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• 1 media/kkk marching.jpeg media/kkk marching.jpeg 2018-03-05T01:22:45-08:00 Intimidation 13 White supremacist groups inhibit voting image_header 2018-06-18T04:29:05-07:00 In addition to quasi-legal methods to intimidate black voters, Southern Democrats used outright violence to prevent their participation. The Ku Klux Klan, Rifle Clubs, Red Shirts and the White League were all white terrorist groups in the South whose purpose was to use intimidation and violence to prevent African Americans from voting. Their methods included lynching, beating, rape, arson, vandalism, and rioting. Despite the elaborate costumes they wore to strike fear in their victims, their identities were not secret though fellow white townspeople did little to stop the practice.
• 1 media/Lynching faces at Jesse Washington.png 2018-03-30T23:28:09-07:00 Southern Hatred 10 image_header 2018-06-17T22:35:50-07:00 By the 1880s, racial hatred had reached a severity that white supremacists similar to the KKK no longer needed to cover their face; instead they wore white caps to show solidarity while they burned homes and crops of black families. For some, white capping helped eliminate competition for agricultural opportunities, for others, racial hatred elevated poor whites. Even whites that stood up for African Americans became the victim of racial terrorists.  Between 1882 and 1968 nearly 3500 blacks were lynched and hundreds of the whites that helped them met the same fate.
  
  It was believed by many whites in the South that the Negro had denigrated “into beasts” since gaining freedom. Novelist Thomas Nelson Page wrote in 1892, “the Negro…does not possess the faculties to raise himself above slavery.” Trumped up allegations of rape, murder, and theft increased during the late 1800’s justifying white mistreatment of the Negro. Any petty criminal behavior or human frailty was fodder for biased newspapers, cartoons, and fiction. The 1905 novel, The Clansman, portrayed black men as lascivious drunkards while the white hero created the Ku Klux Klan to save his love from rape by a freedman. The racially disparaging novel became the “The Birth of a Nation,” a silent film that swept the country in 1915.
  
  Given the atmosphere in which Booker T. Washington struggled, it is not surprising that he sought a path that accommodated the demands of southern whites. He had to maintain the safety of his students, engage potential employers for his graduates and continue the flow of financial support for Tuskegee Institute. He was compelled to ingratiate himself with Southern whites all the while subverting their racism.