There is no question that some white Southerners suffered in the aftermath
of the Civil War. But once the war was over, whites suffered nothing
compared to the systematic, bestial violence against African-Americans
carried out by organized white terror groups.  Yes, some whites went
bankrupt, went hungry, lost their homes--it was very hard for them--but they
were not slaughtered with impunity on their own soil for standing up for
their rights as Americans.  The KKK proved, on American soil, that terrorism
works.  Organized specifically to keep blacks from voting, the KKK
terrorists kidnapped, tortured, and murdered black political leaders and
their white allies across the South.  They burned schools and brutalized
teachers.  The US government grew tired of policing the South.  The troops
were withdrawn.  The terrorists won.  Democracy--full voting rights for
citizens of any color--did not emerge until the 1960s.  The post-1865
misfortunes of white Southerners were vastly inflated in novels, histories,
and family oral histories, so that one would believe that only white
Southerners suffered after 1865. These tales became part of the anti-black
propaganda enshrined in myth, culminating in "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone
With the Wind."  But hard, undeniable evidence that tells a different story
is emerging now from the records.  It's taken us this long to get at the
truth.

Henry Wiencek

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