My relatives on my mother’s side grew up in the panhandle of Florida. When my aunt and uncle bought an abandoned mansion, in it they found a trunk with a Ku Klux Klan outfit in it. I asked my mother why the Klan was active when there were few blacks in the community, and she told me they would impose social order by such means as visiting a man in the middle of the night who had been beating his wife and tar and feather him.
I guess when the laws fail folks find other means...