The Man Who Took On The Klan

Throughline

NPR

History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 16.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1871, Ku Klux Klan violence in South Carolina got so bad that the governor sent a telegram to President Ulysses S. Grant warning that he was facing a state of war. Grant sent him Amos Akerman: a former Confederate soldier and slaveholder who became the U.S. government’s most zealous warrior against the KKK.

Guests:

Bernard Powers, director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston at the College of Charleston in South Carolina

Guy Gugliotta, author of Grant's Enforcer, Taking Down the Klan

Kidada Williams, professor of history at Wayne State University and author of I Saw Death Coming, A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A note before we get started.
0:02.3	This episode contains descriptions of racist violence.
0:12.3	Yorkville, South Carolina, July 27, 1871.
0:18.4	Give us your best information with regard to the disturbances in this county at the last election by men in disguise.
0:25.7	Well, sir, there is no doubt about the matter. There have been several men killed since the last election.
0:32.8	Can you give me the names and circumstances? The first killing I remember was Roundtree. Tell us something
0:41.4	about the raids you were on. The first raid I was on was on the 2nd of December, a week
0:48.0	or 10 days before the night. Ned Turner came over to the shop where I was at work and told me
0:54.0	that they were going to make a raid on Roundtree.
0:57.7	Who was Tom Roundtree?
0:59.7	He was a black man.
1:01.4	What position in his race?
1:03.3	He occupied no position at all.
1:05.8	What was his politics?
1:07.1	He did not meddle in politics much, I don't think.
1:10.9	You're hearing readings of testimony about a murder in York County, South Carolina
1:15.7	that happened the year before in 1870.
1:19.2	The men were testifying in front of Congress.
1:23.2	Well, when the night came on, I went down there.
1:35.3	Yeah. Well, when the night came on, I went down there. Some four or five fellows there.
1:37.3	I asked them what they was going to do.
1:40.3	They said they was going to kill him.
	...

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