Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

4COPS AND KLAN, HAND IN HANDAND THE POLICE ARE SIMPLY THE HIRED ENEMIES OF THIS POPU­LATION. THEY ARE PRESENT TO KEEP THE NEGRO IN HIS PLACEAND TO PROTECT WHITE BUSINESS INTERESTS, AND THEY HAVENO OTHER FUNCTION.-JAMES BALDWININ THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY, AS POLITICAL MACHINES,industrialization, and the new police reshaped urban society, politics in theSouth faced additional complexities in the aftermath of the Civil War. There,many of the trappings of machine politics were present-corruption, abusesof power, favoritism, and street brawls-but with a difference. The status ofthe newly freed Black population became the political question of the day.The Republican Party, dominant following the war, developed a constituencyamong Black voters eager to assert themselves, and relied on the occupyingUnion army to suppress opposition. The Democratic Party aligned itselfwith disenfranchised Confederate veterans, deposed planters, former slaveowners,and the other reactionary remnants of Southern society, includingmany poor White people ideologically attached to the old order. 1 The coerciveforce of the Democratic Party was embodied in secret terrorist societies andvigilante groups including the Black Cavalry, the Men of Justice, the YoungMen's Democratic Clubs, the Knights of the White Camellia, and the KuKlux Klan.2 As the Klan gained a prominence in 1868, it concentrated ondiscouraging Black voters, intimidating Republican candidates, and defeatingproposed radical constitutions.3 But the Klan's defense of White supremacyquickly expanded beyond such narrow political goals.77