I spent the week this way.

Thursday morning, June 18. I often set the clock-radio to go off much earlier than I know I’ll be getting up. That morning I absorbed the news of the shootings in the Mother Church in Charleston before my first coffee. By the time I was at my computer I was feeling the blow. Terror? Of course it’s terror. Reconstruction was yesterday. Jim Crow was an hour ago (or — now. Look up, look around.)

Here is a paragraph about South Carolina’s early history from the College of Charleston’s Lowcountry Digital Archive.

The development of a plantation economy and African slavery in Carolina began before English colonists even settled Charles Town in 1670. In 1663, eight Lords Proprietors in England received land grants in North America from King Charles II for their loyalty to the monarchy during the English Civil War. The Lords decided to combine their shares to establish a profit-seeking proprietary settlement, Carolina, between the English colony of Virginia and Spanish Florida. To ensure financial success, they sent representatives to study the lucrative sugar plantation system on the Caribbean island of Barbados. They also recruited white settlers from this English West Indian colony to help launch their new North American settlement. These white Barbadians often brought enslaved Africans and African Barbadians with them.

Here are a few of the names of white terror organizations that grew up as a response to Reconstruction.

Paramilitary: The White League. The Knights of the White Camellia. The Red Shirts.

Fellow travelers: The Redeemers. (They were starched-shirt businessmen. They wanted lower taxes and smaller government.)

The White League was responsible for the Colfax Massacre in northern Louisiana. They killed between 60 and 130 freedmen and black members of the state militia. They were armed with rifles and a small cannon.

Rifles, and a small cannon.

It was impossible to determine the number of black dead because so many bodies had been removed or “thrown into the river.” That’s the Red River. It still flows.

The historical marker still refers to the Colfax “riots” and attributes the trouble to white scalawags.

When I was in high school in Atlanta I went on an exploratory drive with my friend. We ended up in East Point, where the commercial establishments had signs like Kwik Klean Kloze.

The White League

The development of a plantation economy and African slavery in Carolina began before English colonists even settled Charles Town in 1670. In 1663, eight Lords Proprietors in England received land grants in North America from King Charles II for their loyalty to the monarchy during the English Civil War. The Lords decided to combine their shares to establish a profit-seeking proprietary settlement, Carolina, between the English colony of Virginia and Spanish Florida. To ensure financial success, they sent representatives to study the lucrative sugar plantation system on the Caribbean island of Barbados. They also recruited white settlers from this English West Indian colony to help launch their new North American settlement. These white Barbadians often brought enslaved Africans and African Barbadians with them.

To be continued.