After the civil war, Central North Carolina became a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan. Formed in Tennessee by former Confederate soldiers, the KKK quickly spread and became a vehicle for some whites, including law enforcement officers, elected officials and businessmen, to oppose Reconstruction and terrorize the black population and anyone who stood up for black leaders.
When I moved to North Carolina in 1992, I learned an interesting part of my paternal family history related to the KKK. My grandfather’s grandfather, John Kirk, had been a scalawag, a Southern white who fought for the Union. From the hardscrabble Tennessee hill country, John was the son of a Scots-Irish immigrant who had a farm near the French Broad River.
John’s elder brother, George Washington, also fought for the Union and gained some fame (and notoriety) for leading “Kirk’s Raiders” through the farms and fields of mountain Tar Heels.
This article from the Cashiers Valley historian Jane Nardy tells one story about Kirk:
Known locally as “Kirk’s Army” or “Kirk’s Raiders,” this group of men, under orders, had to find their own food and all homes in their path were ransacked for flour, sugar and meat. The local people quickly learned clever means of concealing their food…The raiders always carried a branding iron with them and if they were lucky enough to discover an able bodied horse, they would take the branding iron into a house, stick it into the fireplace until it was red hot and then go back outside and brand the stolen horse with “U. S. Army”…On the second visit the Nortons had from Col. George W. Kirk and his men, there was a new demand. Kirk looked William Norton straight in the eye and said, “My men would like to have a square dance this evening and we need some young ladies to be our partners. If you will allow your daughters to come with us, we will treat them like ladies and we will return them safely and unharmed to you. If you won’t let them come with us, we’ll burn your house down.” Off went Mary Arlissa, age 20, Elizabeth Alice, age 16 and Julia M., age about 13. The oldest sister, Sarah Emmalissa, age 22, was married, but being that her husband was likely away, she may have been there and also attended the dance. The youngest sister, Martha Lou Ellen Norton, was only about age 11, so she would have remained at home. True to their word, a few anxious hours later, the bushwhackers returned the Norton daughters to their home in the same condition they were in when they left.
What is less known about George Kirk is what he did after the war. He left the state to take a job in Washington, DC. But the Republican governor, William Hold
en, called him back to lead a campaign against the Klan in Alamance and Caswell counties. Now known as the Kirk-Holden War, this lasted only a brief period, from 1869 to 1870. Yet it represented the most any Southern governor did to combat this vicious hate group. In 1870, Holden mobilized the militia, imposed martial law in two counties.
The reaction was vicious. The Republicans were voted out of office in the next election and Holden and Kirk were arrested. Kirk eventually escaped (I think), and Holden was impeached, the first governor in American history to suffer this fate (Matthew Bumgarner wrote a book about Kirk that tells the full history).
Fast forward to the present. The Klan is still with us, unfortunately, but the political winds have wrought incredible change. I began thinking about this again after hearing an interview with Greensboro’s new mayor, Yvonne Johnson.
Greensboro has a difficult, racially divided history. Like its neighbor, Burlington, it was a Klan hotbed as recently as 1979, when the Klan shot and killed five anti-Klan marchers there. I took part in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called to examine this killing. In their final report, they concluded that the “single most important element that contributed to the violent outcome of the confrontation was the absence of police.”
At the time the Commission was deliberating, Johnson was a City Council member. Shamefully, the Council voted along racial lines to oppose the Commission. During the years-long process, not a single white member of the Greensboro City Council spent a single minute at the public hearings,” according to political reporter Ed Cone, who blogs at EdCone.com.
So (phew) even though it is clear that racism is alive and well and even hoary, decrepit monsters like the KKK continue to exist, there are some signs of hope. Johnson is the first African-American to be elected mayor of Greensboro. She promises to let in some much needed and overdue fresh air and sunshine to retrograde Greensboro (written with the love that can only come from its rival, Durham, which has its own highly regarded African American mayor, Bill Bell). The interview reveals her as a pretty straight shooter, with a lot of sensitivity to the legacy of the past and the real energy Greensboro has for moving forward.
So you go, girl!