The fighting raged
for thirteen days. At least thirty-eight people were killed.
Fifteen of these were white, and twenty-three were Negro. Also,
some five hundred people were injured of which the majority were
Negro. Many houses were burned, and it was estimated that one
thousand families were left homeless.
The Klan Revival
While the nation went to war to make the world safe for
democracy, many at home believed that it was still necessary to
make America safe first. These people fell into two groups. There
were those within the Afro-American community who felt that a
country which systematically disenfranchised a large minority
group and which also tolerated widespread discrimination,
segregation, and violence against that minority was not a secure
democratic state. At the same time, those who were responsible
for much of this harassment and terror believed that violence was
necessary precisely in order to protect democracy. They believed
that true democracy sprang from the virtue of a white, Anglo-
Saxon, Protestant civilization, and they wanted to protect it
against alien subversion.
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