Dominic Sandbrook

And the Klan had several hundred members there.

And they would carry out these attacks at night.

There'd be about a dozen hooded men and they would target isolated rural homes with black residents.

They would target them.

Sometimes they'd been accused of crimes, often because they were regarded as outspoken or insolent in the kind of language of the white South, because they were politically active, because they were planning to vote Republican, or sometimes there was no reason at all.

The Klansmen just wanted to attack a black family.

They'd arrive outside your house, they would,

either call you out or they would drag you outside.

The victims are usually men or older boys, but not always, so there are attacks on children or on pregnant women.

Often, you'll be beaten with sticks hundreds of times on your bare back, but sometimes the attacks would go much further.

So there's a story about one 20-year-old black man who was dragged from his home in Columbia, Tennessee, by a Klansman who garrotted him, and then they tied a stone around his neck and they threw him into the river.

There was another man called Henry Fitzpatrick.

He'd been accused on the basis of no evidence of setting fire to some barns.

He was lashed 200 times one night and then the next night the Klansmen came back and they hanged him.

And then a third example, black veteran of the Union Army.

So, I mean, he ticks every Klan target box.

He's black and he'd fought for the North in the Civil War.

He's Clinton Drake and he is dragged from his house

and hanged and the Klansmen then proclaimed a warning they said all Union veterans heed his example or you will face the same fate and as time goes on the Klan becomes more and more public about all this so in July 1868 there's a parade on the 4th of July actually in the town of Columbia

And Klansmen ended up fighting a pitched battle, about 150 Klansmen, with 30 armed freedmen who had hidden their guns from the Klan's regular sweeps.