INTRODUCTION:
Either through political violence or through laws and court decisions, southern African Americans suffered from white southerner’s discontentment toward government’s policy. In 1874 the white militias coalesced into paramilitary organizations such as the White League, first in parishes of the Red River Valley. The new organization operated openly and had political goals: the violent overthrow of Republican rule and the suppression of black voting.
Democrats and many northern Republicans agreed that Confederate nationalism and slavery were dead—the war goals were achieved—and further federal military interference was an undemocratic violation of historic Republican values. The campaigns and elections of 1876 were marked by additional murders and attacks on Republicans in Louisiana, North and South Carolina, and Florida. In South Carolina the campaign season of 1876 was marked by murderous outbreaks and fraud against freedmen. Red Shirts paraded with arms behind Democratic candidates; they killed blacks in the Hamburg and Ellenton SC massacres; and one historian estimated 150 blacks were killed in the weeks before the 1876 election across South Carolina. Red Shirts prevented almost all black voting in two majority-black counties. The Red Shirts were also active in North Carolina.
Seeing through this period of history, we may not only see black people struggling to get right, but also witnessed how the change of rules influenced people’s daily life. Violence was put into spreading out racism and restricting every aspect of black people’s right. For African Americans, the horror continued.