The United States sent troops to South Korea as part of a UNITED NATIONS “police action,” which sought to repel the Communist aggression of North Korea.. It then passed the Civil Rights
Trang 1Consequences of Passive Smoking Legislators across the nation responded to his report by creating laws to restrict smoking and to reduce the risk of passive smoking to nonsmokers
By 1987 smoking was banned in all federal buildings and regulated in restaurants, hospi-tals, and other public places in over 40 states In
1988 Koop commissioned studies on smoke in airplanes Congress reacted to the results of these studies by banning smoking on all flights lasting less than six hours
Koop publicized the addictive nature of tobacco in his 1988 surgeon general’s report
This report forced tobacco officials to agree to more specific surgeon general’s labels on cigarettes However, Koop lost the fight for labels that would have identified nicotine as an addictive substance
Although Koop was known for his anti-abortion stance, he did little on this issue during his time as surgeon general He viewed abortion
as a moral issue, not a political one, and he strongly disagreed with those who wanted to ban contraceptives and abortion In response to Koop’s position on contraception and sex education, many conservatives who at first had supported him turned against him
Koop faced a dilemma when President Reagan asked him to study the psychological effects of abortion on women In Koop’s opinion, it was a poor strategy to quibble about the effects of abortion on the mother when the effects on the fetus were conclusive In addition, because both sides of the abortion controversy produced biased studies, the available research was useless In the end, Koop could not gather evidence to assert conclusively or to refute damaging psychological effects of abortion on the mother He never completed the report
In 1982 the Baby Doe case alarmed the nation Baby Doe was born with Down syndrome, which results in mental retardation and other physical problems, as well esophageal atresia, an obstruction in the food passageway
Down syndrome is not correctable but is compatible with life; the esophageal atresia is incompatible with life but is correctable On the advice of their obstetrician, the parents chose to forgo treatment, and the baby died Koop believed that the child was denied treatment because he was retarded, not because the surgery was risky Koop himself had performed this kind of surgery successfully many times
Judging this to be a case of CHILD ABUSE and infanticide, Koop commented publicly that it is imperative to choose life, even when the quality
of that life is not perfect
In 1983 the nation grappled with similar difficult circumstances surrounding the Baby Jane Doe case Baby Jane Doe was born with spina bifida (a defect in the lower back), an abnormally small head, and hydroencephaly (a condition that causes fluid to collect in the brain) At issue was the baby’s right to medical treatment to increase her quality of life, despite her physical handicaps Koop believed that without medical treatment, Baby Jane Doe’s spine would become infected, that the infection would spread to her brain, and that she would become severely retarded He, therefore, advo-cated medical treatment for that condition Koop’s efforts to educate Congress and the public about the medical injustices affecting handicapped children led to the Baby Doe Amendment (42 U.S.C.A §§ 5101, 5102, 5103)
On October 9, 1984, the amendment extended the laws defining child abuse to include the withholding of fluids, food, and medically indicated treatment from disabled children While in office, Koop became embroiled in the politics of educating the public about the growing health threat of AIDS The Reagan administration prohibited Koop from speaking
on the topic for nearly five years This constraint distressed Koop, who believed that
it was the surgeon general’s duty to inform the public about all health issues Despite the Reagan administration’s silence on the issue,
on October 22, 1986, Koop released The Surgeon General’s Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome In it, he clearly stated the facts about the transmission of the disease and identified preventive measures and high-risk behaviors
Koop was adamant that all U.S citizens obtain the information that they needed in order to stop the spread of AIDS In May 1988
he sent the mailer Understanding AIDS: A Message from the Surgeon General to every household in the United States
When AIDS first attracted attention, it was labeled a homosexual disease because it was transmitted predominantly through sexual con-tact among gay males Koop lost the support of staunch conservatives because he refused to use his position to publicly condemn homosexual
YOU WOULD HAVE TO
LABEL ME A
CONSERVATIVE,BUT
I’M A FLEXIBLE
CONSERVATIVE WE
HAD NEVER,AS A
MEDICAL
PROFESSION,DEALT
WITH PEOPLE WHEN
THEY WERE SICK ON
THE BASIS OF HOW
THEY GOT SICK
—C E VERETT K OOP
178 KOOP, CHARLES EVERETT
Trang 2behavior Koop’s focus was to educate and to
