Midnight rangers: Costume and performance in the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan

Journal of American History

Volumn 92, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 837-863

  Parsons, Elaine Frantz ^a  

^a DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33749348747     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3659969     Document Type: Review

References (200)

1. James R. Crowe, "Origin of the Ku Klux Klan," Banner [1895-1908] (Giles County Historical Society Archives, Pulaski, Tenn.);
2. Pulaski Citizen, May 1868, p. 4;
3. Lapsley David McCord, "Red Gown," manuscript, [c. 1911], Ku-Klux Klan Papers (Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis);
4. Pulaski Citizen, May 4, 1866, pp. 3, 2;
5. ibid., Aug. 2, 1867, p. 3;
6. ibid., June 7, 1867, p. 3.
7. "Midnight Rangers, Pulaski, Sept. 3rd 1866," carte de visite, Pulaski Photograph Collection (Giles County Public Library, Pulaski, Tenn.);
8. Allen Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 1971), 57;
9. testimony of John H. Christy in U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Affairs of the Late Insurrectionary States, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 6: Georgia, vol. I, 42 Cong., 2 sess., July 24, 1871, p. 239;
10. testimony of Reuben Sheets, ibid., part 7: Georgia, vol. II, Oct. 27, 1871, p. 651;
11. Trelease, White Terror, 56-58. The multivolume transcript of testimony before the Joint Select Committee was the result of a congressional investigation into allegations of southern political violence. Bipartisan teams of congressmen summoned witnesses to Washington and traveled to various southern states to hear testimony of alleged victims, perpetrators, and witnesses.
12. Charles L. Flynn Jr., "The Ancient Pedigree of Violent Repression: Georgia's Klan as a Folk Movement," in The Southern Enigma: Essays on Race, Class, and Folk Culture, ed. Walter J. Fraser Jr. and Winfred B. Moore Jr. (Westport, 1983), 189-98;
13. David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1999), 100-111;
14. Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1986), 73-111;
15. William Pencak, Matthew Dennis, and Simon P. Newman, eds., Riot and Revelry in Early America (University Park, 2002);
16. Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (New York, 1998), 11;
17. Natalie Zemon Davis, "The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France," Past and Present, 50 (Feb. 1971), 41-75;
18. James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), 181;
19. Trelease, White Terror, 65;
20. Albion W. Tourgée, A Fool's Errand, By One of the Fools (New York, 1879), 170;
21. Trudier Harris, Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals (Bloomington, 1984);
22. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South (Urbana, 1993), 17-48.
23. John C. Lester and D. L. Wilson, Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth, and Disbandment, ed. Walter L. Fleming (1905; St. Clair Shores, Mich., 1972), 48, 56;
24. Trelease, White Terror, 62.
25. The Klan Prescript is reprinted in Lester and Wilson, Ku Klux Klan, ed. Fleming, 153-54, 170-73.
26. Trelease, White Terror, 13-27.
27. Ibid., 51.
28. Andrew Silver, "Making Minstrelsy of Murder: George Washington Harris, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Reconstruction Aesthetic of Black Fright," Prospects, 25 (2000), 342-43;
29. Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor, May 5, 1868, p. 3;
30. Randolph Shotwell, "Ku-Klux Chronicles: Captain Shotwell's Story of the Klans," n.p., M. S. Shotwell Scrapbook, folder 29, box 4, Shotwell Family Papers (Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill); "The Original Whitney Family in their World Entertainment from Boston," broadsheet, n.d., African American Theater Collection (Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.); testimony of William H. English in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 10: Alabama, vol. III, Oct. 27, 1871, p. 1438;
31. Augusta Daily Chronicle and Sentinel, Aug. 13, 1868, p. 3;
32. Danny O. Crew, Ku Klux Klan Sheet Music: An Illustrated Catalogue of Published Music, 1867-2002 (Jefferson, N.C., 2003);
33. Buell's Ku Klux Klan Songster (New York, 1868), 9-11.
34. Testimony of Thompson C. Hawkins in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 25, 1871, p. 1326;
35. testimony of John H. Wager, ibid., Oct. 14, 1871, p. 933;
36. testimony of Austin Pollard, ibid., part 12: Mississippi, vol. II, Nov. 16, 1871, p. 1109.
37. Samuel Agnew Diary, Aug. 6, 1867, Sept, 1, 1869 (Southern Historical Collection); Pulaski Citizen, June 7, 1867, p. 4;
38. testimony of John R. Taliaferro in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 11: Mississippi, vol. I, July 15, 1871, p. 228;
39. testimony of William Miller, ibid, part 8: Alabama, vol. I, June 2, 1871, p. 9; Shotwell, "Ku-Klux Chronicles."
