In response to escalating violence by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, the North Carolina legislature passed an Anti-Klan Law on April 12, 1869. This law empowered Governor William W. Holden to declare counties in a state of insurrection, suspend habeas corpus, and use state militia to suppress white supremacist terrorism. The legislation marked one of the earliest state-level efforts to curb racial violence and protect Black citizens’ rights in the post-Civil War South.
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