocket. Around one o' clock in the morning, 60 or 70 Klansmen surrounded his house.

[Bernard Powers]

And somebody fired, I don't know which side fired the first gun. When the first gun was fired, about 50 or 75 guns were fired into the cracks and windows of the house.

[Kidada Williams]

He went up in the loft. They discovered it.

[Bernard Powers]

Roundtree run to the edge of the loft and shot down at us in the entry. He then jumped out of the window. I run out and run around and just got around when I saw him fall. Henry Seppa came up and drew a long Bowie knife.

[Kidada Williams]

Then they shot him and cut his throat.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

It was moonlight.

[Kidada Williams]

They had balls of turpentine and lit them.

[Guy Gugliotta]

That got the attention of practically everybody.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Tom Rountree's killing was part of the Ku Klux Klan's campaign to restore white power in South Carolina by keeping black people from the ballot box.

[Guy Gugliotta]

And it gets to be really chaotic. Over the next several months, Black folks start burning gin houses and crops of white farmers around York County.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Black resistance spawned white reprisal. The Klan embarked on a reign of terror in the South Carolina upcountry. The violence got so bad that the governor of South Carolina sent a telegram to President Ulysses S. Grant warning that South Carolina was in a state of war. He even threatened to declare martial law. The Civil War had ended only a few years before.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Enter Amos Ackerman, a former Confederate soldier and slaveholder and the new newly appointed attorney general of the United States. Akerman was in charge of the brand new Department of Justice, created to enforce federal law in the south and protect black people from violence. He believed in the rule of law and he had the power of the US Federal government at his disposal.

[Guy Gugliotta]

He comes in and he's interested in one thing. He's interested in getting rid of the Ku Klux Klan.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But that would prove easier said than done.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

I'm Rundab de Fattah.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Today on the show, the man who took on the Klan. Hi, this is Carolyn from Wappinger Falls, New York.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And you're listening to Throughline from npr. This message comes from Lisa from Night One. You'll feel the difference. Premium materials that deliver serious comfort and full body Support. Go to Lisa.com for 25% off mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

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[Ramtin Arablouei]

This message comes from NPR sponsor the NPR Wine Club, a place to explore the exciting world of wine, including wines inspired by popular NPR shows like Tiny Desk Sauvignon Blanc. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, all purchases help support NPR programming and fund quality reporting developed to connect people to their communities and the world they live in. [e-mail] Podcast must be 21 or older to purchase.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Part one. There had never been peace.

[Bernard Powers]

When the war began and black Carolinians heard the first shots. A lot of those people heard the sound of freedom.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And that Was true for black people across the South.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The end of the war, it came just like that, like you snap your fingers.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

How did you know the end of.

[Kidada Williams]

The war had come?

[Ramtin Arablouei]

How did we know it? Hallelujah broke out. Felix Haywood, enslaved in Texas.

[Kidada Williams]

I remember someone saying, asking a question, you got to say, master.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And somebody answered and said, nah.

[Kidada Williams]

Sarah Jane Patterson, enslaved in Georgia.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Something begins to work up here. I begins to think and to know things. And I knew then I could make a living for my own self. And I never had to be a slave no more. Robert Falls, enslaved, North Carolina. Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes, and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We were free. Just like that. We were free.

[Bernard Powers]

Legally. There's a new situation, but the notion of freedom is, and it was for them, a vague and amorphous notion.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The civil war began in 1861, and within two years, President Abraham Lincoln had issued the emancipation proclamation, which declared that all people who were enslaved in the confederacy were free. And when the Confederacy was defeated in 1865, the federal government passed the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery across the United States.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The slaves where I lived knew after the war that they had abundance of that something called freedom what they could not eat, wear, and sleep in. Ezra Adams, enslaved in South Carolina. We soon found out that freedom could make folks proud, but it didn't make them rich. Yes, sir, they soon found out that.

[Bernard Powers]

Freedom ain't nothing less.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

You got us something to live on and a place to call home.

[Bernard Powers]

And they knew that to really be free, they had to do things.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This is Bernard Powers. He's the director of the center for the study of slavery in Charleston at the college of Charleston in South Carolina.