save lives Although he advocated abstinence as
the best method for preventing the transmission
of AIDS, he also urged the use of condoms by
those who continued to engage in risky sexual
behavior Koop spoke against proposals such as
mandatory testing and the detention of
HIV-positive homosexuals He challenged those who
opposed the use of tax dollars to fund AIDS
research His reasoned approach to the AIDS
epidemic helped to calm the hysteria of the
public
Shortly after GEORGE H W BUSH became
president, Koop expressed interest in the
position of secretary of Health and Human
Services Bush chose Dr Louis W Sullivan for
that job
Koop resigned from his position as surgeon
general at the end of his second term He
wanted new challenges and looked forward to
educating the public without the interference of
Washington politics Ironically, Koop’s
popu-larity had undergone a complete reversal during
his term in office: Koop had entered his post on
the shoulders of conservative Christians, and he
was leaving it as a hero of the liberal press and
public
Even in retirement, Koop continued to
fulfill his role as public-health educator He
established the Koop Foundation and the
C Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth The
Koop Foundation is a private, nonprofit
organi-zation dedicated to fitness, education, and
research initiatives to promote the health of U.S
citizens The Koop Institute actively works for
reform in medical education and the delivery of
medical care To that end, the institute provides a
health-information network to help doctors
ad-dress challenging medical cases By writing,
speak-ing, and consulting on health issues, the diligent
Koop continued to champion the cause of better
and more accessible health care
Koop received numerous awards for his
many lifetime achievements In 1995 President
BILL CLINTON awarded Koop the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian
award In January 2005 Koop was honored with
the Surgeon General’s Medallion, which is the
highest award that the surgeon general can give
to a civilian Koop was given the award for his
lifelong dedication to issues of public health
and his commitment to improving the health
and wellbeing of Americans
FURTHER READINGS Arias, Donya Currie 2008 “C Everett Koop: The Nation’s Health Conscience ” American Journal of Public Health.
98 (March 1).
Koop, C Everett 2002 Critical Issues in Global Health Care.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
——— 1991 Koop: The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor New York: Random House.
The Koop Institute Available online at http://dms.
dartmouth.edu/koop/cek/ (accessed December 19, 2009).
CROSS REFERENCES Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome; Health Care Law;
Surgeon General; Tobacco.
KOREAN WAR The Korean War was a conflict fought on the Korean Peninsula from June 1950 to July 1953
Initially the war was between South Korea (Republic of Korea) and North Korea (Demo-cratic People’s Republic of Korea), but it soon developed into an international war involving the United States and 19 other nations The United States sent troops to South Korea as part
of a UNITED NATIONS “police action,” which sought to repel the Communist aggression of North Korea Before the war ended in a stalemate, the People’s Republic of China had intervened militarily on the side of North Korea, and the Soviet Union had supplied military equipment to the North
At the end of WORLD WAR II, in 1945, the Soviet Union occupied the Korean Peninsula north of the 38th degree of latitude, while the U.S occupied the territory south of it In 1947, after the United States and the Soviet Union failed to negotiate a reunification of the two separate Korean states, the United States asked the U.N to solve the problem The Soviet Union, however, refused a U.N proposal for a general election in the two Koreas to resolve the issue and encouraged the establishment of
a Communist regime under the leadership of Kim Il-sung South Korea then established a democratic government under the leadership of Syngman Rhee By 1949 most Soviet and U.S
troops had been withdrawn from the Korean Peninsula
On June 25, 1950, North Korea, with the tacit approval of the Soviet Union, launched
an attack across the 38th parallel The U.N
Security Council passed a resolution calling for the assistance of all U.N members to stop the invasion Normally, the Soviet Union would have vetoed this resolution, but it was
KOREAN WAR 179
Trang 3boycotting the Security Council in protest of the U.N.’s decision not to admit the People’s Republic of China
Sixteen nations joined the U.N forces, including the United States President HARRY S
TRUMAN immediately responded by ordering U.S forces to assist South Korea Truman did
so without a declaration of war, which until that time had been a prerequisite for U.S military involvement overseas Though some Americans criticized Truman for this decision, generally the country supported his action as part of his strategy of “containment,” which sought to prevent the spread of COMMUNISM beyond its current borders Korea became the test case for containment
