An Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other Purposes
Nicknames
Civil Rights Act of 1871,[citation needed] Ku Klux Klan Act, Third Enforcement Act[1]
Enacted by
the 42nd United States Congress
Citations
Public law
42−22
Statutes at Large
ch. 22, 17 Stat. 13
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 320 by Samuel Shellabarger (R-OH) on March 28, 1871
Committee consideration by House Select Committee on the President's Message, Senate Judiciary
Passed the House on April 7, 1871 (118–91)
Passed the Senate on April 14, 1871 (45–19)
Reported by the joint conference committee on April 19, 1871; agreed to by the House on April 19, 1871 (93–74) and by the Senate on April 19, 1871 (36–13)
Signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20, 1871
United States Supreme Court cases
United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629 (1883)
Bogan v. Scott-Harris, 523 U.S. 44 (1997) See also the "Civil rights liability under Section 1983" section at Template:US14thAmendment
.
The Enforcement Act of 1871 (17 Stat. 13), also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, Third Enforcement Act,[1]Third Ku Klux Klan Act,[2]Civil Rights Act of 1871, or Force Act of 1871,[3] is an Act of the United States Congress that was intended to combat the paramilitary vigilantism of the Ku Klux Klan. The act made certain acts committed by private persons federal offenses including conspiring to deprive citizens of their rights to hold office, serve on juries, or enjoy the equal protection of law. The Act authorized the President to deploy federal troops to counter the Klan and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to make arrests without charge.[4][5]
The act was passed by the 42nd United States Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20, 1871. The act was the last of three Enforcement Acts passed by Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks upon the suffrage rights of African Americans. The statute has been subject to only minor changes since then, but has been the subject of voluminous interpretation by courts.
This legislation was asked for by President Grant and passed within one month of when he sent the request to Congress. Grant's request was a result of the reports he was receiving of widespread racial threats in the Deep South, particularly in South Carolina. He felt that he needed to have his authority broadened before he could effectively intervene. After the act's passage, the president had the power for the first time to both suppress state disorders on his own initiative and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Grant did not hesitate to use this authority on numerous occasions during his presidency, and as a result the KKK was completely dismantled (ending the "first Klan" era) and did not resurface in any meaningful way until the beginning of the 20th century.[6]
Several of the act's provisions still exist today as codified statutes. The most important of these is 42 U.S.C. § 1983: Civil action for deprivation of rights. It is the most widely used civil rights enforcement statute, allowing people to sue in civil court over civil rights violations.
^ abDavis, Abraham L.; Graham, Barbara Luck (1995). The Supreme Court, Race, and Civil Rights: From Marshall to Rehnquist. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. p. 13. ISBN 9781452263793. Archived from the original on December 22, 2020. Retrieved November 27, 2020.
^"The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives". history.house.gov. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
^"U.S. Senate: The Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871". www.senate.gov.
^Keyssar, Alexander (June 30, 2009). The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. Hachette UK. ISBN 978-0-465-01014-1. Acting as the military, or paramilitary, arm of the Democratic Party, organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan mounted violent campaigns against blacks who sought to vote or hold office, as well as their white Republican allies. In 1870 alone, hundreds of freedmen were killed, and many more badly hurt, by politicized vigilante violence...The national government did not stand by idly. In May 1870, stretching the limits of its constitutional powers, congress passed an Enforcement Act that made interference with voting a federal offense...This first enforcement act was followed by others including the Ku Klux Klan Act, which, among its provisions, authorized the president to deploy the army to protect the electoral process.
^Blackburn, Robin (February 20, 2024). The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776-1888. Verso Books. p. 352. ISBN 978-1-80429-341-6. White vigilante groups intervened on the side of white employers to keep down wages and reduce the share of the crop claimed by black tenant farmers. Black schoolhouses were burned, and across the South hundreds of Republican activists were killed in the years 1868-71. Republicans in Congress responded to this wave of terrorist intimidation by passing civil rights legislation backed up by federal force in 1870 and 1871. The so-called Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 empowered the president and army to crack down on the Klan; the suspension of habeas corpus and use of Federal Cavalry led to the arrest of thousands of Klansmen.
^Scaturro, Frank (1999). President Grant Reconsidered. Lanham, MD: Madison Books. pp. 71–72. ISBN 1-56833-132-0.
The KuKluxKlan (/ˌkuː klʌks ˈklæn, ˌkjuː-/), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white...
The First Klan is a neologism or retronym used to describe the first of three distinct operational eras of the KuKluxKlan, a white supremacist domestic...
target was the KuKluxKlan, a white supremacy organization, which was targeting black people, and, later, other groups. Although this act was meant to...
the KuKluxKlan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan, or...
The KuKluxKlan (KKK) arrived in the U.S. state of Oregon in the early 1920s, during the history of the second Klan, and it quickly spread throughout...
The Enforcement Act of 1870, also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1870 or First KuKluxKlanAct, or Force Act (41st Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 114, 16 Stat...
The KuKluxKlan has had a history in the U.S. state of New Jersey since the early part of the 1920s. The Klan was active in the areas of Trenton and Camden...
The United Klans of America Inc. (UKA), based in Alabama, is a KuKluxKlan organization active in the United States. Led by Robert Shelton, the UKA peaked...
Enforcement Act of 1871, sometimes called the Civil Rights Act of 1871 or the Second KuKluxKlanAct, was a United States federal law. The act was the second...
additional legislation to enforce civil rights, such as the KuKluxKlanAct and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. However, continued resistance from Southern Whites...
The National Knights of the KuKluxKlan is a Klan faction that has been in existence since November 1963. In the sixties, the National Knights were the...
The KuKluxKlan in Southern Illinois operated between 1867 and 1875 in seven counties—Franklin, Williamson, Jackson, Saline, Johnson, Union, and Pope...
members with conspiracy to intimidate African Americans under the 1871 KuKluxKlanAct, a Reconstruction era civil rights statute. On December 3, the trio...
political majorities. The activities of groups such as the KuKluxKlan (KKK) undermined the act, meaning that it failed to immediately secure the civil...
played a critical role in the demise of the second incarnation of the KuKluxKlan. In March 1925, while working for the state of Indiana on an adult literacy...
A Kleagle is an officer of the KuKluxKlan whose main role is to recruit new members and must maintain the three guiding principles: recruit, maintain...
(NAAWP) is a white supremacist organization established in 1979 by former KuKluxKlan Grand Wizard David Duke, deriving its name from the National Association...
along with related state laws.: 9 The "parent" act (Sect. 211) was passed on March 3, 1873, as the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation...
Act of 1870 (also known under the popular titles as the Civil Rights Act of 1870 or the First KuKluxKlanAct) and the later Second Enforcement Act of...
Confederate Veterans from 1919 to 1921, and as the Grand Dragon of the KuKluxKlan for Georgia. Forrest was born in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1871. His grandfather...
Wheeling and Belmont were unsatisfied with the ruling and asked Congress to act. To Stanton's horror, a bill declaring the Wheeling bridge permissible became...
Civil Rights Act of 1866 Copied content from Civil Rights Act of 1866 Copied content from KuKluxKlanAct Copied content from Civil Rights Act of 1875 Copied...
acts of violence by the Klan. The KuKluxKlan became violent in Georgia on or before March 30, 1868, when 30 members of the Klan killed white politician...
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