[Bernard Powers]

They had to determine what freedom looked like, and that's what they did. In so many ways, they're faced with.

[Kidada Williams]

A constellation of options and decisions.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This is Kidada Williams, the author of.

[Kidada Williams]

I saw death, a history of terror and survival in the war against reconstruction.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And professor of history at Wayne State university.

[Kidada Williams]

Where do you live? Where do you work?

[Bernard Powers]

And they make all of those decisions in freedom.

[Kidada Williams]

First you go find your loved ones who were sold away from you.

[Bernard Powers]

You can see advertisements that they put in local newspapers for husbands, wives, children that had been sold away.

[Kidada Williams]

They wrote, rush into securing housing, create.

[Bernard Powers]

Schools to learn how to read and.

[Kidada Williams]

Write, doing what they can to acquire land, finding employment.

[Bernard Powers]

They decided that if they were free, they could labor in whatever way they.

[Kidada Williams]

Decided, pressing lawmakers to make sure that their rights are protected. And they have to do this because every single move they make is contested.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The master says, we are all free, but it don't mean we as white and it don't mean we as equal. George King, enslaved in South Carolina in the years after the war, much of the south was in shambles.

[Bernard Powers]

Virtually all of the fighting during the Civil War occurred in the south. And so there was widespread destruction and disrepair, otherwise brutal. Those places were abandoned, and they suffered tremendous damage from the bombs.

[Guy Gugliotta]

There had been a surrender, of course, in 1865 at Appomattox, but there had never been peace. I'm Guy Gugliotta, former journalist for the Washington Post.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Guy wrote a book called Grant's Enforcer Taking down the Klan.

[Guy Gugliotta]

The south had lost one fifth of its male population, its economy based on plantation agriculture, and slavery was no more.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

For both white and black southerners, the end of the war upended the social and economic order that had existed for generations.

[Guy Gugliotta]

There was nothing to replace it.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Amos Ackerman was one of the many white southerners who now found themselves unsure of where they belonged in the world.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Before the war, he was a very successful attorney in northern Georgia.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

He had moved to the south from New Hampshire to escape the cold for health reasons.

[Guy Gugliotta]

He was worried about two things as far as I could see. Worried about getting out of debt and worried about God. He spent a lot of time in church. He's really a bore. He's just super serious. Very, very, very dull.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

When the war began, Akerman saw how the federal government responded to the first invasions of the Confederate army.

[Guy Gugliotta]

He's disgusted because Confederates invaded this big federal armory and the federal government didn't do anything about it. Ackerman much later says, I like a strong government. He said, and this government wasn't strong. If this government wouldn't protect itself, I wasn't going to protect was federal weakness, which kind of drove him into the Confederacy.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Federal weakness, and also the fact that he himself was a slaveholder who enslaved 11 people.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

After the war, the world around Ackerman had turned on its head. He basically saw the writing on the wall. The side he had fought for, lost. And above his devotion to the Confederacy was his devotion to the rule of law. Slavery was illegal, and that was simply the law. Now, however unlikely it might have seemed, Amos Ackerman did a complete about face.

[Bernard Powers]

Some of us who had adhered to.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The Confederacy felt it to be our duty that we were to participate in.

[Bernard Powers]

The politics of the Union to let Confederate ideas rule us no longer.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Regarding the subjugation of one race by the other as an appurtenance of slavery.

[Bernard Powers]

We were content that it should go to the grave in which slavery had been buried.

[Kidada Williams]

Reconstruction was an effort to reconcile the outcomes of the Civil War. So it's, you know, a series of policies, but it's also a process as the nation tries to figure out a new way forward. But it also means trying to figure out what it means to include newly freed African Americans into the body politic.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Among white Southerners, a certain kind of rhetoric started to emerge.

