Name Date Class

! Enrichment Activity 12 ! !

Reconstruction
During the Reconstruction period, many
white Southerners had difficulty accepting
the idea of civil rights and liberties for
African Americans. Some whites banded
together in secret societies such as the Ku
Klux Klan and resorted to terrorism to
deprive former enslaved people of their
new rights.

DIRECTIONS: Below is the statement of a former enslaved person who lived in South
Carolina. The statement describes his experience in 1871 at the hands of members of the
Ku Klux Klan, who came to his home in the middle of the night. Then answer the questions

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that follow.

CHAPTER
! !
They came to my door and they said “Hey!” I was asleep. They called, “Hey, hey!” My wife says, “Lewis
listen.” ”What are you doing there?” I says; and they said, “Come out; I will show you what I am doing.”
And I got up and sat on the bed, with my legs hanging out, and peeped out. They says, “Lewis, aren’t you
going to get up and open the door?” I spoke and said, “What do you want; do you want to whip me?
I have done nothing to be whipped.” They said, “Lewis, you get up and come out.” After so long a time I
went to the door. Then one come running right up to me, a great big fellow. He says, “Come down on the
ground among your friends!” I says, “I can do that and let the trouble be over with; short or long, let be
over with,” and out on the ground I went. Says he, “How did you vote?” I says, “I voted the radical ticket.”
“You has sir?” he says. I says, “Yes sir.” “Well . . .” says he, “Ain’t you had no instruction?” I says, “I can’t
read, and I can’t write, and I can’t much more than spell.” I says, “How can a black man get along without
there is some white gentleman or other with them? We go by instructions. We don’t know nothing much.”
“O” says he, “you radicals go side by side with one another, and us democrats go side by side with one
another.” I says, “I can’t help that.” He says, “Well sir, are you going up in the morning to see to your crop,
and go to work?” I says, “Just as quick as I get my breakfast I am going.” I says, “What do you want to whip
me for? I have done nothing.” “Come out in the road,” he says. I stopped and studied and hung down my
head. “I can’t study up nothing,” I said, “for what you ought to whip me.” They said, “You didn’t think
about this when you voted the radical ticket.” One of them threw a pistol right up here under my chin, and
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one grabbed me by the sleeve, and he says, “You must come get in the road and march,” and in the road
I went. He says, “Now Lewis, you get down on your knees.” Then I dropped down. They set to work on me
and hit me ten or fifteen licks pretty keen and I raised up. “Get down,” he says; “if you ever raise up again
you’ll be dead before we quit you.” Says he, “Now, you must promise you will vote the democratic ticket?”
I says, “I don’t know how I will vote, it looks hard when a body thinks this way and that way to take a
beating.” “Come out with it—come, out with it,” says he. Then I says, “Yes, sir, I reckon so.” Well, after I told
them that, they said “Now get up and put on your shirt.” I stopped and studied, and had to put on my
shirt. “Now,” he says, ”you go; we are done with you.”
Adapted from the Ku Klux Report, 1871.

! !

(continued)
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 Name Date Class

! Enrichment Activity 12 (continued)

Questions to Consider

1. What political reasons did the Klan members give for their behavior?

2. In addition to the political reasons the Klan members gave for their behavior, what other
factors may have caused them to terrorize former slaves?
CHAPTER

3. What was Lewis’s attitude, and why do you think he acted in this manner?
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4. GO A STEP FURTHER " Write a scenario describing the activity that may have taken
place in Lewis’s home and neighborhood after the Ku Klux Klan members left.

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