But there was opposition, especially in the South, to granting African Americans their constitutionally mandated legal rights. Members of the Ku Klux Klan terrorized blacks for seeking to exercise their right to vote, running for public office, and serving on juries. he Third Force Act, also known as the KKK or the Civil Rights Act of 1871, empowered President Ulysses S. Grant to use the armed forces to combat those who conspired to deny equal protection of the laws and, if necessary, to suspend habeas corpus to enforce the act. Grant signed the legislation on this day in 1871. After the act’s passage, the president for the first time had the power to suppress state disorders on his own initiative and suspend the right of habeas corpus. Grant did not hesitate to use this authority.