[Kidada Williams]

White Southerners coming out of the Civil War, they rightfully, you know, one could understand that they might fear that black people are going to attack them. There is a sense of what will they do to us after what we have done to them. There are even federal lawmakers that are wringing their hands and saying, well, you know, are black people seeking revenge? The reality is that there is no evidence at all of black people instigating this violence. What they are doing is defending themselves against it in a way that they weren't necessarily doing in slavery. And that's why you see white supremacists, they kind of up the ante with the organized violence when it becomes clear that they're not going to be able to stop black people from seizing their freedom.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The Ku Klux Klan, the most notorious of these white terror organizations, was founded in 1866 in Tennessee.

[Kidada Williams]

The Klan is engaged in its early days in these kind of pranks and they're performing musical entertainment.

[Bernard Powers]

Just because the Klan is not organized in Carolina until 1868, it doesn't mean that there was an absence of white terrorist organizations. They exist for from the very beginning of the years following the war. The KKK is just the one that was probably the most well organized and the one that received the greatest publicity. And it's really triggered by the success of political reconstruction.

[Kidada Williams]

Once black men, men have the right to vote, they really start to get involved in the political violence.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

In 1867, the Reconstruction Acts were passed. They placed the Confederate states under military rule until they ratified the 14th amendment and established new state constitutions that guaranteed equal rights and protections to African Americans. Under the Reconstruction Acts, black men in Southern states could vote and hold office for the first time.

[Kidada Williams]

This opens the floodgates and black men rush through them. In 1867, only about 1% of black men are registered to vote. But by the end of the year, upwards of 80% of black men are registered to vote.

[Bernard Powers]

It's a complete metamorphosis politically. In South Carolina, you get the creation of the black body politic. And the thing to keep in mind is this South Carolina is a state that has a black majority. When the state elections are held in the spring of 1868, African Americans occupied the majority of seats. This is the only place, it's the only place during Reconstruction in the south where there was a black majority in either house of a state legislature. Obviously, black people had never seen this, had never participated in a process like this, nor had whites, and they were outraged.

[Kidada Williams]

Rather than accept black political rule, they turned to violence.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Testimony of Henry Lipscomb Spartanburg, South Carolina July 11, 1871.

[Bernard Powers]

Were the colored people there afraid?

[Ramtin Arablouei]

They were not so afraid at the start, at the election, they were not afraid. They went up and voted, every one of them. And some swam the river in order to, and some waited. But after the coup, clucking started and they whipped some and killed some and got their guns. They were scared.

[Bernard Powers]

In many cases. It was horrific, terrible.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

They came about midnight. They came to take me or kill me, I reckon.

[Kidada Williams]

How were these men dressed?

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This man had on white altogether, plum all around and a disguise across the face. A little white and I could see red eyes and lips.

[Bernard Powers]

There was relative safety in the cities. Charleston, Georgetown, Beaufort.

[Guy Gugliotta]

The cotton counties are just overwhelmingly black. If the Klan tries to mess around down there, it's pretty dangerous for the. But up in the, in the upcountry, in Spartanburg County, York County, Union county, these counties are all pretty much equally divided between blacks and whites.

[Bernard Powers]

When one went into the interior particularly, you're moving away from the street lights, you live out on farms and your nearest neighbors could be miles away. So your ability to receive aid and protection and even to band together is much more limited in the countryside because the population is much more diffuse.

[Kidada Williams]

While black people were enslaved, their lives had value. Right? So enslavers aren't just killing the people they hold in bondage all willy nilly, but black people seizing their freedom. It's a completely different story. And so this violence is much more likely to be deadly.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Why were you afraid to sleep in your house?

[Ramtin Arablouei]

They had killed Mr. Alf Owens, a white man down there, and a black man named Jim Peeler and one named Tom Rountree. I could hear them say they allowed to go to every radical man's house. And that scared me. Did you sleep in the woods? Yes, sir.

[Kidada Williams]

There really is no peace for black people who are trying to live upright and to be free in the South. And that is very clear by virtue of the violence that they are experiencing and witnessing on a daily basis. People think, well, I thought this person was an ally. And then they were in the raid the night before. That's the reality of terrorism.

[Bernard Powers]

The issue really then is how does the north, and how do Republican politicians in Washington, in Congress, respond? Well, they respond with hope. They hope that the situation will get better, but unfortunately, they don't respond with enough action.

