The Promise of Reconstruction
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the United States government passed a series of laws designed to protect newly freed African Americans from racial violence and oppression. Among these laws was the Enforcement Act of 1870—sometimes called the First Ku Klux Klan Act. It was passed to combat racial terrorism in the South and to enforce the rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Two of its provisions—Section 51 and Section 52—were especially important. Section 51 focused on conspiracies to deny someone their civil rights. Section 52 made it a crime for any person acting under “color of law”—including government officials and police officers—to willfully deprive someone of their constitutional rights.
At first, the Department of Justice used these laws aggressively. In 1871, federal prosecutors used Section 52 to prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, where Klan violence had terrorized Black communities across nine counties. More than 1,200 Klan members were indicted, and every one of them was convicted. The law was also used successfully in Mississippi between 1872 and 1875 to combat Klan violence.
For a brief moment, it looked like the federal government might stand up to white supremacist violence.
But that moment didn’t last.
The Collapse of Federal Protection
The Supreme Court’s 1876 decision in United States v. Cruikshank gutted the federal government’s ability to protect Black citizens. The case arose out of the Colfax Massacre, where over 100 Black men were murdered by a white mob in Louisiana. Federal prosecutors used the Enforcement Acts to bring charges. But the Court struck them down.
The justices ruled that the federal government could only act when states failed to protect rights—and even then, only under narrow circumstances. They also held that the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to state actions, not private citizens. The result? White mobs could kill Black people with impunity, so long as no state laws were broken—or if the state refused to prosecute.
The decision in Cruikshank left Black Americans exposed. For decades afterward, Sections 51 and 52 were rarely used. The Department of Justice all but abandoned efforts to fight racist violence in the South.
The Long Silence—and the Revival
For nearly fifty years, Section 52 sat dormant. It wasn’t until Robert Hall’s death in 1943 that federal prosecutors decided to revive it. Hall had been brutally beaten to death by Sheriff Claude Screws and two deputies in Baker County, Georgia. The local justice system refused to act. But after pressure from the NAACP and Black organizers, the U.S. Attorney for Georgia pushed the Department of Justice to act.
The DOJ filed charges against Screws and the others under Section 52—arguing that the men had acted “under color of law” to deprive Robert Hall of his constitutional rights.
The case—Screws v. United States—eventually reached the Supreme Court. In a narrow 5–4 ruling, the Court upheld the use of Section 52. It ruled that officials could be prosecuted if they “willfully” violated someone’s rights while acting in their official capacity. This decision didn’t fully restore the power of the Reconstruction laws—but it was a turning point.
It created a new legal pathway to hold police officers and other government actors accountable for civil rights abuses.
The Legacy of Section 52
Today, Section 52 lives on as 18 U.S.C. § 242, one of the core statutes the federal government uses to prosecute police misconduct and civil rights violations. It is the very foundation for many of the modern federal civil rights cases brought by the Department of Justice.
Robert Hall’s story is tragic. But the legal case that followed helped resurrect a law that had been buried by history. Section 52, once silenced by white supremacy and judicial retreat, became a tool—however imperfect—for justice.
To learn more about Robert Hall’s story and the trial that revived this law, watch the full video.
