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After Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis, America exhaled. It avoided another round of the last decade’s reciprocal ideological violence, including campus riots, armed protests against federal land use management, neo-Nazi violence, Black Lives Matter riots, and occupations of the U.S. and state capitols.
Many officials refuse to restore order because they sympathize with protests or are intimidated by them. Section 1986 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 can break the cycle by holding faithless executives liable for failing to stop discriminatory conspiracies based on race.
The post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution established equal rights without regard to race, yet Southern whites terrorized newly freed slaves during Reconstruction. In response, Section 1985 of the KKK Act created an individual right to bring lawsuits for damages against private conspiracies that violate civil rights. Because conspirators were emboldened when government officials stood aside, even if there was no coordination, Section 1986 of the KKK Act made liable for damages every “person who, having knowledge and power to aid in preventing” a Section 1985 conspiracy neglects to do so.