[Kidada Williams]

What starts to happen as the violence goes on and on and on, and as it escalates, there is a greater sense of moral injury that the federal government is going to let this violence slide. You had, you know, Northern conservatives who are in the Democratic Party at this time saying, this is just Southern culture. There's nothing to see here. There's nothing going on here. We don't need to pay attention, and we certainly don't need federal troops to do anything about it.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

We.

[Kidada Williams]

We don't need new laws. This is just the way the south is.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Just like before the Civil War, Georgia attorney Amos Ackerman saw the federal government failing to respond to challenges to its authority. He was getting frustrated with their weak stance, and he was not afraid to be open about it. I think that difficulties arise mainly from.

[Bernard Powers]

The disturbances in the minds of the.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

People on account of the war and its results and the changes brought in society by these causes.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Akerman appeared before Congress and said, this is what you do.

[Bernard Powers]

Some action by Congress is desirable, and that action should be founded upon the power which Congress possesses under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

[Guy Gugliotta]

You've just passed the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment says that everybody born in the United States is a citizen. If you're a citizen, you've got rights. And so black folks are citizens. When the Ku Klux Klan just breaks into houses, terrorizes people, lynches people, murders people, steals from people, why don't you make those federal crimes, try them in federal court? Is civil rights violations.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I have no doubt of the fact.

[Bernard Powers]

That Congress possesses such power.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Ackerman caught President Grant's eye, and he offered him a position as the nation's new attorney General, which took the whole country by surprise.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

At this time, Akerman was a stranger to the national stage. Nobody knew his name, and he had fought for the Confederacy. So what made Grant think that Akerman was the best choice to enforce Reconstruction laws that most former Confederate soldiers saw as not only a humiliating reminder of their defeat, but also a huge overreach of federal powers.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Grant wanted to reconcile with the south, and so he needed a South in the Cabinet. And Akerman was indeed the only Southerner ever to serve in a Reconstruction Cabinet.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

When Ackerman took office in 1870, he was ready to use the federal power at his disposal to enforce the law.

[Guy Gugliotta]

He comes in and he's interested in one thing. He's interested in getting rid of the Ku Klux Klan and that's all he wants to do. He's not interested in anything else else.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Coming up, Amos Akerman sends the Department of Justice into South Carolina.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Hello, my name is Imani Rosario. I'm calling from Princeton, New Jersey. I am a smarter, more informed and probably more interesting person having found and started listening to your podcast. You are listening to Throughline on npr. This message comes from Adobe. You need to make a huge presentation in an hour. Luckily, Adobe Acrobat Studio uses AI and Adobe Express to take your files and generate a presentation in a few clicks. Need a last minute pitch deck? Do that with Acrobat. Need to level up your presentation design. Do that with Acrobat. Have 30 plus documents that need to be simplified into a proposal. Do that with Acrobat. Learn [e-mail] do that with Acrobat this message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify. No idea where to sell? Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. It is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the Internet's best converting checkout to help you turn them from browsers to buyers. Go to Shopify.com NPR to take your business to the next level. Today, Evergreen trees are Pacific Northwest icons in journalism. An Evergreen story isn't tied to one news cycle. It goes deep and helps you understand the world. The Evergreen is also a podcast from OPB about the Northwest.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I'm Jen Chavez.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Listen to the Evergreen podcast from OPD every Monday, part of the NPR Network. Part 2 Enforcement.

[Kidada Williams]

7 March they came to my house about 2 o' clock in the night. Came in the house and called him disguised men. I can't tell who it was. I don't know how many there was. I call them Ku klux.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

In early March 1871, the Ku Klux Klan arrived at Jim Williams house in York County. He was there with his wife Rose and their children.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Jim Williams was an active civil rights leader. He was also the captain of a state militia company based in York county in South Carolina.

