Pulaski riot addition to the riot, whites killed blacks in other local incidents, and conducted campaigns of general harassment against freedmen and their sympathizers in the area. The riot was a demonstration of the KKK's growing power in Giles County, and the Middle Tennessee area. KKK members were said to commit more than 1,300 murders during the run up the Election of 1868. Most of the violence were directed towards blacks to intimidate them and break Republican support, though "carpetbagger" and "scalawag" whites were also targeted. Pulaski riot The Pulaski riot was a race riot that occurred in Pulaski, Tennessee, on January
History of Tennessee December. After the war, Tennessee adopted the Thirteenth amendment forbidding slave-holding or involuntary servitude on February 22, 1865; ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on July 18, 1866; and was the first state readmitted to the Union on July 24, 1866. Because it had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, Tennessee was the only state that seceded from the Union that did not have a military governor during Reconstruction. "Proscription" was the policy of disqualifying as many ex-Confederates as possible. In 1865 Tennessee disfranchised upwards of 80,000 ex-Confederates. There were only two or three African Americans in the Tennessee