Newspaper Page Text
Alf vs. the Klan
continued from p. 9
Alf, however, was still hidden away in the
dark garret, just under the roof. A small
opening, just big enough for one man to
sneak through kept Alf hidden in what he
called the “cuddy.” If the Klansmen could
be convinced that Alf had left through the
window during the commotion, they might
leave and take to the surrounding area to
track him down, like before. Alf and his
family could easily abscond in the dark once
the men turned their attention away from
the house.
Silence returned to the second floor after
the rush of men descended downstairs and
outside. In the dark at the top of the stairs
the man who remained must have seemed
like a ghost, a white shape against the dark,
still and silent in the hush. It’s doubtful
that Alf knew that a man had stealthily
remained in the dark upstairs. There was
one place left to look for Richardson, and
the small opening of the garret was soon
filled with the blank white of masked face
and hood. “I’ve got you,” said the mask.
A shot ripped into Alf’s arm. Then two
entered near his ribcage. The shooter yelled
down to his compatriots, “Come back up!
I’ve shot him! Let’s finish him!” Alf felt
a deep weakness come on as the blood
drained from his body. The Klansman joined
the others rushing back into the house. Alf
dragged himself out of the tiny compart
ment and got himself to the top of stairs
just ahead of the hooded group and just in
time to fire at the man reaching the top. The
man collapsed into a mound of bloodied
white cotton, dead. The Klansmen fled. Alf,
though quite wounded, survived.
Frederick Douglass’ newspaper in
Washington, D.C. celebrated Alf’s victory in
the nation’s capital. What the
account missed in accuracy it
made up for in glee.
“Alfred Richardson, col
ored Representative in the
Legislature, who lives in
Watkinsville, was visited a
few nights ago by Georgia’s
chivalry, and after they had
surrounded the house, like
pure cowards, began to shoot
into it. Three shots are said
to have taken effect upon
Richardson. Thinking they had finished
their victim, they entered the house for
the purpose of applying the torch, but the
leader was saluted with a discharge from a
shot-gun, which settled his account right
there. The balance of the gang fled, carrying
off their dead comrade. Richardson is not
seriously wounded, and will soon recover. If
the negroes of the South would, in all cases,
defend themselves in this manner, there
would be less fun in Ku-Kluxing, and fewer
Ku-Klux.”
Even in sparse white Republican strong
holds in upcountry Northwest Georgia, the
Calhoun Times celebrated the Klan killer of
Clarke County to its almost entirely white
readership:
“Alfred Richardson, of Watkinsville,
trumped the Ku-Klux the other night. A
party of unknown men visited his house
and commenced firing, whereupon Alfred
concealed himself. One of the Ku-Kluxes
then entered the house with a light, but
at a signal from Alfred’s shot gun, he died
promptly. This disgusted the party and they
withdrew. Alfred carries three pistol balls
under his side as trophies of victory.”
The governor, deploying his journalistic
eminent domain, soon wrested space in
Athens newspapers to issue a proclama
tion announcing that “a party of disguised
men, known as the Ku Klux Klan, about
thirty in number, went to the house of
Hon. Alfred Richardson,” this being “the
second attempt to assassinate the said
Richardson.” In Athens, as elsewhere in the
state, “the authorities of the said county of
Clarke have failed to ferret out or to secure
the apprehension of the perpetrators,”
and so Governor Bullock and state and
federal authorities were “offering a reward
of FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS for the
living later. Athens and Lickskillet would
not ensure total safety, but remaining in
Watkinsville meant certain death. Alf would
soon put the Watkinsville property up for
sale.
It is impossible to know whether
Richardson and his family were under
stood to be home in Watkinsville when
the house was set ablaze by incendiaries
weeks later. When it was initially reported
in the Banner, writers and editors there
could only speculate as to the Richardsons’
whereabouts. It was believed that the home
invasion in January would have resulted in
an inferno had Alf not repelled the attack-
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Description.
The name of every person whose
place of abode on the first day of
Jane, 1870, was in this family.
- i S
'oil
Profession, Occupation,
or Trade of each person,
male or female.
Value op Rf.al Estate
owned.
