Kidada Williams

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.