The Ku-Klux and the Contest for the Street in the Reconstruction-Era South

The Ku-Klux Klan committed most of its acts of violence in private or secluded spaces. Yet, Ku-Klux groups also expended a good deal of energy in taking symbolic control of public spaces in more heavily populated towns and cities through eerie nighttime marches and parades. This paper, based on press accounts of Klan processions in 1868-1874, discusses these temporary, usually carnivalesque, assertions of control over contested public spaces. The work of the Klan in claiming the public streets was made more evident still on the many occasions when Klans emerged in response to what they deemed to be inappropriate public gatherings of freedpeople, or the too-confident occupation of public space by freedpeople.

Yet Klansmen were always in danger of prosecution: their use of public spaces had to be temporary, announced only in a limited way, and anonymous. Ku-Klux supporters also counted on the Klan’s very existence remaining constantly in doubt. Ku-Klux could use public space to claim their right to it and to gain attention to their goals, but they could only do it in ways that were deniable and beyond the state’s reach. The Klan claimed space briefly and anonymously, often at midnight, and while wearing bizarre costumes. They could emerge more confidently in larger gatherings in spaces of liminality like Mardi Gras processions. This paper draws on contemporary newspaper descriptions of Klan processions to explore the strategies Ku-Klux used to claim public streets while refusing to take on a public persona or even acknowledge their own public existence.