“While black victims of the Klan had no hope of justice, most white victims had little more. Indeed, ‘through fear or shame,’ few of the Klan’s white victims reported to legal authorities….
“A North Carolinian opponent of the Klan later explained that much of its support derived from a public consensus that the whites ‘they punished had a whole lot lacking in their character and they deserved some punishment.’ According to him, non-Klan white residents would point to people ‘leading these immoral lives, and they’ve been doing it for 10 years and the children out there are suffering and nothing’s being done about it. So the Klan did something about; they put the whip to them.’ Neighbors like these were unlikely to indict or convict.”
— From “Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan” by David Mark Chalmers (1987)