The 1870 census listed Richardson’s occupation as “legislator.”
apprehension, arrest and conviction” of
the Klansmen and a considerable bounty
of “one thousand dollars each for any addi
tional number more than one of the ‘Klan’
engaged in committing the outrage.” A
resident of the area stood to make a small
fortune by cooperating with Bullock. No
Klansman was brought to justice.
Alf on the Run
The Klan terror army, at work every
where in the state, was operating now with
virtually no resistance. Alf fled to Atlanta
initially to avoid death, then to Athens,
where relative safety could be found in
denser black populations. Alf, his wife and
three daughters likely sought refuge in the
large black neighborhood of Lickskillet,
where census records show the Richardsons
ers, so the successful firebombing weeks
later may have been another attempt to
kill Alf and his family. It could just as well
have been an attempt to make the property
worthless, as all of Alf’s structures listed for
sale were torched torched: “a good frame
house with seven rooms, a kitchen, a two-
story smoke-house, a dairy,” as well as a
blacksmith shop, all apparently burned.
Alfred Richardson and his family were,
for the moment, safe in Athens, but the
property was languishing on the market,
gashed with the black scars from Klan
arsonists. Nearly the full length of his
body bore the wounds from his war with
the Klan, with two metal balls now perma
nently embedded in his side as a reminder.
He was a living witness to the ongoing
terrorist takeover of the South. But that
takeover was just then meeting with federal
power, as Congress debated a sweeping
“Ku-Klux bill,” the Third Enforcement Act,
that would hand unprecedented power to
the president to make war on the Klan.
Athenians joined the rest of the white
South in watching in horror as Congress
moved to give the dreaded Ulysses S. Grant,
now president, and his top army com
mander, the infernal General Sherman, the
power to operate at will wherever the Klan
reigned. According to the bill under dis
cussion, the writ of habeas corpus could be
suspended, and Grant and Sherman could
deploy federal troops as law enforcement.
It was what we’d call now “counterinsur
gency,” a targeted war against the vast ter
rorist network of the South. Gen. Sherman
went before the Senate to declare that “In
11 Southern states the public condition
at the present time is one of unparalleled
horror and anarchy.” Only a war against the
Klan could reverse the tide.
Covering Up the Klan
The Klan had been central in the success
of beating back black freedom and return
ing white supremacist control. “The Klan
was a military force serving the interests
of the Democratic Party, the planter class,
and all those who desired the restoration of
white supremacy,” writes Eric Foner, pre
eminent historian of Reconstruction. This
was the realization Athenians were having
as the Klan’s violent elimination was being
debated in Washington. Say what you will
about it, the Klan’s terrorism was working.
Athens was an increasingly rare outlier in
this regard, though. Richardson and Davis
would be returning to Atlanta to represent
Athens, despite the best efforts of the
Klan, but the black vote was viciously sup
pressed elsewhere, handing full control of
the legislature to the white
Democrats. The Democrats
would expel Bullock from
office on spurious charges,
with Bullock fleeing the
state in fear of terrorist
violence. The Klan hadn’t
previously been uniformly
beloved by whites, but
white Athenians suddenly
understood that the Klan
paramilitary was, in the
end, the only real force
there had been to oppose black freedom
after the war. And that realization during
the course of 1871’s anti-Klan activity in
Washington led to a remarkable warming
toward the Klan by white Athens. As swiftly
as the bill made its way to President Grant’s
eager pen, so too did amnesia sweep sud
denly over Athens and the South. Klan?
What Klan?
A great charade began, with white
Southern conservatives beginning a col
lective performance of sudden ignorance
of Klan terrorism. The Augusta Chronicle,
for example, had welcomed the Klan ahead
of the “Bayonet election” in 1868: “Klan
has been organized in this place...Success
say we to the Ku Klux Klan!” But by the
time the Klan bill was being deliberated in
Washington in early 1871, a sibling Augusta
paper would call the existence of the Klan
“an unmitigated lie” and that “if such a
body existed, it was among the Radicals.”
The Chronicle, champion of Klan salvation
three years before, now vociferously denied
in 1871 the charges of Klan violence. “Many
of the alleged outrages are manufactured
y continued on next page
T7~
Place of Birth, uamiDg State
or Territory of U. S.; or the
Country, if of foreign birth.
MARCH 4, 2020 | FLAGPOLE.COM 15