40. Richard Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia, 1985), 40;
41. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 84; Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York, 1988), 25;
42. Barbara Babcock-Abrahams, "'A Tolerated Margin of Mess': The Trickster and His Tales Reconsidered," Journal of the Folklore Institute, 11 (Fall 1975), 148.
43. One of the best descriptions of nineteenth-century Mardi Gras is found in Samuel Kinser, Carnival, American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile (Chicago, 1990).
44. Lisa Cardyn, "Sexualized Racism/Gendered Violence: Outraging the Body Politic in the Reconstruction South," Michigan Law Review, 100 (2002), 813-35;
45. Laura F. Edwards, Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction (Urbana, 1997), 107-29, 161-77;
46. Lee Ann Whites, The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860-1890 (Athens, Ga., 1995), 96-159.
47. For explorations of the significance of Reconstruction-era Klan costume and performance, see Cardyn, "Sexualized Racism/Gendered Violence"; Gladys-Marie Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History (Knoxville, 1975), 110-54;
48. Silver, "Making Minstrelsy of Murder"; Andrew Silver, "Minstrel Shows and Whiteface Conventions: The Politics of Popular Discourse and the Transformation of Southern Humor, 1835-1939" (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1997), 70-115;
49. and Judith Jackson Fossett, "(K)night Riders in (K)night Gowns: The Ku Klux Klan, Race, and Constructions of Masculinity," in Race Consciousness: African American Studies for the New Century, ed. Judith Jackson Fossett and Jeffrey A. Tucker (New York, 1997), 35-49.
50. Testimony of Aaron V. Biggerstaff in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 2: North Carolina, vol. I, April 20, 1871, p. 485;
51. testimony of Samuel Bonner, ibid., part 3: South Carolina, vol. I, July 10, 1871, p. 578;
52. testimony of Isham Henry, ibid., part 9;
53. Alabama, vol. II, Aug. 4, 1869, p. 1199;
54. testimony of Jacob Montgomery, ibid., part 4: South Carolina, vol. II, July 12, 1871, p. 696;
55. testimony of H. Thomson Hughes, ibid., July 18, 1871, p. 1093.
56. Testimony of Daniel Coleman in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 9, 1871, p. 661.
57. See also testimony of Hon. Peter M. Dox, ibid., part 8: Alabama, vol. I, July 11, 1871, p. 457;
58. testimony of Joseph F. Galloway, ibid., part 12: Mississippi, vol. II, Nov. 9, 1871, p. 663;
59. testimony of Warren Jones, ibid., part 7: Georgia, vol. II, Oct. 27, 1871, p. 690;
60. testimony of Charles Smith, ibid., Oct. 26, 1871, p. 599;
61. written affidavit of Dean Reynolds, ibid., part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Aug. 5, 1869, p. 1186;
62. testimony of G. Wiley Wells, ibid., part 12: Mississippi, vol. II, Nov. 17, 1871, p. 1154;
63. testimony of Henry Hamlin, ibid., part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 12, 1871, p. 857;
64. "Ku Klux Outrages in Wayne County, NC," statement, "Ku Klux Klan Papers, Depositions, etc. 1869-1870," William Woods Holden Collection (Duke University); testimony of Joseph Gill in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 12, 1871, p. 813;
65. Pulaski Citizen, March 9, 1866, p. 1;
66. ibid., April 13, 1866, p. 1;
67. Trelease, White Terror, 198.
68. Testimony of James M. Moss in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 13, 1871, p. 919;
69. testimony of James M. Justice, ibid., part 2: North Carolina, vol. I, July 3, 1871, p. 118;
70. testimony of John Lipscomb, ibid., part 4: South Carolina, vol. II, July 11, 1871, p. 670;
71. testimony of Reuben Bryant, ibid., July 11, 1871, p. 677;
72. testimony of Jones, ibid., part 7: Georgia, vol. II, Oct. 27, 1871, p. 690;
73. J. P. FlournoySr., "The True Story of the Jones-Hill Mob by an Eye Witness," p. 156, bound typescript, Alfred Flournoy Papers, 1824-1935 (Louisiana State University Archives, Baton Rouge); testimony of Sarah A. Allen in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 12: Mississippi, vol. II, Nov. 11, 1871, p. 779;
74. transcript of previous testimony of Gadsden Steel, ibid., part 5: South Carolina, vol. III, n.d., p. 1718;
75. Cardyn, "Sexualized Racism/Gendered Violence," 831-32; testimony of Galloway in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 12: Mississippi, vol. II, Nov. 9, 1871, p. 663;
76. testimony of John Coley, ibid., part 6: Georgia, vol. I, Oct. 20, 1871, p. 365;
77. testimony of Edward E. Holman, ibid., part 11: Mississippi, vol. I, July 25, 1871, p. 352;
78. testimony of Columbus Jeter, ibid., part 6: Georgia, vol. I, Oct. 26, 1871, p. 560;
79. testimony of Samuel J. Gholson, ibid., part 12: Mississippi, vol. II, Nov. 13, 1871, p. 856;
80. testimony of Sandy Sellers, handwritten unidentified trial transcript, p. 1, Ku Klux Klan Collection (Duke University); Henry [?] to Andrew McCollum, April 16, 1868, folder 21, Andrew McCollum Papers (Southern Historical Collection); Pulaski Citizen, March 9, 1866, p. 1.