The North Korean forces crushed the South Korean army, with the South Koreans holding just the southeastern part of the peninsula U.N
forces, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, stabilized the front On September
15, 1950, MacArthur made a bold amphibious landing at Inchon, about 100 miles below the 38th parallel, cutting off the North Korean forces
The North Korean army was quickly defeated, and more than 125,000 soldiers were captured
MacArthur then sent U.N forces into North Korea, proclaiming, on November 24, that the troops would be home by Christmas As U.N
forces neared the Yalu River, which is the border between North Korea and Manchuria, the northeast part of China, the Chinese army attacked them with 180,000 troops The
entrance of China changed the balance of forces U.S troops took heavy casualties during the winter of 1950–51 as the Chinese army pushed the U.N forces back across the 38th parallel and proceeded south U.N forces finally halted the offensive south of Seoul, the capital
of South Korea A U.N counteroffensive in February 1951 forced the Chinese to withdraw from South Korea By the end of April, U.N forces occupied positions slightly north of the 38th parallel
It was during this period that President Truman became concerned about the actions of MacArthur The general publicly expressed his desire to attack Manchuria, blockade the Chinese coast, and reinforce U.N forces with troops from Nationalist China, with the goal of achieving victory Truman, however, favored a limited war, fearing that MacArthur’s course would bring the Soviet Union into the war against the United States When MacArthur continued to make his views known, Truman,
as commander in chief, relieved the general of his command on April 11, 1951 The“firing” of MacArthur touched off a firestorm of criticism
by Congress and the public against Truman and his apparent unwillingness to win the war Nevertheless, Truman maintained the limited war strategy, which resulted in a deadlock along the 38th parallel
In June 1951 the Soviet Union proposed that cease-fire discussions begin, and in July the representatives of the U.N and Communist commands began truce negotiations at Kaesong, North Korea These negotiations were later moved to P’anmunjom
The Korean War affected U.S domestic policy In April 1952 President Truman sparked a constitutional crisis when he seized the U.S steel industry With a labor strike by the steelworkers’ union imminent, Truman was concerned that the loss of steel production would hurt the Korean War effort He ordered Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to seize the steel mills and maintain full production The steel industry challenged the order, bring-ing it before the Supreme Court In Youngs-town Sheet and Tube CO v Sawyer, 343 U.S
579, 72 S Ct 863, 96 L Ed 1153 (1952), the Court refused to allow the government to seize and operate the steel mills The majority rejected Truman’s claim of inherent executive
A convoy of U.S.
Army trucks cross the
38th parallel during
the Korean War The
parallel marks the
dividing line between
North and South
Korea.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
AND RECORDS
ADMINISTRATION
180 KOREAN WAR
Trang 4power in theCONSTITUTIONto protect the public
interest in times of crisis
Truman’s popularity declined because of the
war, which contributed to his decision not to
run for reelection in 1952 In the presidential
race, Republican DWIGHT D EISENHOWER easily
defeated Democrat ADLAI STEVENSON
Eisen-hower, a former U.S Army general and World
War II hero, pledged to end the war The truce
negotiations, which broke off in October 1952,
were resumed in April 1953 After Eisenhower
hinted that he was prepared to use nuclear
weapons if a settlement was not reached, an
armistice was signed on July 27, 1953
More than 33,000 U.S soldiers died in the
conflict, and 415,000 South Korean soldiers
were killed It is estimated that 2,000,000 North
Koreans and Chinese died The United States
has maintained a military presence in South
Korea since the end of the war, because North
Korea and South Korea have remained hostile
neighbors
FURTHER READINGS
Harrison, Selig S 2002 Korean Endgame: A Strategy for
Reunification and U.S Disengagement Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Univ Press.
Isserman, Maurice 2003 Korean War: Updated Edition.
New York: Facts on File.
Levie, Howard S 2002 “How it All Started—And How it
Ended: A Legal Study of the Korean War ” Akron Law
Review 35 (winter) Available online at http://www.
korean-war.com/Archives/2002/06/msg00263.html;
website home page: http://www.korean-war.com
(accessed August 5, 2009).
Turner, Robert F 1996 “Truman, Korea, and the
Constitution: Debunking the ‘Imperial President’
Myth ” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 19
(winter).
Young, James V., and William Stueck 2003 Eye on Korea:
An Insider Account of Korea-American Relations College
Station: Texas A&M Univ Press.
CROSS REFERENCES
Cold War; Labor Law; Labor Union; Presidential Powers;
Stalin, Joseph; Vietnam War.
