*On this date the Enforcement Act of 1870 was passed. Also known as the Civil Rights Act and the First Ku Klux Klan Act, or Force Act, it was an American federal law written to empower the President with the legal authority to enforce the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment throughout the United States.
The act was the first of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks on the suffrage rights of Blacks from state officials or violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The act would develop from separate legislative actions in the House and Senate, passed by Congress in May 1870 and signed into law by United States President Ulysses S. Grant.
