Pulaski riot freedmen gathered at the door of the store, some eighteen whites rushed and shot at them at close range. They murdered one man, mortally wounded another, and injured four. No white was injured or prosecuted. The incident was investigated by the Freedmen's Bureau office of Nashville, Tennessee. In December 1865, white Confederate veterans had founded the Ku Klux Klan, a secret vigilante organization, in Pulaski. Chapters had been started in numerous other towns in Tennessee and other states. Members generally operated in groups and often threatened intended victims at night, trying to suppress black political actions and sometimes economic enterprises.
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