KOREMATSU V UNITED STATES
Korematsu v United States, 323 U.S 214, 65 S
Ct 193, 89 L Ed 194 (1944), was a
controver-sial 6–3 decision of the Supreme Court that
affirmed the conviction of a Japanese American
citizen who violated an exclusion order that
barred all persons of Japanese ancestry from
designated military areas duringWORLD WAR II
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, an American
citizen of Japanese descent, was convicted in
federal court for remaining in a designated military area in California contrary to a Civilian Exclusion Order issued by an army general that required persons of Japanese ancestry to report
to assembly centers as a prelude to mass removal from the West Coast He unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the CIRCUIT COURT of appeals and was granted certiorari by the Supreme Court
The order that Korematsu was convicted of violating was based upon an EXECUTIVE ORDER, which authorized the military commander to establish military zones and impose restrictions
on activities or order exclusion from those areas
in order to protect against ESPIONAGE and sabotage Federal law made violation of these orders a crime The entire West Coast and southern Arizona were designated as military zones The restriction and exclusion orders applied to all enemy aliens and additionally to American citizens of Japanese ancestry Pur-suant to the executive order, another order imposed an 8 P.M to 6 A.M curfew on all persons of Japanese ancestry in designated West Coast military areas This order and a
Fred Korematsu receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton on January 15, 1998.
AP IMAGES
KOREMATSU V UNITED STATES 181
Trang 5conviction based on it was challenged in Hirabayashi v United States, 320 U.S 81, 63 S
Ct 1375, 87 L.Ed 1774 (1943), but the Supreme Court upheld the order as “‘protection against espionage and against sabotage’” and sustained the conviction The Court relied upon that case
as support for its refusal to rule that Congress and the president exceeded their war powers in excluding persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast in Korematsu Although it acknowl-edged that being prohibited from the area where one’s home is located is a more severe hardship than a ten-hour curfew, the Court accepted the claims of the government that such drastic measures were necessary to adequately protect the country
At the start of the majority opinion, the Court stated that any legal restriction that infringes upon the CIVIL RIGHTS of a particular race is “immediately suspect.” However, it continued, not all restrictions are unconstitu-tional Such limitations are valid when dictated
by public necessity, but they must withstand rigid judicial scrutiny in order to be upheld The restrictions imposed upon Japanese Americans were deemed by the Court to be necessary for public security during time of war
Korematsu argued that the rationale of the Court in Hirabayashi was erroneous and that when the order in question was promulgated there was no longer any danger of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast The Court rejected these arguments Both the curfew and exclusion orders were necessary, because disloyal Amer-icans of Japanese origin could not be easily segregated until subsequent investigations took place Although the hardship of exclusion fell upon many loyal people, the Court viewed it as one of the harsh results of modern warfare
The Court affirmed Korematsu’s conviction, which has been cited by constitutional scholars
as the foundation of the strict scrutiny test that
is applied to suspect classifications made by the government
In 1983, upon a challenge by Korematsu who was represented by the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION and the Japanese American Citizens League, U.S district court judge Marilyn Hall Patel vacated the 40-year-old conviction Based upon newly discovered evidence—previously withheld government documents—the judge found that the new evidence demonstrated “that the Government
knowingly withheld information from the Courts when they were considering the critical question of military necessity in this case.” The judge added that “justices of [the Supreme] Court and legal scholars have commented that the[Korematsu] decision is an anachronism in upholding overt racial discrimination as ‘com-pellingly justified,’ and that the Korematsu case lies overruled in the court of history.”
CROSS REFERENCE Japanese American Evacuation Cases.
