In Post-Civil War Days or Now

East Texas Had No Need for KKK

Athens Weekly Review
April 28 1966
By Correspondent Elton Miller

Taylor- Rise of the Ku Klux Klan in these days--these the trying times of the 1960's-- has a precedent in the history of our people that dates back a century
ago when the boys came home from the battlefields of Shiloh and Appomattox.

But, like it was a century ago, some of the good East Texas counties were not good homes for the KKK.

It was good philosophy in Henderson County in the Days of the Great Depression that one should not give care of the tomorrow if the table is loaded with turnip greens and black-eyed peas. If all is well in town square, there is no need of worrying about a day in which there might be tumult.

So in December of 1867, the Rusk Observer had some salient comment to make about the little need for KKK activities in Cherokee County.
The Observer gave some good reasons.
1. Cherokee County Negroes were not interested in voting, even in those Reconstruction days of Radical Republicans.
2.They were willing to take the "Old Marsters" advice on affairs of state.
3.The only crisis in the Cherokee reconstruction period was election outrages of 1870. During a 4 day election, conduct of folks in the redlands--the so-called "election outrages"-- was cause for a full scale investigation by the state police, conducted by Lieut. Thomas Sheriff. Alleged fraud and intimidation of
freedom came in for the in-depth investigation by the police state that Gov. E. J. Davis had established for the Lone Star State from headquarters.

Like other counties of Texas, Henderson suffered in the post-war period. There was a spirit of lawlessness that came out of the confusion of demoblization. Ex-soldiers were home without money, without jobs, and broken hearted because they had lost and disgruntled because they were hungry. They didn't
think they were appreciated and saw no sin in stealing. They felt justified in robbing private as well as government stores.

Businessmen were slow to reopen their business when they were hard hit by many robberies.

Hundreds of barrels and hogs- heads of Louisiana sugar were stored in a commissary the Confederate government had set up in Rusk. When the Confederacy collapsed, the people--especially war widows--laid claim to the coveted sugar. Soldiers at first tried to guard it, but they gave way to the popular demand.
On a certain day it was rumored that someone would open the storehouse for scarce sugar--most of them had not had sugar in their diets since the war began.
A large crowd gathered. Men and wimen rushed in, much like the looting in Harlem and Los Angeles during race riots.Vast quantities were wasted in the scramble. Six-inch covering laid on the ground.

Federal troops stationed in the Cherokee capital later confiscated the sugar wherever they found it.

Those were the wild days-- but there was no time for the KKK. To be sure, there were some small organizations around, like there were in the 1920's, before
Dan Moody as Williamson County's fighting district attorney, took the hood off the Klan.

It was in the state's 13th election in 1873 when Richard Coke defeated Davis for the governorship that the good citizens finally took over the state government and thus began the process to restore sane government and enforce the criminal code of Texas.

The day of the outlaw was fast coming to a close in the western frontier. Soon such giants of the saddle and pistol like Sam Bass, and James brothers,
the Youngers and John Wesley Hardin were to give their lives as peace was restored in the land of the Confederacy.

Typed as written. (LGR)

Old Newspaper Articles of Henderson County TX

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