The Ku Klux Klan Act may be a law from the Reconstruction era, but it still relevant today as a way to address modern civil rights violations.
On April 20, 1871, President Ulysses Grant signed the law, also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1871. Part of the law is known today as Section 1983 of the United States Code and is the basis for federal civil rights lawsuits across the country.
Through the Ku Klux Klan Act, Congress opened the doors of federal courts to sue state officers and even private actors for civil rights violations. Section 1983 includes suits for violations of civil rights by police officers, public educators and officials, or prison guards and wardens. Another part of the act is included in Section 1985 of the code.
The Ku Klux Klan Act’s passage followed racial violence and terrorism in South Carolina. It was the third of a series of “Enforcement Acts” meant to protect African American citizens against this widespread extralegal violence. The first two acts, passed in May 1870 and February 1871, aimed to allow the federal government to enforce the 15th Amendment and African American voting rights in the south.
During the debates over the act, the bill’s supporters repeatedly described the of terror imposed by the Klan upon black citizens and their white sympathizers in the southern states. These violent acts went unpunished, legislators asserted, because Klan members and sympathizers were powerful enough that law enforcement would not arrest them, juries refused to convict, and judges would not hold fair trials.
Republicans in Congress argued that states refusing to protect African Americans by ignoring the violence of the Klan violated their14th amendment right to “equal protection.”
The origins of the Ku Klux Klan Act and Section 1983 go back to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was modeled on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Prior to Reconstruction, the one area in which Congress and the federal government could guarantee, by private lawsuits, constitutional rights was related to fugitive slaves.
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