[Bernard Powers]

The state militia is organized by the Republican administration. The state militia essentially becomes a black militia. It is comprised of black men because Southern white men would not really join it.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Jim Williams Co. Was actively engaged in resisting, they were one of the only lines of defense the black community had against the Klan. And so it was only a matter of time before Jim became a target. Rose Williams hid in her house all night with her children. It was only once the sun rose that she was able to go out. Outside. Her husband's body was discovered that next morning. He had been lynched by the Klan.

[Guy Gugliotta]

It went off like an explosion in South Carolina.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

It was clear that the Klan had targeted Williams because he was such a public figure. South Carolina's attorney general told the press that civil authorities were unable because of the Klan to enforce the laws. In other words, it was like another mini civil war was unfolding right in South Carolina and the government was losing.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The governor of South Carolina, a pro Reconstruction Republican, even sent a desperate telegram to President Grant.

[Bernard Powers]

An actual state of war exists in York and Chester counties. Fighting for four days by Ku Klux from North Carolina. I will be compelled to declare martial law.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The federal government had a problem.

[Kidada Williams]

Republicans in Congress recognize that their ability to continue ruling is going to be endangered if black men are being killed and if they can't vote or if they're being assassinated.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

For the past year, Congress had been passing a series of laws designed to protect the rights of newly emancipated black people and regain order and control over white supremacist violence in the South. They were known as the enforcement acts.

[Bernard Powers]

The final one of these acts was also known as the KKK act, the Ku Klux Klan Act.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Congress passed the KKK act in April 1871, a little over a month after Jim Williams murder. And this was the act that would allow Amos Ackerman to prosecute the Klan in South Carolina.

[Bernard Powers]

When you see this at the top level, at the congressional level, you say, oh, my goodness. Well, Congress is doing things. It's acting, except the problem is at the implementation level. And so you see these measures occurring that have been passed by Congress seeming to indicate growing strength and commitment to Reconstruction, except at the state level.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

In South Carolina, the Klan held a lot of power in local communities, from business owners to physicians to legislators. White South Carolinians from all kinds of backgrounds had ties to the Klan.

[Kidada Williams]

What we know is that the political climate they create is that you don't need to be a formal member of the organization to partake in the activities. So it can be difficult to understand who's in, who's quote in the organization. You know, you move in and out of this activity. You know, you go to church on Sunday morning and, you know, Saturday night You participated in a Klan raid.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This made it really hard to enforce the law.

[Bernard Powers]

And the Grant administration will begin to more aggressively implement the enforcement acts. Working along with the newly organized Justice Department that Amos Ackerman will head.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Akerman's most important job was to prove that the Ku Klux Klan was a.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Conspiracy, that it was an actual organization with leaders and members, meetings and plans that they carried out to inflict the terror on black people. Looking back from our vantage point, it seems obvious. We know today that the Ku Klux Klan was a real organization, but back then, this was a group shrouded in rumor and mystery to the federal government. It wasn't clear exactly what it was or how deep the conspiracy went.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Akerman needed to discover its leaders, its members, and figure out what kind of planned violence the organization was responsible for.

[Bernard Powers]

South Carolina was seen as kind of a test case.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

If Akerman won, it would be a dramatic expansion of the role the federal government could play in enforcing civil rights. It could even mean the end of the Klan. But could he pull it off? That's coming up.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Todd from Minneapolis.

[Bernard Powers]

I've been a listener since your very.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

First episode, and I can't help but think that some people see history as.

[Guy Gugliotta]

A tale of caution and others see it as a plan to be recreated. Here, listing the through line from npr.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Ira Glass. On this American Life. We look for stories that are surprising.

[Kidada Williams]

That you won't hear anywhere else.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Like, for example, this one astronaut who went to the moon. You know what? He's not into space.

[Kidada Williams]

Was it cool to float around weightless?

[Guy Gugliotta]

No, no, no.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This American Life Unexpected stories. Wherever you get your podcasts on Planet.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Money, we have covered a lot of.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Topics, like just try searching something on.

[Guy Gugliotta]

The Internet and adding Planet Money to the end of it.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Tariff prices. Planet Money.

[Guy Gugliotta]

That's an episode stop sign.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Planet Money.