KU KLUX KLAN The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a white supremacist organization that was founded in 1866 Throughout its notorious history, factions of the secret fraternal organization have used acts
of terrorism—including MURDER, LYNCHING, ar-son, RAPE, and bombing—to oppose the grant-ing of CIVIL RIGHTS to African Americans Deriving its membership from native-born, white Protestant U.S citizens, the KKK has also been anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic and has opposed theIMMIGRATIONof all those it does not view as “racially pure.” Other names for the group have been White Brotherhood, Heroes of America, Constitutional Union Guards, and Invisible Empire
Origins and Initial Growth
Ex-Confederate soldiers established the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 They developed the first two words of the group’s name from the Greek word kuklos, meaning
“group or band,” and took the third as a variant
of the word clan Starting as a largely recrea-tional group, the Klan soon turned to intimi-dating newly freed African Americans Riding at night, the Klan terrorized and sometimes murdered those it opposed Members adopted
a hooded white costume—a guise intended to represent the ghosts of the Confederate dead—
to avoid identification and to frighten victims during nighttime raids
The Klan fed off the post-Civil War resentments of white southerners—resentment that centered on the RECONSTRUCTION programs imposed on the South by a Republican Congress Under Reconstruction, the North sought to restructure southern society on the basis of racial equality Under this new regime, leading southern whites were disfranchised, whereas inexperienced African Americans,
182 KU KLUX KLAN
Trang 6carpetbaggers (northerners who had migrated
to the South following the war), and scalawags
(southerners who cooperated with the North)
occupied major political offices
Shortly after the KKK’s formation, Nathan
Bedford Forrest, a former slave trader and
Confederate general, assumed control of the
organization and turned it into a militaristic,
hierarchical entity In 1868 Forrest formally
disbanded the group after he became appalled
by its growing violence However, the KKK
continued to grow, and its atrocities worsened
Drawing the core of its membership from
ex-Confederate soldiers, the KKK may have
numbered several hundred thousand at its
height during Reconstruction
In 1871 the federal government took a
series of steps to counter the KKK and its
violence Congress organized a joint select
committee made up of seven senators and 14
representatives to look into the Klan and its
activities It then passed the Civil Rights Act of
1871, frequently referred to as the Ku Klux Klan
Act, which made night-riding a crime and
empowered the president to order the use of
federal troops to put down conspirators by
force The law also provided criminal and civil
penalties for people convicted of private
conspiracies—such as those perpetrated by the
KKK—intended to deny others their civil rights
Also in 1871, President ULYSSES S GRANT
relocated troops from the Indian wars on the
western plains to South Carolina, in order to
quell Klan violence In October and November
of that year, the federal CIRCUIT COURT for the
District of South Carolina held a series of trials
of KKK members suspected of having engaged
in criminal conspiracies, but the trials resulted
in few convictions
The Klan declined in influence as the 1870s
wore on Arrests, combined with the return of
southern whites to political dominance in the
South, diminished its activity and influence
Resurgence
The KKK experienced a resurgence afterWORLD
WAR I, reaching a peak of 3 or 4 million
members in the 1920s David W Griffith’s 1915
movie The Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas
Dixon’s 1905 novel The Clansman, served as the
spark for this revival The movie depicted the
Klan as a heroic force defending the “Aryan
birthright” of white southerners against African
Americans and Radical Republicans seeking to build a Black Empire in the South In particular, the movie showed a gallant Klan defending the honor of white women threatened by lecherous African American men
William J Simmons renewed the KKK at a Stone Mountain, Georgia, ceremony in 1915
Later, Christian fundamentalist ministers aided recruitment as the Klan portrayed itself as the protector of traditional values during the Jazz Age
As its membership grew into the millions in the 1920s, the Klan exerted considerable politi-cal influence, helping to elect sympathetic candidates to state and national offices The group was strong not only in southern states such as Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, but also in Oklahoma, California, Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York Strongly opposed to non–Anglo-Saxon immigration, the Klan helped secure the passage of strict quotas on immigration In addition to being racist, the group also espoused hatred of Jews, Catholics, socialists, and unions
By the end of the 1920s, a backlash against the KKK had developed Reports of its violence turned public sentiment against the group, and its membership declined to about 40,000 At the same time, Louisiana, Michigan, and Oklahoma passed anti-mask laws intended to frustrate Klan activity Most of these laws made it a misdemeanor to wear a mask that concealed the
Ku Klux Klan members parade in Washington, D.C., during the 1920s, a decade in which Klan membership grew into the millions and the group exerted significant political influence.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
KU KLUX KLAN 183
Trang 7identity of the wearer, excluding masks worn for holiday costumes or other legitimate uses
South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia later passed similar laws
Anti-Civil Rights Involvement
The KKK experienced another, less successful resurgence during the 1960s as African Amer-icans won civil rights gains in the South
Opposed to the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT and its attempt to end racial segregation and discrimi-nation, the Klan capitalized on the fears of whites, to grow to a membership of about 20,000 It portrayed the civil rights movement
as a Communist, Jewish conspiracy, and it engaged in terrorist acts designed to frustrate and intimidate the movement’s members KKK adherents were responsible for acts such as the
