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Primary sourceDocument20 April 1871

Third Enforcement Act

20 April 1871

Also called the Ku Klux Klan Act, this 1871 law Grant requested and signed let him use federal force to crush Klan violence against Black citizens.

Grant requested this act and used it to suppress the Klan, a central act of his Reconstruction civil rights policy.

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What it is

This law, passed by Congress and signed by President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20, 1871, made Klan violence against citizens' rights a federal crime and let the president deploy troops and suspend habeas corpus to stop it.

Why it matters

Grant himself asked Congress for this power after receiving reports of racial violence in the Deep South, especially South Carolina. He used it repeatedly, and as a result the Klan of that era was largely broken up. The act shows Grant actively defending the civil rights of Black Americans during Reconstruction, and parts of it are still used in civil rights lawsuits today.

  • Why did Grant feel he needed new legal powers rather than using existing laws?
  • What does the vote split between Republicans and Democrats tell you about the politics of Reconstruction?
  • What happened to the Klan decades later that this act could not prevent?

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