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At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

Ku Klux Klan To Davie Jeems

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC09090 Author/Creator: Ku Klux Klan Place Written: s.l. Type: Autograph letter signed Date: circa 1868 Pagination: 2 p. ; 24 x 19.5 cm. Order a Copy

Threatening a Black office-holder. "Notice/To Jeems, Davie, you must be a good boy...at night I am a Ku Klux sent here to look after you and all the rest of the radicals and make you know your place. I have got my eye on you every day...[T]ell Platt Madison we have, a Box, For him and you. We nail all, radicals up in Boxes and send them away to KKK. There is 200 000 ded men returned to this country to make you and all the rest of the radicals good Democrats and vote right with the white people...no nigger is safe unless he joins the Democratic Club...give all your Friends timely warning." Note on verso in reference to the write: "This man was elected in April to the Sheriffs Office of the County of Lincoln [Georgia]. Similar threats have prevented all the other Republican officers from taking their commissions."

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