A brief history of the Ku Klux Klan Acts: 1870s laws to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, now being used against Trump
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Friday, August 4, 2023
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Three of the charges in United States of America v. Donald J. Trump are fairly easy to understand.
Key Points:
- Three of the charges in United States of America v. Donald J. Trump are fairly easy to understand.
- They require a jury to determine whether Trump tried to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election and if he knowingly conspired to obstruct the certification of results on Jan. 6, 2021, all in an attempt to remain in the White House.
- But the fourth charge against Trump – of conspiring against the rights of the voters to cast ballots and have them fairly and honestly counted – is more complicated, and it comes from a dark time in U.S. history.
- As a historian who studies and writes about democracy and the American South, I believe the 1870s have something to teach us about the fourth count in the Jan. 6 case against Trump.
Ku Klux Klan Acts
- The indictment asserts that Trump knowingly conspired “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.” That quote comes from a series of laws enacted in the 1870s called the Ku Klux Klan Acts.
- As the Brennan Center for Justice points out, in the 20th century the Supreme Court has ruled that all sorts of election infringements violate the Enforcement Acts, including stuffing ballot boxes and bribing voters.
Retreat from democracy
- The Department of Justice secured convictions in 140 cases by using the law that is being used to prosecute Trump.
- Congress had to expand the attorney general’s staff into an entire department of government to handle the excessive case load.
- After Grant was reelected, many champions of Black rights lapsed into what historians often characterize as a moral fatigue.
- Nine stood trial, including one William Cruikshank, the burly, self-confident plantation owner who had supervised the executions.
- The Supreme Court set William Cruikshank free, and white supremacists established racist regimes in every Southern state for nearly 100 years thereafter.
Civil War amendments today
- The 5-4 majority held that states could be trusted to guarantee citizens’ voting rights.
- Writing in dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared enforcing the Civil War amendments to “battling the Hydra,” the multiheaded monster that sprouted new heads after one was defeated.
- Given this long history of advance and retreat, it’s not surprising, then, that special counsel Jack Smith, in his use of a law to prosecute Trump that dates back to the Reconstruction Era’s laws protecting the Black vote, has reasserted the Department of Justice’s power to enforce the Civil War amendments.