There is something particularly menacing about being attacked by faceless people. The mask not only terrorizes the victim of the attack, but it also uniquely empowers the perpetrator. We see this in many of the videos as those who claim to be federal officers, speak crudely and cruelly, and behave with unspeakable brutality against unarmed laborers and their families. The mask prevents their victims from identifying the “officers.” But perhaps the anonymity offered by the mask also encourages these agents to obscure their own humanity from each other and from themselves.
This country has a unique history with the particular terror of masked attackers. The Ku Klux Klan, the violent white supremacist organization terrorized Black people in the American South in the first years after the end of the Civil War and through much of the 20th century. So rampant was Klan violence in the years immediately after the Civil War, that it threatened to derail the promise of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 and was designed to ensure that Black people would equal citizens in post-Civil War America.
In the first decade after the end of the Civil War, the violence of the Klan grew to such an alarming level that President Grant encouraged Congress to address the growing problem by passing a statute that would give federal authorities the ability to prosecute those interfering with the constitutional rights of Black people.
In response Congress enacted the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, which gave the federal government authority to prosecute crimes committed by the Klan. For this reason, the Enforcement Acts are colloquially referred to as the “Ku Klux Klan Acts.” Among its other protections designed to ensure access to voting for Black people, the Enforcement Act of 1870 made it a felony when:
…two or more persons to band or conspire together, or go in disguise upon the public highway, or the premises of another, with intent to ….injure, press, threaten or intimidate any citizen with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise and enjoyment of any right or privilege granted or secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
The reference to disguise was not accidental. Congress held a set of hearings in 1870 and 1871 to receive testimony about the effect of Klan violence in the South. The testimony offered at the hearings was harrowing. Black people courageously stepped forward to tell in their own words what they had endured in towns and hamlets throughout the South. They told of threats, whipping, rape, arson, murder – all carried out by masked and armed bands of men who demanded that Black people do their bidding. Frequently the acts of these mobs were designed to keep Black people from voting, from teaching in newly opened schools, from purchasing land or from demanding to be paid for labor. Whites also testified about how their efforts to assist Black neighbors who faced Klan violence, turned the attention of the mob on them. Local officials were either secretly part of the mobs, or too intimidated to prosecute.