1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four young African American girls were killed and many others were injured, and the 1964 murder of civil rights workers Michael Schwer-ner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, in Mississippi The Klan was also responsible for many other beatings, murders, and bombings, including attacks on the Freedom Riders, who sought to integrate interstate buses
In many instances, the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI), then under the control of
J Edgar Hoover, had intelligence that would have led to the prevention of Klan violence or conviction of its perpetrators However, the FBI did little to oppose the Klan during the height of the civil rights movement
By the 1990s the Klan had shrunk to under 10,000 members and had splintered into several organizations, including the Imperial Klans of America, the Knights of the White Kamelia, and the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
These factions also sought alliances with a proliferating number of other white suprema-cist groups, including the Order and Aryan Nations Like these groups, the KKK put new emphasis on whites as an“oppressed majority,”
victimized byAFFIRMATIVE ACTIONand other civil rights measures
The Klan’s campaign of hatred has spurred opposition from many fronts, including Klan-watch, an organization started by lawyer and civil rights activist Morris Dees in 1980 The group is affiliated with Dees’sSOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER, in Montgomery, Alabama In 1987
Dees won a $7 million civil suit against the Alabama-based United Klans of America for the
1981 murder of a 19-year-old man The suit drove that Klan organization into BANKRUPTCY
In 1998 Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center won a civil suit against the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who were accused
of burning down the Macedonia Baptist Church
in Bloomville, South Carolina The center won
an unprecedented $37.8 million in damages The KKK suffered other setbacks For example, in 1990 the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that state’s Anti-Mask Act (Ga Code Ann § 16-11-38) by a vote
of 6-1 (State v Miller, 260 Ga 669, 398 S.E.2d 547) The case involved a Klan member who had been arrested for wearing full Klan regalia, including mask, in public and had claimed a
FIRST AMENDMENT right to wear such clothing The court ruled that the law, first passed in
1951, protected a state interest in safeguarding the right of people to exercise their civil rights and to be free from violence and intimidation
It held that the law did not interfere with the defendant’sFREEDOM OF SPEECH
By 2008 KKK membership had been reduced to approximately 6,000 individuals Despite this reduction in membership, however, the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY released warnings in 2009, indicating that right-wing extremist groups, such as the KKK, pose an increasing threat to the United States The warnings reflected that the number of right-wing terrorists is on the rise again, as the result
of recruitment campaigns based upon fears related to a down economy The recruitment is also alleged to be based on racism related to the election of BARACK OBAMA, the nation’s first African American President
FURTHER READINGS Allen, Wayne R 1991 “Klan, Cloth, and Constitution: Anti-Mask Laws and the First Amendment ” Georgia Law Review 25 (spring).
Chalmers, David Mark 2003 Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Grossman, Mark 1993 “Ku Klux Klan.” Civil Rights Movement Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO Johnson, Sandra E 2002 Standing on Holy Ground: A Triumph over Hate Crime in the Deep South New York:
St Martin’s Press.
Karen, Anthony S 2009 The Invisible Empire Brooklyn, New York: powerHouse Books.
184 KU KLUX KLAN
Trang 8Phillips, John W 2000 Sign of the Cross: The Prosecutor’s
True Story of a Landmark Trial against the Klan.
Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press.
Richard, Mark Paul 2009 “This Is Not a Catholic Nation:
The Ku Klux Klan Confronts Franco-Americans in
Maine.” The New England Quarterly 82 (June)
CROSS REFERENCE
Jim Crow Laws.
KU KLUX KLAN ACT
The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 (ch 22, 17 Stat
13 [codified as amended at 18 U.S.C.A § 241,
42 U.S.C.A §§ 1983, 1985(3), and 1988]), also
called theCIVIL RIGHTSAct of 1871 or the Force
Act of 1871, was one of several importantCIVIL
RIGHTS ACTS passed by Congress during
RECON-STRUCTION, the period following the Civil War
when the victorious northern states attempted
to create a new political order in the South The
act was intended to protect African Americans
from violence perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist group
In March 1871 President ULYSSES S GRANT
requested from Congress legislation that would address the problem of KKK violence, which had grown steadily since the group’s formation
in 1866 Congress responded on April 20, 1871, with the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, originally introduced as a bill “to enforce the provisions of theFOURTEENTH AMENDMENTand for other purposes.” Section 1 of the act covered enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment and was later codified, in part, at 42 U.S.C.A §
1983 Section 2 of the act, codified at 42 U.S.C
A § 1985(3), provided civil and criminal penalties intended to deal with conspiratorial violence of the kind practiced by the Klan Both sections of the act were intended to give federal protection to Fourteenth Amendment rights that were regularly being violated by private individuals as opposed to the state
Hugo L Black and the KKK
H
B
ugo L Black is remembered as a distinguished
U.S Supreme Court justice, a progressive U.S
Senator, and an able trial attorney Black also was
a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the 1920s
Public disclosure of this fact came shortly after
his appointment to the Supreme Court was
confirmed by the Senate in 1937 The resulting
public uproar would probably have doomed his
Court appointment if the disclosure had come just a
few weeks earlier
In 1923 Black was a trial attorney in
Birming-ham, Alabama, which at the time was controlled by
