In an act approved on May 20, 1897, the legislature approved a comprehensive antilynching measure. The act imposed a punishment of
imprisonment of not less than one year or more than five years for "any two or more persons" planning to impose any punishment upon
anyone "charged with a public offense" or planning to inflict any damage upon "any property, real or personal" of another. If, furthermore,
any injury to persons or property would result from such an effort, the punishment was to be imprisonment for not less than one year
or more than fifteen years. If death should result from such actions, the punishment would be "as now prescribed by law." It would
not be any mitigation of the offense that anyone "may have acted through heat or passion, or that he may have acted without malice."
The act also charged public officials with the obligations to act in defense of threatened persons or property by summoning able-bodied
male citizens of the county. Failure of county officials to act was to be punished by fines of not less than one hundred dollars or more
than five hundred dollars and loss of office. Also, the governor was to be authorized to pay rewards for information leading to the
"apprehension and conviction" of any persons violating the act and to employ detectives at his discretion" for the ferreting out and
apprehension and conviction of offenders.
The ongoing activity of "mobs and riotous assemblages of persons in certain counties of this Commonwealth" caused the legislature to
declare that "an emergency exists, and that this act shall take effect when approved by the Governor."
Ku Klux Klan robe, ca. 1925. Scene from the Kentucky Historical Society's permanent exhibit, A Kentucky Journey. For Kentucky's African Americans, freedom after the Civil War ushered in a new era of violence. Bands of angry whites joined organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. Between 1890 and 1900 sixty-six African Americans and twenty-six Caucasians are known to have been lynched in the state. Museum Collection UN-1236, Kentucky Historical Society Collections.
