November 28 is the anniversary of the opening of the The Ku Klux Klan Trials in 1871. Going to the extraordinary step of declaring martial law, and suspending habeas corpus for white people, the federal government began mass arrests of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina.

The republican party at the time was abolitionist, and sought to currie favour with black voters at the end of the civil war. Voter suppresion was rampant in the south, with white people lynching black people when the election didn’t go their way, with little being done by the state governments or courts. The main organising force for these racist attacks was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) terrorist group, who had greatly ramped up their attacks after a Republican election win in 1870. Murder, rape, and beatings for black people were commonplace in South Carolina. Facing the very real prospect of losing his job, the governor asked the federal government to step in. In October of that year, US president Grant ordered the disbanding of the KKK. When they refused, the military was called in and began mass arrests of KKK members. They arrested over 1000 people.

Although many of the leaders had fled before they could be arrested, the trials actually went unexpectedly well. A year later, hundreds of convictions were made, and although sentences were light, there were over a thousand more in the works. The juries even had black people serving on them. But the attorney general was forced to resign after a disagreement with the railroad barons. The new attorney general was much less eager to prosecute the KKK, and progress ground to a halt. White Americans and Democrats were horrified by the federal government’s overreach and supposed violation of constitutional rights. Evidently feeling that he had made a big enough show of doing something about the KKK, the US president granted pardons for all those convicted and clemency for those in progress. The trials were over.

The military was present for the next election to guard against the KKK as a show of face. But the very clear message sent to the KKK was that they were truly above the law. The terrorism only got worse. Less constitutionally problematic of course was taking the freedom of the natives. On this day in 1872, the Modoc War began, because a group of them had left their reservation to return to their homeland, ending with the hanging of their chief. The KKK is still active today, although suffers with membership problems, as there’s a much wider variety of fascist groups to join these days.