81. Testimony of William Ford in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 9, 1871, p. 681;
82. testimony of Wells, ibid., part 12: Mississippi, vol. II, Nov. 17, 1871, p. 1154;
83. testimony of William H. Oglesby, ibid., part 7: Georgia, vol. II, Nov. 3, 1871,p. 1004;
84. Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History, 138. For examples of ghosts or Indians in minstrel plays,
85. see Charles White, 100th Night of Hamlet (New York, 1874), no. 273, box 2,
86. Fred W. Atkinson Collection of Ethiopian Drama (Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.); Charles White, Guide to the Stage: or, Unappreciated Talent (n.p., 1849), no. 252, ibid.;
87. Charles White, The Ghost (Chicago, 1874), no. 247, ibid.;
88. J. C. Stewart, The Last of the Mohicans. An Ethiopian Sketch (New York, 1870), no. 107, box l, ibid.;
89. and Dan Bryant, The Live Injun, or Jim Crow (New York, 1874), no. 260, box 2, ibid. According to the playbills, White's play 100th Night of Hamlet was first performed in 1865;
90. White's The Ghost was first performed in 1863;
91. Bryant's The Live Injun, or Jim Crow was first performed in 1865.
92. Testimony of John Dunlap, Tennessee General Assembly, Report of Evidence Taken Before the Military Committee in Relation to Outrages Committed by the Ku Klux Klan in Middle and West Tennessee (Nashville, 1868), 19.
93. Testimony of John Dunlap, in "Papers in the Contested Election Case of Sheafe v. Tillman," Misc. Doc. 52, Congressional Serial Set, vol. 1433, pp. 261-63;
94. testimony of John Tayloe Coleman in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 18, 1871, p. 1048-49;
95. Tho. A. Ragland, C. J. L. Williams, and Z. Groom to Tho. Settle, July 13, 1869, Holden Collection; testimony of William A. Bolt in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 4: South Carolina, vol. II, July 20, 1871, p. 1121; McCord, "Red Gown," 39.
96. Kinser, Carnival, American Style, 216-23. Avery Meriwether to Lee Meriwether, Feb. 5, 1877, folder 51, box 1, Meriwether Family Papers (Mississippi Valley Collection, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tenn.);
97. Avery Meriwether to Rivers Meriwether, Feb. 25, 1877, ibid.;
98. testimony of Joseph Gist in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 4: South Carolina, vol. II, July 18, 1871, p. 1061;
99. testimony of Christina Page, ibid., July 20, 1871, p. 1142-44;
100. testimony of Bolt, ibid., July 20, 1871, p. 1121;
101. testimony of James Gaffney, ibid., July 10, 1871, p. 617;
102. testimony of Lipscomb, ibid., July 11, 1871, p. 667;
103. testimony of John H. Christy, ibid., part 6: Georgia, vol.1, July 24, 1871, pp. 245, 247.
104. Mobile Daily Herald, Oct. 27, 1907.
105. Report of testimony of John Christy in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 11: Mississippi, vol. I, Nov. 6, 1871, p. 144;
106. testimony of Henry Kidd, ibid., part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 12, 1871, p. 869;
107. testimony of Truman Root, Solomon L. Hotge v. Jacob P. Reed, Misc. Doc. 18, Congressional Serial Set, 41 Cong., 1 sess., vol. 1402, p. 30;
108. Shotwell, "Ku-Klux Chronicles."
109. Testimony of Elias Hill in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 5: South Carolina, vol. III, July 25, 1871, p. 1407;
110. testimony of Samuel Horton, ibid., part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 10, 1871, p. 729;
111. testimony of W. H. Purdom, in "Papers in the Contested Election Case of Sheafe v. Tillman," 53.
