Ku Klux Klan Kills Hinds
In 1868, Arkansas congressman James M. Hinds rode toward a Republican campaign meeting near Indian Bay in Monroe County, promoting Ulysses S. Grant and civil rights for freed slaves during Reconstruction. A Ku Klux Klan member named George A. Clark, who also served as secretary of the county Democratic committee, shot Hinds in the back with a shotgun and wounded fellow Republican Joseph Brooks.
Hinds fell from his horse and lay in the road but stayed conscious long enough to write a brief note to his wife and name Clark as his attacker before dying about two hours later. A coroner’s inquest identified Clark as the killer, yet authorities never arrested or prosecuted him, even though Hinds was the first sitting member of the U.S. Congress to be assassinated.