members of the Klan After rebuffing membership
several times, he joined the KKK on September 23,
1923 Black later claimed to have left the group after
several years, but no clear evidence documented
his departure In 1937 there were allegations he had
signed an undated letter resigning from the Klan,
which was to have been used to establish a false
resignation date if public scandal occurred
In 1937 Black made a radio address to the
nation, in which he admitted his Klan membership
but claimed he had resigned and had not had any
connection with the group for many years He also
stated he harbored no prejudice against anyone because of their race, religion, or ethnicity
During his Court career, Black was reluctant to discuss his KKK membership and offered various reasons for why he had joined To some people he admitted it was a mistake, whereas to others he said the KKK was just another fraternal organiza-tion, like the Masons or Elks It is clear, however, that as an ambitious politician, Black had sought Klan support for his political campaigns In the 1920s KKK support had been critical to a Democratic politician in Alabama
Despite his later denial of holding any prejudices, Black was an active member of the KKK for several years He participated in Klan events throughout Alabama, wearing the organization’s characteristic white robes and hood, and initiated new Klan members into the Invisible Empire, reading the Klan oath, which pledged the members to“most zealously and valiantly shield and preserve by any and all justifiable means white supremacy.”
CROSS REFERENCE Black, Hugo Lafayette
KU KLUX KLAN ACT 185
Trang 9In addition, the Ku Klux Klan Act gave the president power to suspend the writ ofHABEAS CORPUS in order to fight the KKK President Grant used this power only once, in October
1871, in ten South Carolina counties experienc-ing high levels of KlanTERRORISM The act also banned KKK and other conspiracy members from serving on juries
The Republicans who framed the Ku Klux Klan Act intended it to provide a federal remedy for private conspiracies of the sort practiced by the KKK against African Americans and others
As had become all too apparent by 1871, local and state courts were ineffective in prosecuting Klan violence Local and state law enforcement officials, including judges, were often sympa-thetic to the KKK or were subject to intimida-tion by the group, as were trial witnesses The
Ku Klux Klan Act would allow victims of Klan violence to take their case to a federal court, where, it was supposed, they would receive a fairer trial
The act, like other civil rights laws from the Reconstruction era, sparked considerable legal debate Its detractors claimed that the law improperly expanded federal jurisdiction to areas of CRIMINAL LAW better left to the states
The Supreme Court took this view in 1883 when it struck down the criminal provisions of the act’s second section on the ground that protecting individuals from private conspiracies was a state and not federal function (United States v Harris, 106 U.S 629, 1 S Ct 601, 27 L
Ed 290) This and other rulings stripped the Ku Klux Klan Act of much of its power Like many other civil rights laws from its era, it went largely unenforced in succeeding decades
The remaining civil provisions of the act were later codified under 42 U.S.C.A § 1985(3), where they have been referred to as the conspiracy statute These provisions hold, in part, that when two or more persons“conspire
or go in disguise on the highway or the premises
of another, for the purpose of depriving any person or class of persons of the EQUAL PROTECTION of the law,” they may be sued by the injured parties The civil provisions, or
§ 1985(3), remained generally unused until the
1971 U.S Supreme Court decision Griffin v
Breckenridge, 403 U.S 88, 91 S Ct 1790, 29 L
Ed 2d 338 In Griffin, the Court reaffirmed the original intention of § 1985(3) and ruled that the statute may allow a civil remedy for certain private conspiracies The Griffin case concerned
a 1966 incident in Mississippi in which a group
of white men stopped a car out of suspicion that one of its three African American occupants was
a civil rights worker The whites proceeded to beat and threaten the African Americans The Court upheld one victim’s claim that, under § 1985(3), the whites had engaged in a conspiracy
to deny him the equal protection of the laws of the United States and Mississippi
In making its decision, the Court was careful to restrict § 1985 claims to those involving actions motivated by “some racial,
or perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus.” This standard meant that the conspirators in question had to be motivated against a class of persons, not a particular political or social issue By creating this standard, the Court sought to prevent § 1985(3) from becoming a “general federal tort law” that would cover every type of private conspiracy
Since Griffin, the Court has expressed misgivings about expanding the types of classes protected by the statute Using the Griffin standard, the Court later ruled in United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners v Scott,
463 U.S 825, 103 S Ct 3352, 77 L Ed 2d 1049 (1983), that economic or commercial groups could not be considered a class protected by the law In that case, the Court rejected a claim by nonunion workers who had been attacked by union workers at job sites
During the 1980s and 1990s, lower federal courts upheld the use of § 1985(3) against antiabortion protesters who blockaded family planning clinics with large demonstrations and disruptions In one RULING, a federal district court held that an antiabortion group had conspired to violate the right to interstate travel
of women seeking to visit family planning clinics (NOW v Operation Rescue, 726 F Supp
1483[E.D Va 1989])
However, in a 1993 case, Bray v Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, 506 U.S 263, 113 S Ct
753, 122 L Ed 2d 34, the Supreme Court ruled that § 1985(3) could not be used against antiabortion protesters The Court held that women seekingABORTION cannot be considered
a class under the terms of the law
FURTHER READINGS Brown, Bruce 1991 “Injunctive Relief and Section 1985(3): Anti-Abortion Blockaders Meet the ‘Ku Klux Klan Act ’.” Buffalo Law Review 39 (fall).