112. Testimony of M. A. Glenn, ibid., 55. For advertisements for theatrical supplies,
113. see Ed. James, Amateur Negro Minstrel's Guide (New York, 1880), no. 185 b., box 1, Atkinson Collection of Ethiopian Drama.
114. Many of the examples discussed here are also considered in Cardyn, "Sexualized Racism/Gendered Violence," 829-30.
115. See also Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History, 129;
116. Flynn, "Ancient Pedigree of Violent Repression," 192-93;
117. and Fossett, "(K)night Riders in (K)night Gowns." Testimony of John J. Neason in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 3: South Carolina, vol. I, June 8, 1871, p. 42;
118. testimony of Commodore Perry Price, ibid., July 3, 1871, p. 297;
119. testimony of Gill, ibid., part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 12, 1871, p. 813;
120. testimony of Eli Barnes, ibid., part 7: Georgia, vol. II, Nov. 2, 1871, p. 955;
121. testimony of John Dunlap, in State of Tennessee, Report of Evidence Taken before the Military Committee in Relation to Outrages Committed by the Ku Klux Klan.... (Nashville, 1868), 18.
122. One possible interpretation of this evidence is that a woman was participating in the attack. See Cardyn, "Sexualized Racism/Gendered Violence," 833. Testimony of A. B. Martin in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 6: Georgia, vol. I, Oct. 25, 1871, p. 549;
123. testimony of Lieutenant F. B. Taylor, ibid., part 6: Georgia, vol. I, Oct. 24, 1871, p. 505;
124. testimony of Lucy McMillan, ibid., part 4: South Carolina, vol. II, July 10, 1871, p. 605.
125. Kenneth S. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Death, Humanitarianism, Slave Rebellions, the Pro-Slavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton, 1996), 26-31;
126. Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York, 1995), 27;
127. Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, 1975), 124-51;
128. Susan G. Davis, "'Making Night Hideous': Christmas Revelry and Public Order in Nineteenth Century Philadelphia," American Quarterly, 34 (Summer, 1982), 185-99;
129. Knoxville Whig, Sept. 27, 1865, p. 2;
130. testimony of Essic Harris in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 2: North Carolina, vol. I, July 1, 1871, p. 87;
131. transcript of previous testimony of Mary Ann Norvill, ibid., n.d., p. 473;
132. testimony of Martha Hendricks, ibid., part 6: Georgia, vol. I, Oct. 24, 1871, p. 520.
133. Testimony of Christy, ibid., July 24, 1871, p. 245;
134. J. E. Robuck, My Own Personal Experience and Observation as a Soldier in the Confederate Army During the Civil War, 1861-1865; Also During the Period of Reconstruction - Appending a History of the Origin, Rise, Career and Disbanding of the Famous Ku-Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire. Exactly Why, When, and Where it Originated (n.p., 1900), 15.
135. Minor Meriwether's role in the Memphis Klan is mentioned in Trelease, White Terror, 183;
136. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether to Rivers and Avery Meriwether, May 15, 1876, folder 51, box 1, Meriwether Family Papers; Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill, 1993).
137. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, The Ku-Klux Klan; or, The Carpet-Bagger in New Orleans (Memphis, 1877), 4, 15, 42, 47.
138. Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 105-9;
139. Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (New York, 1997), 46, 50-54;
140. Pulaski Citizen, April 26, 1867, p. 1;
141. testimony of George W. Garner in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 3: South Carolina, vol. I, July 7, 1871, p. 393;
142. testimony of Robert H. Abercrombie, ibid., part 9: Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 19, 1871, p. 1113;
143. testimony of Betsey Westbrook, ibid., Oct. 24, 1871, pp. 1243-44;
144. testimony of Miller, ibid., part 8: Alabama, vol. I, June 2, 1871, p. 3;
145. deposition of Mary Campbell, ibid., Aug. 4, 1869, p. 149;
146. testimony of William Burnside Anderson, ibid., part 3: South Carolina, vol. I, July 3, 1871, p. 290;
147. testimony of Cornelius McBride, ibid., part 11: Mississippi, vol. I, July 21, 1871, p. 327;
148. testimony of Mary Brown, ibid., part 6: Georgia, vol. I, Oct. 21, 1871, p. 376.
