That same night, prominent black Republican James Martin was shot and killed at his home in Union, Alabama, also in Greene County.
The Klan's primary targets were freedmen and free blacks from the North, but they also attacked and intimidated white Republican officeholders, teachers, and other freedman sympathizers.
[2] That same night, James Martin, a black Republican prominent in the county, was shot by gunmen near his home in Union, Alabama, who took him away rather than let him be treated; he was never seen again.
A store in Eutaw, owned by a prominent white Democrat, was burned a few days after Boyd's murder, and several barns were also reportedly torched over the next month.
[3][4] President Ulysses S. Grant gained congressional passage of the 1870 Enforcement Acts, intended to authorize the federal government to suppress Klan violence.