[Guy Gugliotta]

That too. Alaska halibut derby. Planet Money.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

If you can ask it, we have probably answered it. Planet Money. Listen on the NPR app or wherever.

[Guy Gugliotta]

You get your podcasts.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Valentine's Day is coming up, and the perfect gift for the NPR lover in your life is waiting at the NPR shop. From cozy sweaters and mugs made for slow mornings to our tiny desk hoodie, there's something for every NPR fan. Each purchase supports public media and the journalism you love. Find something [e-mail] Part 3 wins and losses.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

If Amos Ackerman was going to arrest the Ku Klux Klan in raids, he was going to need men on the ground. And Lewis Merrill was one of those Guys. Merrill was an army officer sent to York county, which was one of nine South Carolina counties where the federal government wanted to investigate the Klan. But before Merrill and his troops could make any arrests, he needed to build strong cases against Klan members, a feat that was tough in the South. Merrill wasn't getting any help from local law enforcement, and his troops were met with insults by the locals. But the investigations persisted, and for months, Lewis Merrill developed white informants, followed leads from black residents. He reviewed legal records and coroner's reports. And In October of 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant gave Merrill and his troops authority to go after the Klan. The raids began.

[Guy Gugliotta]

So Merrill goes after him. He just starts rolling them up. He goes to the house of a very big leader of the Klan. He sends one of his lieutenants there. They arrest the father, and then the lieutenant asks his daughter, where's the pledge.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The pledge taken by Klan members?

[Guy Gugliotta]

The daughter says, oh, it's right here, and opens a desk and hands him the pledge.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Some of the Klan members fled the county. Some even fled the country during the raids. But Merrill and his troops did arrest several Klan leaders, including men accused in Tom Rountree's and Jim Williams murders.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Merrill's people, the cavalry, are just riding through York county, just pulling people in by the dozen.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Most of the arrests happened in broad daylight with no resistance.

[Guy Gugliotta]

So they start to come in, they start to confess, and he's collecting this huge body of material. These people are pleading out as rapidly as they possibly can. They're just taking confessions like one after the other and telling them everything about what's happened. It's absolutely chaotic.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In the end, almost 200 people were held in a building that had been converted into a jail, and hundreds more were paroled, waiting to be called to trial.

[Guy Gugliotta]

The trials took place in the ballroom of the biggest hotel in Columbia, South Carolina, the capital of the state. Picture this T shape. The judges are at the head of the T, and along one side of the T are the prosecution, and on the other side are the defense lawyers. The jury is sitting over against the wall.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The jurors were mostly black men. South Carolina had a majority black population, and potential white jurors also refused to serve, either as a boycott or because they feared or were part of the Klan.

[Guy Gugliotta]

The rest of the room is filled. Black folks sitting on one side and white folks sitting on the other side. Well, there are two things that the prosecution wants to do. They want to convict the Klansmen, obviously, but what they want to do is they want to put teeth on the 14th Amendment.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The 14th Amendment enshrined equal protections under the Constitution.

[Guy Gugliotta]

I want to show that these crimes, hate crimes, are violations of the civil rights of the victims.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Amos Ackerman and his prosecutors argued that the 14th Amendment gave the federal government power over states to uphold these equal protections. And since the state of South Carolina hadn't protected black people from the Klan, they argued the federal government could. But the 14th Amendment had just been ratified a few years before, and what it meant had still not been totally tested. Prosecutor David Corbyn told the room.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

What does the 14th Amendment mean? Is Congress going to pass an act.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

To explain these words? I have no doubt that Congress cannot.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Explain what those words mean. It must be done by the court.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Akerman and his prosecutors also wanted to convict the Klan for violating other constitutional rights.

[Guy Gugliotta]

If you break into somebody's house, you're violating the Fourth Amendment. If you break into somebody's house and take their guns, you're violating the Second Amendment. These people are citizens. There is no reason why these crimes can't be prosecuted in federal court, just like the civil rights violations.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But prosecutors weren't convincing enough. Even the judges were afraid of expanding the constitutional powers of the federal government. So if Ackerman and Corbyn were going to have a shot at convicting any Klan members, they had to stick with violations of the Enforcement act and prove that the Klan and its individual members conspired to prevent black people from voting.

