Black Mississippians, participating in the political process for the first time, formed a coalition with white Republicans made up of locals and Northerners in a Republican party that controlled the state legislature for a time. Most of the Republican voters were freedmen, several of whom held important state offices. Some black leaders emerged who had gained education in the North and were returning to the South. A. K. Davis served as lieutenant governor, and Hiram Revels (1827–1901) and Blanche K. Bruce (1841–1898) were elected by the Legislature to the U.S. Senate. John R. Lynch (1847–1939) was elected as a representative to Congress. The Republican regime faced the determined opposition of the "unreconstructed" white Democrats in the population. Soon after the end of the war, chapters of the Ku Klux Klan were organized in Mississippi, working to intimidate blacks and their allies, such as schoolteachers, and suppress voting.