149. For allegations of black Klans, see testimony of William D. Simpson, ibid., part 5: South Carolina, vol. III, July 24, 1871, p. 1311;
150. testimony of Alexander P. Wylie, ibid., July 26, 1871, p. 1429;
151. testimony of O. C. French, ibid., part 11 : Mississippi, vol. I, July 12, 1871, p. 19;
152. testimony of Charles Baskerville, ibid., Aug. 1, 1871, p. 375;
153. testimony of Joe Brown, ibid., part 6: Georgia, vol. I, Oct. 24, 1871, p. 503;
154. Silver, "Making Minstrelsy of Murder," 352.
155. Edwards, Gendered Strife and Confusion, 110.
156. Walter Benn Michaels, "The Souls of White Folk," in Literature and the Body: Essays on Populations and Persons, ed. Elaine Scarry (Baltimore, 1988);
157. Scott Reynolds Nelson, Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1999), 111-12;
158. testimony of William M. Champion in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 3: South Carolina, vol. I, July 6, 1871, p. 366.
159. The episode of forced interracial intimacy is discussed in Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History, 111 ;
160. and in Lou Faulkner Williams, The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 1871-1872 (Athens, Ga., 1996), 30.
161. Testimony of Lewis Perkins in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 12: Mississippi, vol. II, Nov. 14, 1871, p. 899;
162. testimony of E. H. Chambers, ibid., part 7: Georgia, vol. II, Oct. 26, 1871, p. 602.
163. Cockrell, Demons of Disorder, 53, 160;
164. Lott, Love and Theft, 25, 52, 123-24. On how producing, observing, and ridiculing the suffering black body allowed Klansmen and their supporters to interrupt the traumatic repetition of their own battlefield memories, see Silver, "Making Minstrelsy of Murder," 345;
165. Cardyn, "Sexualized Racism/Gendered Violence," 829-35; and Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 107.
166. Flynn, "Ancient Pedigree of Violent Repression," 192; Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 149-50.
167. Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, 1995), 217-32;
168. Cockrell, Demons of Disorder, 53; testimony of Elias Thomson in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 3: South Carolina, vol. I, July 7, 1871, p. 411;
169. transcript of previous testimony of Dick Wilson, ibid., part 5: South Carolina, vol. III, n.d., p. 1747.
170. For a counterargument, giving examples of honor language and evocations of Sir Walter Scott, see Nelson, Iron Confederacies, 109-11. Medieval imagery would come to be associated with the Klan mainly in retrospect, in Progressive Era Lost Cause literature.
171. See Thomas Dixon, The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (New York, 1905);
172. and McCord, "Red Gown." Ku Klux Klan Flag (1920.1364), Textiles Division (Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, 111.).
173. W. T. Lhamon Jr., Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 42;
174. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, 1986), 58.
175. Lhamon, Raising Cain, 45;
176. Franklin (La.) Planters' Banner, Dec. 7, 1870, p. 2;
177. Harriet Ritvo, Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 219.
178. Testimony of Eliza Lyon in Joint Select Committee, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, part 9:
179. Alabama, vol. II, Oct. 24, 1871, p. 1263.
180. William D. Piersen, "African American Festive Style and the Creation of American Culture," in Riot and Revelry, ed. Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, 255-72;
181. Kinser, Carnival, American Style;
182. Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York, 1996).
183. Kinser, Carnival, American Style, 147;
184. Mary Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1997), 242;
185. New Orleans Picayune, Feb. 14, 1871, p. 2.
186. James Gill, Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans (Jackson, 1997), 86, 104-8;
187. Roach, Cities of the Dead, 240, 269, esp. 261-62;
188. Richard Rambuss, "Spenser and Milton at Mardi Gras: English Literature, American Cultural Capital, and the Reformation of New Orleans Carnival," boundary 2, 27 (Summer 2000), 61-62.
189. Gill, Lords of Misrule, 98;
190. Perry Young, The Mistick Krewe: Chronicles of Comus and His Kin (New Orleans, 1931), 129.
191. Mobile Daily Tribune, Dec. 31, 1871, p. 1, clipping in "Ku Klux Klan," Vertical File (Mobile Historic Preservation Society, Mobile, Ala.);
192. Mobile Daily Advertiser, Jan. 27, 1872.
193. Trelease, White Terror, 184, 309-10, 399-418.
194. Christopher Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America (New York, 2002), 82-83;
195. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988), 458-59;
196. Enforcement Act, 16 Stat. 140 (1870); Ku Klux Klan Act, 16 Stat. 433 (1871).
197. Tourgée, Fool's Errand, 250; Babcock-Abrahams, "Tolerated Margin of Mess," 154.
198. Eda Clarke Fain Jr., "'Cut Loose the Corset Strings of Dull Times': Attending Carnival in Memphis, Tennessee, through Newsprint Coverage, 1872-1901" (Ph.D. diss., University of Memphis, 1999);
199. Memphis Daily Avalanche, Feb. 14, 1872, p. 4.
200. Memphis Daily Appeal, Feb. 14, 1872, p. 4.