[Guy Gugliotta]

You're beating people up and you're lynching people, and you're doing all these crimes, and you're doing it because you don't want these folks to belong to the Republican Party and you don't want them to vote.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And these conspiracy cases had strong witnesses.

[Guy Gugliotta]

From the black community, maybe give unbelievable testimony.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Are you the wife of Jim Williams?

[Kidada Williams]

Yes, sir.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Jim Williams wife Rose just describes in detail exactly what happened. How her husband was sort of found hiding underneath a floorboard, taken out.

[Kidada Williams]

They told me to shut the door and take my children and go to bed. I shut the door, but didn't go to bed. I looked out of the crack after.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Them until they got under the shadows.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Of the trees, walked out into the woods and hung from a pine tree. And this courtroom is just absolutely silent.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

While the trials were underway, Amos Ackerman was fired up, pushing his rhetoric to sell these prosecutions to the public.

[Guy Gugliotta]

He became more and more and more militant as time went on. By the time these trials took place, he was regarded as the most radical member of the Cabinet. He actually went up and gave a.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Speech Speech in Brooklyn where he commented on KKK men on trial in South Carolina. They are to be convicted. Some would be imprisoned, some sent to the penitentiary, and some would be hung.

[Guy Gugliotta]

And he met it.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This new, radicalized Acreman hadn't just pushed the buttons of former Confederates. President Grant was looking towards the next election. The political tides were changing. Grant began pulling back on using the federal government to go after the kkk. The governor of Georgia requested federal help to deal with the Klan in his state, but Grant refused. Ackerman had also been getting a little too involved in Grant's business interests.

[Guy Gugliotta]

He had gotten involved in a couple of cases against a big railroad. And Grant loved businessmen. He loved big railroad people and rich people. So the feeling was on Akerman's part that he had alienated too many rich people, had alienated the railroads, and he had to leave.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Then, in the middle of the trials, Amos Ackerman was pressured by President Grant to step down. Sir, I hereby resign the office of Attorney General of the United States.

[Bernard Powers]

This resignation to take effect in accordance with the wish which you verbally expressed.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

To me today on the 10th of January next at Akerman Department of Justice, December 13, 1871. Despite Akerman's resignation, the federal government won many of its conspiracy cases in the South Carolina klan trials of 1871 and 1872. In the end, there were about 140 convictions, mostly guilty pleas. But after Akerman resigned and after these first few trials, the political will to prosecute the more than 1,000 open Klan cases fizzled out. The white lawmakers in Congress soon no longer had an appetite for using the federal government's power to prosecute violence against black people like they had before. The advocates just weren't there.

[Guy Gugliotta]

Thaddeus Stevens, the Charles Sumners, Lincoln. He was gone. They were gone. Carrying this flag was an increasingly difficult labor.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Grant would eventually issue a blanket pardon for all those convicted and for those cases not yet tried.

[Kidada Williams]

For all of the people who are arrested, hardly anyone does time. And a lot of that is because of the local communities and ongoing resistance to black people being free, equal and secure, and resistance to the federal government presuming that it should, should be doing anything in order to stop white Southerners from attacking black Southerners.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

On the surface, Ackerman's zealous pursuit of the KKK was a win for the federal government in the middle of Reconstruction. After the trials ended in 1872, the organization more or less disappeared.

[Guy Gugliotta]

The Klan per se pretty much folded its tents all across the South. The Ku Klux Klan Just disappeared. But white terrorism did not.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And in the end, Akerman and the Justice Department never took down the big KKK leaders like they'd wanted. Most of them either fled the counties during the raids or just didn't face major consequences.

[Kidada Williams]

A lot of people, they never surrendered themselves to the government. They just leave and go to another community. A lot of people are pardoned, right, for their activities. And so that's why hardly anyone does any time. And they just go back into the communities doing some of the exact same things they had done before.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In 1877, Grant's presidency came to an end, and Reconstruction went with him. The 1876 election was highly contested. In order to settle the disputes, the federal government promised to pull the military presence from the South. Once the military was no longer enforcing Reconstruction, Southern Democrats started passing Jim Crow laws. These laws upheld racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters. They made it easier for white violence against black people to continue.

