Stories of the KKK
"The Yankees rode three years over the county in squads, and colored folks didn't know they was free. I have seen them in their old uniforms riding around when I was a child. White folks started talking about freedom 'fore the darkies and turning them loose with the clothes they had on and what they could tote away. No land, no home, no place; they roamed around.
When it was freedom, the thing Papa done was go to a place and start out sharecropping. Folks had no horses or mules. They had to plow new ground with oxen. I plowed when I was a girl, plowed oxen. If you had horses or mules and the Yankees come along three or four years after the war, they would swap horses, ride a piece, and if they had a chance swap horses again. Stealing went on during and long after the war.
The Klu Klux was awful in South Carolina. The colored folks had no church to go to. They gather around at folk's houses to have preaching and prayers. One night we was having it at our house, only I was the oldest and was in another room sound asleep on the bed. There was a crowd at our house. The Klu Klux come, pulled off his robe and dough face, hung it up on a nail in the room, and said, "Where's that Jim Jesus?" He pulled him out the room. The crowd run off. Mama took the three little children but forgot me and run off too. They beat Papa till they thought he was dead and throwed him in a fence corner. He was beat nearly to death, just cut all to pieces. He crawled to my bed and woke me up and back to the steps. I thought he was dead -- bled to death -- on the steps. Mama come back to leave and found he was alive. She doctored him up, and he lived thirty years after that. We left that morning.
The old white woman that owned the place was rich -- big rich. She been complaining about the noise -- singing and preaching. She called him "Praying Jim Jesus" till he got to be called that around. He prayed in the field. She said he disturbed her. Mama said one of the Klu Klux she knowed been raised up there close to Master Barton's, but Papa said he didn't know one of them that beat on him."
- These are the words of Maggie Stenhouse as told to Irene Robertson. Stenhouse was born near Pickens, South Carolina.
"We lived in a log house during the Ku Klux days. They would watch you just like a chicken rooster watching for a worm. At night, we was scared to have a light. They would come around with the dough faces on and peer in the windows and open the door. Iffen you didn't look out, they would scare you half to death. John Good, a darky blacksmith, used to shoe the horses for the Ku Klux. He would mark the horseshoes with a bent nail or something like that; then after a raid, he could go out in the road and see if a certain horse had been rode; so he began to tell on the Klu Klux. As soon as the Ku Klux found out they was being give away, they suspicioned John. They went to him and made him tell how he knew who they was. They kept him in hiding, and when he told his tricks, they killed him.
When I was a boy on the Gilmore place, the Klu Klux would come along at night a-riding the niggers like they was goats. Yes sir, they had 'em down on all fours a-crawling, and they would be on their backs. They would carry the niggers to Turk Creek bridge and make them set up on the banisters of the bridge, then they would shoot 'em offen the banisters into the water. I 'clare them was the awfulest days I ever is seed. A darky named Sam Scaife drifted a hundred yards in the water downstream. His folks took and got him outen that bloody water and buried him on the bank of the creek. The Klu Klux would not let them take him to no graveyard. Fact is, they would not let many of the niggers take the dead bodies of the folks anywheres. They just throwed them in a big hole right there and pulled some dirt over them. For weeks after that, you could not go near that place, 'cause it stink so far and bad. Sam's folks, they throwed a lot of Indian-head rocks all over his grave, 'cause it was so shallow, and them rocks kept the wild animals from a-bothering Sam. You can still see them rocks, I could carry you there right now.
Another darky, Eli McCollum, floated about three and a half miles down the creek. His folks went there and took him out and buried him on the banks of the stream right by the side of a Indian mound. You can see that Indian mound to this very day. It is big as my house is, over there on the Chester side."
- These are the words of Brawley Gilmore of Union, South Carolina, as reported by Caldwell Sims.
"After us colored folks was 'sidered free and turned loose, the Klu Klux broke out. Some colored people started to farming, like I told you, and gathered the old stock. If they got so they made good money and had a good farm, the Klu Klux would come and murder 'em. The government builded schoolhouses, and the Klu Klux went to work and burned 'em down. They'd go to the jails and take the colored men out and knock their brains out and break their necks and throw 'em in the river.
There was a colored man they taken, his name was Jim Freeman. They taken him and destroyed his stuff and him 'cause he was making some money. Hung him on a tree in his front yard, right in front of his cabin.
There was some colored young men went to the schools they'd opened by the government. Some white woman said someone had stole something of hers, so they put them young men in jail. The Klu Klux went to the jail and took 'em out and killed 'em. That happened the second year after the war.
After the Klu Kuxes got so strong, the colored men got together and made the complaint before the law. The governor told the law to give 'em the old guns in the commissary, what the Southern soldiers had used, so they issued the colored men old muskets and said protect themselves. They got together and organized the militia and the leaders like regular soldiers. They didn't meet 'cept when they heared the Klu Kluxes was coming to get some colored folks. Then they was ready for 'em. They'd hide in the cabins, and then's when they found out who a lot of them Klu Kluxes was, 'cause a lot of 'em was kilt. They wore long sheets and covered the hosses with sheets so you couldn't recognize 'em. Men you thought was your friend was Klu Kluxes, and you'd deal with 'em in stores in the daytime, and at night they'd come out to your house and kill you. I never took part in none of the fights, but I heared the others talk 'bout them, but not where them Klu Klux could hear 'em."
- These are the words of Pierce Harper in an interview reported by Samuel S. Taylor. Harper was born in 1851 near Snow Hill, Greene County, North Carolina. He was a slave in North Carolina.
"I never will forgit when they hung Cy Guy. They hung him for a scandalous insult to a white woman, and they comed after him a hundred strong.
They tries him there in the woods, and they scratches Cy's arm to git some blood, and with that blood they writes that he shall hang 'tween the heavens and the earth till he am dead, dead, dead, and that any nigger what takes down the body shall be hunged too.
Well, sir, the next morning there he hung, right over the road, and the sentence hanging over his head. Nobody'd bother with that body for four days, and there it hung, swinging in the wind, but the fourth day the sheriff comes and takes it down.
There was Ed and Cindy, who 'fore the war belonged to Mr. Lynch, and after the war he told 'em to move. He gives 'em a month, and they ain't gone, so the Ku Kluxes gits 'em.
It was on a cold night when they comed and drugged the niggers outen bed. They carried 'em down in the woods and whup them, then they throws 'em in the pond, their bodies breaking the ice. Ed come out and come to our house, but Cindy ain't been seed since.
Sam Allen in Caswell County was told to move, and after a month the hundred Ku Klux come a-toting his casket, and they tells him that his time has come and iffen he want to tell his wife goodbye and say his prayers hurry up.
They set the coffin on two chairs, and Sam kisses his old woman who am a-crying, then he kneels down side of his bed with his head on the pillow and his arms throwed out front of him.
He sets there for a minute and when he riz he had a long knife in his hand. 'Fore he could be grabbed he done kill two of the Ku Kluxes with the knife, and he done outen the door. They ain't catch him neither, and the next night when they comed back, 'termined to git him, they shot another nigger by accident...."
- These are the words of Ben Johnson (born circa 1851), of Hecktown, Durham, North Carolina, as reported by Mary A. Hicks.
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Copyright © 1998 S. J. Coker