Benjamin Helm Bristow

Benjamin Helm Bristow strove to protect African Americans from white supremacists in the District of Kentucky. As U.S. attorney (1866–70), Bristow enforced the Civil Rights Act of 1866, ensuring the citizenship rights of African Americans. During Reconstruction, Kentucky was under a “rule of terror,” as armed militia groups rode the countryside whipping, torturing, and stealing without consequence.

Using the writ of habeas corpus, Bristow transferred cases to federal courts when Black people were prevented from testifying in state courts. Bristow wrote, “It is a matter of the first impor-tance to the 225,000 Colored people of this state that the so-called ‘Civil Rights’ law of Congress should be maintained and enforced.” He success-fully prosecuted twenty-nine cases, and Kentucky was one of the few states where the Civil Rights Act was enforced. However, federal enforcement acts became ineffective after United States v. Cruikshank (1876) and United States v. Reese (1876).