Dan Price letter

Dan Price was a white Republican who taught in African-American schools during the Reconstruction era in Alabama. His situation became so bad in Livingston and Sumter County that he moved to Meridian, Mississippi, taking many freemen (and thus, much of the cheap farm labor) with him. Local white farmers deputized a former slave, Adam Kennard, and sent him to retrieve the freemen. In 1871, Kennard was captured near Meridian and whipped by masked men. Kennard said that Price was the leader of the group who attacked him. The local paper labeled Price the "Grand Cyclops of the negro Ku Klux Klan." Since Price was in disguise when he attacked Kennard, he was prosecuted under the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that prevented acts of violence while in disguise (ostensibly an anti-Klan measure). Ironically, Price was the first person prosecuted under the anti-KKK law, but even before his trial, there was controversy; African-Americans were unhappy that no real Klansmen had yet been tried for their violent acts while in disguise. Because of ongoing threats of violence, Meridian prosecutors agreed to drop the charges if Price agreed to leave the city. A suspicious fire broke out in Meridian and mobs patrolled the streets. There was actual shooting during a trial and the local Klan killed man freemen. It is believed that thirty people died in the riots. No one was ever charged with the deaths in what was the most infamous of all mass Klan activity in Reconstruction Mississippi.