American citizens. Through lynching, beatings, whippings, and murders the KKK got the point across that all blacks were "inferior" to them. .
The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was issued and passed by the house to stop the violence against African Americans. The bill failed when it reached the Senate because they felt that murder was a state offense, not a federal offense, therefore they had no business intervening. Many women of this time period also worked to stop lynching. In a letter to Mary White Ovington in 1920 Florence Kelley, General Secretary of the National Consumers" League, described her account of a conversation held with Alice Paul. Alice Paul did not want Mary Talbert, a strong black woman; to speak at the Federation Conference for fear that she would speak of the anti-lynching laws. Paul stated that the law was "not a woman's measure in the same sense that the Shepard-Tower bill for maternity and infancy was a woman's measure." Paul felt that the speech might anger southern members and therefore be "bad tactics for colored women voters." As this account shows, the Ku Klux Klan and their violent instances did not only affect men, they also affected women of the country and these women were going to fight for what was right.
Because of the rise in the Ku Klux Klan, justice systems were influenced. Court cases were biased; police officers allowed violence to take place, and many stations became corrupt. Race riots broke out in twenty different cities. One example in Chicago was especially frightening. At a local beach, a black man swam into an area marked "whites only." The whites .
in the area felt he was stepping out of his bounds and stoned him to death. As nearby blacks saw .
this happening, they notified a police officer that did nothing. The African Americans then attacked the police officer. Twenty to forty people were dead at the end of the riot. Many officers of the law took it upon themselves to "discipline" certain areas of society.
