I love seeing letters like this one, as they speak to the reign of terror perpetually looming over the landscape of most Southern states as they remind us that one of the key motives of the night riding was to to spread fear and terror for the sake of voter suppression. I haven’t reviewed the laws of Florida yet to see if they had changed around that time period like the neighboring states. Under the Mississippi Plan, sanction the SCOTUS decision in the 1890s, the new South Carolina constitution and Louisiana constitution both passed in 1895 removed about 95 percent of black Republican voters from the rolls, or around 150,000 roughly in each state. We don’t hear enough of how this was done to cheat in the elections. This removal guaranteed the conservative democrats would win all elections in those states, which they did, all the way until 1965. Alabama and Georgia followed suit. In all it appears over a million black American voters were removed. But that did stop them from fighting to register and to run for office. The registered to run in the 1890s. 1910s and 20s. A small group of educated lawyers and black businessmen continued to asset their rights and to sue. Six black women, most school teachers as I recall, sued the state of South Carolina for their right to vote with an active young black lawyer working for the NAACP and trained by an older black activist lawyer. They lost.

Of course. But they prized their political voice through their vote and kept demanding and demanding their rights. This was why the Klucks issued their letter, to threaten and intimidate in 1920 the sudden expectation to vote black women had and the demands they were making. This was the civil rights movement and the Klan is reacting against the assertion of the democratic legal rights of US citizens with terror, force, and illegal disenfranchisement. The federal government didn’t step in, and the cheating continued. And it is cheating; it is insurrection to threaten voting rights. That is the true meaning of this threatening letter. History books don’t tell the real narrative, because they are white written and narrated. Because in Florida DeSantis must approve them.

But because fifty percent of the nation as been controlled by these repressive white conservatives, really autocrats, and the South the entire time has resorted to voter suppression, disenfranchisement, and insurrection, we who believe in civil rights, the sacred unalienable rights of each individual, cannot tell the real narratives. That of how black Americans fight continually with some whites for democracy from before America started and in every decade since. The evidence is there. But so is the evidence of white cheating, as seen in this letter. The called it white supremacy because they believe they are supreme, which is autocracy. Their hatred at seeing black Americans vote alongside liberals drives their threats and violence to this day. Historical Letter by historical letter, the truth of their nature, their hatred toward democracy and the real values of equality become clear.

Your work is honest and brave. Thank you again.