[Kidada Williams]

So you don't have as many Klan raids after all of the arrests, but you still have lynchings, you still have massacres, you still have a lot of targeted violence around elections through the end of the 19th century. And that's how they're able to get Jim Crow installed, through violence and by seizing political power.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

By the 1880s, all the black senators.

[Guy Gugliotta]

And black congressmen from the south were all gone.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

And the north, which still today gets a lot of credit for abolishing slavery, doesn't re up its push to use the federal government to change things. It doesn't go full Amos Ackerman on these laws in the South.

[Kidada Williams]

These are not the abolitionists. They've styled themselves as Northerners, and westerners create this abolitionist cause, this mythology that they're all abolitionists. And the reality is that they were not. They only accept emancipation as a way to end the war quickly. And they can get away with that because white northerners and white Westerners are willing to turn deaf ear and blind eye to the violence in order to move on with the American experiment.

[Bernard Powers]

What happens over time is the memories of the war and what it was about. They begin to fade.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

How would you then characterize the outcome of these trials? Like, I mean, I asked this question. Would you consider it a success or failure if the measure is protecting the black population and ending the terror and what's effectively a local civil war happening? How successful or not was were these trials in helping to change that, based.

[Bernard Powers]

On those cross criteria of stopping the terrorism and protecting the rights of black Carolinians to vote and hold office. I would have to judge the KKK investigations and trials a failure. What they showed, I think unequivocally that the federal government was not really willing to marshal the full power, authority and machinery to eradicate white terrorism in the South. They were unprepared beforehand. They didn't take the opportunity to correct the situation. And what it also probably does is to further emboldened the forces of terror and organizations like the KKK to control the display of violence in a way that could not be easily tracked and prosecuted.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

The legacy of the Klan trials is one of political power, but also political will.

[Kidada Williams]

You know, they do something really important during Reconstruction, but they don't do enough. What happened during Reconstruction, what happened with the Klan violence and the Klan hearings, I think it really kind of underscores that reality. The federal government could have acted. They chose not to. And they chose not to because the larger white American public did not want them to.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This episode was produced by me and.

[Bernard Powers]

Me and Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey.

[Kidada Williams]

Minor, Christina Kim, Devin Kadayama, Irene Noguchi.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Kiana Mohattam, Thomas Coltrane. And we want to give a special shout out to producer Lawrence Wu, who I'm sure you've heard on the credits before. He's been with us since we started Throughline about seven years ago. And actually, really even before we started it, he was burning the midnight oil with me and Ramtin back when the show was just an idea in our heads. I can't say enough how grateful we are that he took a chance on us.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The show would not be what it is today without him. He's an incredible creative producer. Some of the best sound design on this show is thanks to him. And he's just like the coolest guy you'd ever meet. A kind, generous teammate and friend. Now Lawrence is on to new adventures and we're, of course, very excited for him, but also really sad to see him go.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Thank you, Lawrence, for being building this show with us and helping to make it better. We're really going to miss you.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Thanks to Augie Nuzzer, Ellis Aureola, Mark Roth, Luther Pearson, Christy Miles and Ryan Muzzi for their voiceover work.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Thank you to Tony Cavan, Johannes Durgi, Beth Donovan and Tommy Evans. This episode episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which.

[Bernard Powers]

Includes Naveed, Marvi, Sho, Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write [e-mail] and make sure you follow us on Apple, Spotify or the NPR app. That way you'll never miss an episode.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Thanks for listening. This message comes from Squarespace, a platform for building a custom on brand website. Choose from award winning templates, showcase your work and manage payments. Visit squarespace.com NPR to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This message comes from Grainger. Grainger knows that if you're a school custodian, cleanliness is your top priority. That's why you can rely on Grainger for a range of cleaning products and equipment from disinfectants to floor scrubbers. Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices like full service, wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on thinkorswim. Visit schwab.com to learn more.