186 KU KLUX KLAN ACT
Trang 10Gormley, Ken 1985 “Private Conspiracies and the
Constitution: A Modern Vision of 42 U.S.C Section
1985(3) ” Texas Law Review 64 (November).
Hall, Kermit L 1984 “Political Power and Constitutional
Legitimacy: The South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials,
1871 –1872.” Emory Law Journal 33 (fall) Available
online at http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Hall1.html;
website home page: http://www.saf.org (accessed
Au-gust 5, 2009).
McMurtry, Joy Hollingsworth, and Patti S Pennock 1995.
“Ending the Violence: Applying the Ku Klux Klan Act,
RICO, and FACE to the Abortion Controversy.” Land
and Water Law Review 30.
CROSS REFERENCES
Civil Rights Acts; Civil Rights Cases; Civil Rights
Movement; Jim Crow Laws.
vKUNSTLER, WILLIAM MOSES
WILLIAM MOSES KUNSTLER rose to prominence
during theCIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTin the 1960s
He represented Freedom Riders,MARTIN LUTHER
KING Jr., and the CHICAGO EIGHT Politics and
the law are inseparable in his philosophy
He was the author of 12 books, a sometime
Hollywood actor, and a cofounder of the
CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS (CCR) in
Tennessee
Even as a child, Kunstler liked trouble He
was born July 7, 1919, in New York City, the
eldest of three children of Frances Mandelbaum
and Monroe B Kunstler, a physician Ignoring
schoolwork to run with a street gang called the
Red Devils, he worried his conservative Jewish
family He read voraciously on his own, and by
high school became a straight A student At
Yale, he majored in French and wrote his senior
thesis on the satirist Molière Then he joined
the Army and served in WORLD WAR II as a
cryptographer, taking part in General Douglas MacArthur’s invasion of the Philippines, earn-ing the Iron Cross, and risearn-ing to the rank of major Afterward, he entered Columbia Law School, mainly to compete with his younger brother, Michael Kunstler
Kunstler and his brother opened a law practice in 1949 The mundane work bored Kunstler, who wanted more challenge than handling annulments and divorces He kept busy writing a book on corporate tax law, contributing to the New York Times Book Review, teaching at New York Law School, and hosting radio shows whose eclectic guest lists covered personalities ranging from Eleanor Roosevelt to Malcolm X
William M Kunstler.
AP IMAGES
1900 1925 1950 1975 2000
❖
1919 Born, New York City
1914–18 World War I
1939–45 World War II
1950–53 Korean War
◆
1949 Graduated from Columbia Law School;
opened private practice with brother Michael
1961–73 Vietnam War
◆
1961 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? published; represented
Freedom Riders on behalf of ACLU in Jackson, Miss.
◆ ◆
1968 Defended Chicago Eight
1971 Defended prisoners charged in Attica (N.Y.) Prison rebellion
◆
1974 Defended Russell Means and Dennis Banks in Leadership Trial
◆
1985 Trials and Tribulations
published;
took on Darrell Cabey's civil suit against Bernhard Goetz
◆
1986 Defended Larry Davis against charges of attempted murder of six police officers in Bronx, N.Y.
1996 Cabey won
$43 million judgment against Goetz
1995 Died, New York City
1994 My Life as a Radical Lawyer
published
◆
1990 Won acquittal of
El Sayyid Nosair in Meir Kahane murder case