Editing Pulaski, Tennessee (section)

==History==
{{Expand section|date=February 2023}}
Pulaski was founded in 1809. During the [[American Civil War | Civil War]], after the Union took control of Tennessee in 1862, thousands of [[African Americans]] left plantations and farms to join their lines for refuge.{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}} The Army set up a [[contraband]] camp in Pulaski to help house the [[freedmen]] and their families, feed them, and put them to work. In addition, education classes were started.{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}} The vicinity of Pulaski was the site of a number of skirmishes during the [[Franklin–Nashville Campaign]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}} Union troops occupied the state from 1862, and hundreds of African Americans left plantations even before the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] to join their lines.

In 1863, [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] courier [[Sam Davis]] was hanged in Pulaski by the [[Union Army]] on suspicion of espionage.{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}}

After the war, in late 1865, six Tennessee veterans of the [[Confederate States Army|Confederate Army]] founded a secret society, later known as the [[Ku Klux Klan]] (KKK). This was the first chapter. These men, John C. Lester, John B. Kennedy, James R. Crowe, Frank O. McCord, Richard R. Reed, and J. Calvin Jones, established the KKK on December 25, 1865. They created rules for a secret, hierarchical society devoted to suppressing [[freedmen]] and their white allies, and maintaining [[white supremacy]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871 |last=Horn |first=Stanley F. |year=1939 |publisher=Patterson Smith Publishing Corporation |location=Montclair, New Jersey |pages=9}}</ref><ref>Fleming, Walter J., ''Ku Klux Klan: Its Origins, Growth and Disbandment'', p. 27, 1905, Neale Publishing.</ref>

The white [[insurgents]] were determined to fight secretly against the political advancement of [[freedmen]] and of sympathetic whites. Chapters of the KKK quickly were organized in other parts of the state and the South. KKK members often attacked their victims at night, to increase the intimidation of threats and assaults. Other incidents of racial violence against blacks also took place. The [[Pulaski riot]] was a [[Mass racial violence in the United States|race riot]] initiated against blacks that took place in the city in the winter of 1868, following a heated election season.

[[Martin Methodist College]] was founded in Pulaski in 1870 as a private college for white students. Martin Methodist College was merged with the UT System in 2021 to become the new campus under the [[University of Tennessee System]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}} It is now known as [[University of Tennessee Southern]] and is a public university.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Kast|first=Monica|title=University of Tennessee adds fifth campus with Martin Methodist College merger|url=https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/education/2021/06/25/university-tennessee-adds-new-campus-create-ut-southern/7600973002/|access-date=August 5, 2021|website=Knoxville News Sentinel|language=en-US}}</ref>