[Trump continues a long history in the U.S. of local, state and
national political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to
challenge or overthrow democratic governments.]
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US CAPITOL PROTESTERS, EGGED ON BY TRUMP, ARE PART OF A LONG HISTORY
OF WHITE SUPREMACISTS HEARING POLITICIANS’ WORDS AS ENCOURAGEMENT  
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Shannon M. Smith
January 7, 2021
The Conversation
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_ Trump continues a long history in the U.S. of local, state and
national political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to
challenge or overthrow democratic governments. _

The Proud Boys outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on
Wednesday, January 6, 2021., (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The
Washington Post via Getty Images

 

At a rally that morning, Donald Trump had urged those supporters
[[link removed]]
to march on the Capitol, saying he would “never concede” and that
they should show “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to
take back our country.”

The Times was joined in laying the blame at Trump’s feet by many
others, including Republican Sen. Mitt Romney
[[link removed]],
who said what happened at the Capitol was “an insurrection incited
by the president of the United States.”

Among the protesters at the Capitol were members of white supremacy
groups, including the Proud Boys
[[link removed]].
Their participation in the Jan. 6 events, egged on by Trump
[[link removed]],
reflects a long history in the U.S. of local, state and national
political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to challenge or
overthrow democratic governments.

During Reconstruction, the post-Civil War period of forming
interracial governments and reintegrating former Confederate states
into the Union, white city and state leaders in the South tacitly
encouraged violence against black voters by state militias and groups
like the Ku Klux Klan
[[link removed]]. They did it in
a way that allowed those leaders to look innocent of any crimes.

Those groups used that chaos to end federal power in their states and
reestablish white-dominated Southern state governments.

Today, white supremacists hope the political chaos they contribute to
will lead to
[[link removed]]
race war [[link removed]]
and the creation of their own white nation
[[link removed]].

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Cartoon by Thomas Nast in an 1868 Harper’s Weekly, ‘This is a
white man’s government,’ skewering Southern white supremacists
fighting Reconstruction laws. Library of Congress
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Reconstruction violence

Moments of changing social and political power in U.S. history have
led to clashes – often armed
[[link removed]]
– between white supremacists and interracial alliances over voting
rights.

That history includes the period following the Civil War, when white
supremacist organizations saw the postwar rule over Southern states of
Radical Republicans and the federal government as illegitimate. They
wanted to return to the prewar status quo of slavery by another name
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and white supremacist rule.

As a historian of protests and Reconstruction
[[link removed]],
I study how those paramilitary groups or self-proclaimed
“regulators” consequently spread fear and terror among black and
white Republican voters with the support of the anti-black Democratic
Party in Southern states.

They targeted elections and vowed to “carry the election peaceably
if we can, forcibly if we must
[[link removed]].”

Still, many courageous black and white voters fought back
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by forming political organizations, daring to vote and assembling
their own armed guards
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to protect themselves.

A leader of the Three Percenters militia movement, Matt Marshall,
speaks at an anti-lockdown protest, April 19, 2020 in Olympia,
Washington. Getty/Karen Ducey
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‘Gentlemen of property and standing’

Then, as today, white supremacists received encouraging signals from
powerful leaders.

In the 19th century, “gentlemen of property and standing
[[link removed]]”
often led or indirectly supported anti-abolition mobs, slave patrols,
lynch mobs or Klan attacks.

Federal investigators in Kentucky in 1867 found that “many men of
wealth and position [[link removed]]” rode
with the armed groups. One witness in the federal investigation
testified that “many of the most respectable men in the county
belong in the ‘Lynch’ party.” Future South Carolina Governor and
U.S. Senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman reflected on his
participation in the Hamburg massacre
[[link removed]] of 1876,
arguing that “the leading men
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of the area wanted to teach black voters a lesson by “having the
whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many as was
justifiable.” At least six black men were killed in the Hamburg
attack on the black South Carolina militia by the Red Shirts
[[link removed]], a white rifle
club.

White supremacists knew that they would not face consequences for
their violence.

An agent of the federal Freedmen’s Bureau
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– set up by Congress in 1865 to help former slaves and poor whites
in the South – stated that the “desperadoes
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received encouragement and were “screened from the hands of justice
by citizens of boasted connections.”

President Ulysses S. Grant condemned
[[link removed]] the Hamburg
massacre, arguing that some claimed “the right to kill negroes and
Republicans without fear of punishment and without loss of caste or
reputation.”

Facing community pressure, and without the presence of the U.S. Army
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enforce laws, local sheriffs and judges refused or were unable to
enforce federal laws.

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Armed rioters shown in the aftermath of the multiracial Wilmington,
North Carolina, government being overthrown by white supremacists in
1898. Library of Congress
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Witnesses were often afraid to challenge local leaders for fear of
attack. The “reign of terror
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“men dare not report outrages and appear as witnesses.”

When the U.S. District Court in Kentucky brought charges against two
men for lynching in 1871, prosecutors could not find witnesses willing
to testify against the accused. The Frankfort Commonwealth
[[link removed]] newspaper wrote, “He would be
hung by a [mob] inside of twenty-four hours, and the dominant
sentiment … would say ‘served him right.’”

State militias

As Southern states threw off federal military occupation and elected
their own white-dominated governments, they no longer had to rely
solely on white terror organizations to enforce their agenda.

Instead, these self-described “redeemers
[[link removed]]” formed state-funded
militias that served similar functions of intimidation and voter
suppression with the support of prominent citizens.

At political rallies and elections throughout the South, official
Democratic militias paraded through towns and monitored polling
stations
[[link removed]]
to threaten black and white Republican voters, proclaiming that
“this is our country and we intend to protect it or die
[[link removed]].”

In 1870 the Louisville Commercial
[[link removed]] newspaper argued, “We have,
then, a militia for the State of Kentucky composed of members of one
political party, and designed solely to operate against members of
another political party. These militia are armed with State guns, are
equipped from the State arsenal, and to a man are the enemies of the
national government.”

By driving away Republican voters and claiming electoral victory,
these Democratic leaders gained power through state-supported militia
violence.

White militias and paramilitary groups also confiscated guns from
black citizens who tried to protect themselves, claiming “We did not
think they had a right to have guns
[[link removed]].”

White terror groups and their allies in law enforcement were
especially hostile to politically active black Union veterans who
returned home with their military weapons. Local sheriffs confiscated
weapons and armed bands raided homes to destroy their guns.

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In an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon, ‘The Union as it was,’
Thomas Nast critiques violent white supremacist organizations for
forcing African Americans into a position ‘worse than slavery.’
Library of Congress/Thomas Nast from Harpers Weekly
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Guerrilla race war

During Reconstruction, paramilitary groups and official Democratic
militias found support from county sheriffs up to state governors who
encouraged violence while maintaining their own innocence.

Today, white supremacists appear to interpret politicians’ remarks
as support for their cause of a new civil war
[[link removed]]
to create a white-dominated government.

These groups thrive on recent protests against stay-at-home orders
[[link removed]],
especially the ones featuring protesters with guns
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creating an intimidating spectacle
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for those who support local and state government authority.

Beyond “dog whistle
[[link removed]]”
politics, as in the past, these statements – and the actions
encouraged by them – can lead to real violence
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and hate crimes
[[link removed]]
against any who threaten supremacists’ concept of a white nation.

_Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article originally
published
[[link removed]]
May 18, 2020._

[_You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help._
Read The Conversation’s newsletter
[[link removed]].][The
Conversation]

Shannon M. Smith
[[link removed]],
Associate Professor of History, _College of Saint Benedict & Saint
John's University
[[link removed]]_

This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]].

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