The Second Coming of the KKK

August 28, 2017
Gordon (Impounded), professor of history at NYU and two-time Bancroft Prize winner, delves into the cultural and societal conditions that led to the resurgence of the KKK during the 1920s. The work is explicitly informed by the 21st-century rise of conservative populism in America, but Gordon largely leaves direct comparisons with contemporary politics to her readers. She argues that the Klan in the 1920s was a mainstream manifestation of persistent currents in American history that are often dormant but surface periodically. While rejecting the KKK’s philosophy, Gordon acknowledges the effectiveness of the Klan’s leaders at recruitment and translating their corresponding political power into legislation consistent with their philosophy, specifically antimiscegenation laws and immigration restrictions. Among the strategies she describes is the appeal to a number of American ideological strains: racism, nativism, temperance, fraternalism, and Christian evangelicalism. Recruiters were given pyramidlike economic incentives, and there was widespread use of propaganda and demagoguery to create the perception of threats to white supremacy. Gordon also provides insights into the surprising effectiveness and independence of the women’s auxiliaries to the exclusively male KKK. This clear-eyed analysis illuminates the character and historic power of America’s own “politics of resentment.”

August 15, 2017
An award-winning historian of social movements examines the unlikely rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the North after World War I, underscoring the organization's ideas that "echo again today."Among those ideas were white supremacy, Christian evangelicalism, suspicion of elites, anti-intellectualism, fear of immigrants, and a conviction that American values were under dire threat. Gordon (Humanities and History/New York Univ. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, 2009, etc.), the winner of two Bancroft Prizes, argues persuasively that the Klan was visible and respected, drawing its membership from the middle class. "In many areas," she writes, "Klan membership brought prestige" and "community status." Like other contemporary fraternal organizations, such as the Masons and Rotarians, the Klan fostered "male bonding through brotherhood and ritual." Elaborate and arcane rituals involved "Klan water," purchased from the organization's national headquarters, "where it was made sacred, like holy water." Membership required learning an intricate vocabulary of rank. The Imperial Wizard reigned over three Great Klaliffs, the Great Klabee, the Great Kligrapp, the Great Kludd, and the Great Night-Hawk, and "chapters were known as Klaverns, each headed by an Exalted Cyclops." New members were "naturalized" at a Klonversation, and the officers of a Klavern were known, tellingly, as Terrors. The Klan was funded through initiation fees, dues, and a pyramid scheme, whereby recruiters worked on commission; the Klan also sold costumes and memorabilia. A member could buy "a zircon-studded Fiery Cross" as a brooch for his wife. Gordon examines in particular Klan popularity in Portland, Oregon, once a bastion of racism, and the attraction of the organization to at least half a million women, many of whom were active in other reform groups, such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In the late 1920s, the Klan was beset by infighting, money troubles, and scandals that exposed leaders' hypocrisy and misbehavior. Its appeal diminished, and membership dwindled. But as the author amply shows, its fearful, angry spirit lives on. A revealing, well-researched--and, unfortunately, contemporarily relevant--investigation of the KKK's wide support in the 1920s.

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September 1, 2017
Nearly a century ago, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) enjoyed a resurgence after decades of post-Civil War decline. America in the 1920s was ripe for the organization's appeal, that of a secret fraternal society that extolled the virtues of racial segregation, exhorted members to denounce Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and African Americans, and exemplified ideals of strict morality and fervent patriotism. Most often associated with the rise of discrimination in the Reconstruction South, the KKK of the 1920s sought to expand its reach and its coffers into other regions of the country. Due to an extensive and sophisticated PR machine, the KKK attracted millions of actual members and more covert sympathizers in little towns and urban areas throughout the Midwest, Northeast, and Pacific Northwest. Its vitriol and rhetoric were not new then but, most disturbingly, are all too familiar in today's political arena, lending Gordon's retrospective an urgency and relevance that make it required reading for anyone striving to understand the present through a considered analysis of the past.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2017

Between 1915 and 1926, the second Ku Klux Klan (KKK) attracted millions of members with many more sympathetic to their views and goals. Exploding from the Klan's original stronghold of the American South, another group flourished in the North, where members were elected and held sway at all levels of government, including governors' mansions, state representatives, and Congress. Historian Gordon (history, New York Univ.; Dorothea Lange) traces the influence of what she calls the six ancestors of the second Klan: the first Klan, nativism, temperance, fraternalism, Christian evangelicalism, and populism. These ancestors led the Klan to favor issues, both conservative and liberal, all in support of what was called "100 percent Americanism." The author argues that the Klan was not a uniquely American phenomenon, but one that shared much with the rise of fascist organizations in Europe in 1920s and 1930s. Some of the forces that gave rise to the second KKK have waned in influence today, such as fraternal societies; others, such as populism and nationalism, remain potent and support both left and right-wing movements. VERDICT Essential for anyone interested in how American society and politics of the 1920s have impacted the present.--Chad E. Statler, Lakeland Comm. Coll., Kirtland, OH

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