What if the freedmen violently resisted voter suppression

As Reconstruction ended, the Democratic Party managed to retake the southern states by using violence to intimidate Republican voters and take over the states. What if the freedmen had been given guns and they retaliated against the KKK and other similar organizations. Would the resistance be effective in neutralizing the KKK once federal troops leave and could they prevent the disenfranchisement of the black voters and avoid Jim Crow?
 
There'd probably just be more violent suppression. I don't see even low level sustained violence happening for very long if there's actual conflicts as opposed to just one sided suppression.
 
This. Also, if they resort to more violence, the southern Whites will say 'see, these n****rs are brutal animals and can't e trusted with the vote'. And, unfortunately I suspect many northerners would buy that argument. Sigh.
This, this right here. What people should remember is that many whites even in the north would not care so much as to why the freedmen are fighting, only that they are fighting. Take the whole NFL anthem kneeling. People who were upset at this didn't really care for what Kaepernick was protesting, they were upset that he was kneeling (which somehow these days is a sign of disrespect???) and went on to ignore the reasons why or made up other reasons that they think he had for doing it. That same mentality would apply in this scenario so I am glad that the freedmen didn't resort to violence because it would have ended badly for them. Very badly.
 
With what weapons? Jim Crow laws systematically disarmed freedmen through gun control laws passed in the name of "public safety".
 
While i can see black freedmen triumphing via force in quite a few places the us is not one of them, the demographics are just too unbalanced.

In an almost unrelated note, a tl that has slave rebellions succeeding all over the areas of the caribbean/ south america where blacks make up a large part of the population would be cool af, yo.
 
The US army successfully neutralized the KKK in those days, and it included many freed black men among its soldiers. The real problem was the second KKK.
 
Unless US Army retained in South to help freedmen, what happen OTL will happen. In OTL, There are many incidents when black veterans and freedmen attempt to resist, they were massacred, there still many monuments in South, celebrating victory over 'chaos'.
 
The white "Redeemers" were better organized, and more numerous in nearly all Southern states. Northern white Democrats welcomed the triumph of their party colleagues. Northern Republicans didn't care that much. Also they were put off by stories of lurid corruption in the Reconstruction governments. That is, they accepted the Redeemer propaganda that blacks were too stupid and ignorant to function as citizens.

However, it should be noted that black Republican voting continued after 1876 in parts of the South. Blacks even won some elections, though not for any statewide offices. But there were a few black state legislators and US Representatives. Black voting was truly suppressed in the 1890s. The last black Representative of that era was elected from North Carolina in 1896 and 1898. A final wave of white supremacist violence in 1899-1900 nailed down the lid there.

One factor was the split of southern Republicans into "Black and Tan" and "Lily White" factions. The latter group embraced white supremacy - in part because it seemed impossible to get any white support otherwise. After 1900, the Lily Whites controlled the state parties, which gave them leverage at the national conventions. Thus national Republican leaders like Roosevelt and Taft followed the Lily White line to the extent of tacitly consenting to white supremacy and black disfranchisement.
 
Is it possible for Grant to decide to distribute the old Civil War military surplus to the freedmen so that they can secure their rights? Then the freedmen would be better armed than the white supremacists.
 
Is it possible for Grant to decide to distribute the old Civil War military surplus to the freedmen so that they can secure their rights? Then the freedmen would be better armed than the white supremacists.

The freedmen were often armed, and usually as well as the Redeemer terrorists. But the effects of slavery were not instantly thrown off.

The freedmen had been, until a few years before, kept in a state of ignorance and helplessness. The whites had been the ruling class, organized through state and local governments, and through the Confederate government and army. It takes psychological preparation to go into a fight and be effective. This preparation can be military training, or it can be raising in a culture where combativeness is admired and encouraged. Southern culture definitely encouraged combativeness in white men. But not in blacks. I suspect that slaves who got into fights with other slaves would be punished - the owners not wanting their property damaged.

The blacks had no experience of banding together on their own, few natural leaders with any experience, no institutions for organizing to form around. The Redeemers had all of that, and rage at the thought of being governed or policed by blacks.

This is not to say that the blacks never fought back, never resisted. But they were not effective in comparison to their numbers.
 
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