Violence escalated: lynching, arson, beatings, a reign of orchestrated bloodshed for the last three years of Johnson’s chaotic term. The exact number of deaths has never been fully established, but one military commander, General John Reynolds, reported from Texas that murders of Black citizens were “so common as to render it impossible to keep an accurate account of them.” Sheriffs would not arrest their criminal neighbors. Witnesses were intimidated or murdered. “We can inform you that we are the law itself,” was the message delivered from a Klan unit to one teacher in Mississippi.
