Ku Klux Klan Rally

Sc StateHousE, 1957

The Ku Klux Klan used violence – kidnapping, beating, mutilating, and lynching – to enforce subjugation and segregation. Klansmen counted on terrorism to intimidate, silence, or run out of town any black person considered successful or outspoken, anyone who didn’t know his or her “place,” anyone accused of an affront to white people, no matter how minor or false the charge.

These photos were taken on December 7, 1957, when 200 Klansmen formed a human cross on the State House steps then marched up and down Main Street in Columbia, South Carolina. In an interview afterward, Imperial Wizard E. L. Edwards denied knowledge of the November 20 bombing of Dr. James and Claudia Thomas Sanders’ home in Gaffney, Cherokee County. No one was injured when three sticks of dynamite exploded, damaging the home. That same day in the same county, another dynamite explosion damaged the home of Lewis Ford, a black tenant farmer.

Claudia Thomas Sanders became a target when she supported gradual desegregation of public schools in an essay included in “South Carolina Speaks,” a booklet about race relations intended to introduce “words of moderation.” State law enforcement, aided by the FBI, arrested five KKK members. Evidence revealed the successful bombing was a third attempt on Claudia Thomas Sanders’ life. However, charges against two of the men were dropped, one died mysteriously at home when his car crushed him, and an all-white jury acquitted the remaining two.

Photos by Richard Taylor. Courtesy of The State Newspaper Photograph Archive at Richland Library, Columbia, SC