by Linda Gordon
7. Taylor, “What the Klan Did in Indiana,” 330–32.
8. Evans, “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” 42.
9. Pew Research Center, Hispanic Trends, “The Nation’s Immigration Laws, 1920 to Today,” September 28, 2015, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/chapter-1-the-nations-immigration-laws-1920-to-today/.
10. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 37ff.
11. Only 30 of 194 countries, none of them in Europe, grant birthright citizenship.
12. Evans, “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” 41–42.
13. This integration parallels an earlier transition that turned groups seen as nonwhite—such as Jews, the Irish, and Mediterranean peoples—into “whites.” The 1920s Klan did not see them as nonwhite but nevertheless viewed them as inferior; it was groups that we might today call “people of color”—those of African, Latin American, and Asian descent—whom the Klan considered nonwhite.
14. Eckard Toy, “ ‘Promised Land’ or Armageddon? History, Survivalists, and the Aryan Nations in the Pacific Northwest,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 36, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 82.
15. Journalist Nina Rastogi has identified six categories of white supremacist groups today: neo-Nazi, KKK, Christian Identity, racist skinhead, Nordic mystics, and Aryan prison gangs. Nina Rastogi, “The Six Flavors of White Supremacy,” Slate, May 5, 2009, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/05/the_six_flavors_of_white_supremacy.html.
16. Those who so label it include Robert Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism,” Journal of Modern History 70, no. 1 (March 1998): 12, and Nancy MacLean agrees.
17. Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism,” New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995; Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism,” 3.
18. Thomas Greven, “The Rise of Right-Wing Populism in Europe and the United States: A Comparative Perspective,” a Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Perspective, http://www.fesdc.org/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/RightwingPopulism.pdf.
19. Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guildford Press, 2000).
20. Historian Roger Griffin labels as fascist the call for a “re-birth” of an ethnically pure nation, and this fits the Klan exactly if we include a religion requirement. Roger Griffin, “Revolution from the Right: Fascism,” in Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West, 1560–1991, ed. David Parker (London: Routledge, 2000); Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), xi.
21. Michael Mark Cohen, “Buzz Can Happen Here: Sinclair Lewis and the New American Fascism,” New Ohio Review 20 (Fall 2016): 170.
22. Croatian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Slovakian, and Ukrainian fascisms did incorporate religion.
23. Eco, “Ur-Fascism.”
24. James M. Jasper, “Constructing Indignation: Anger Dynamics in Protest Movements,” Emotion Review 6, no. 3 (2014): 208.
25. Harel Shapiro, Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), quoted by Greg Grandin in his review, “History’s Sinkhole,” Nation, November 11, 2013, 28.
26. For example, Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origin of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); Mary C. Brennan, Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade Against Communism (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008); Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987); and Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
27. Statement of 1935, quoted in Helen Thomas, Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public (New York: Scribner, 2006), 172.
INDEX
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.
Page numbers followed by n refer to endnotes.
Abbott, Thomas R., 105
acronyms used by Klansmen, 73
Agricultural Workers Organization, 105
alien, defined, 65, 211
Alma White College, 121
American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), 175
Americanism
education and, 134, 151, 155, 217n
middle class as protector, 3
protection by Klan, 36, 42
redefinition by Klan, 7, 15, 20, 196
rhetoric about threats to, 5, 41–42, 43–44, 64, 97
structures of feeling, 41–44
suspicion of elites, 42
Americanization of Public Schools Committee, 157
American Protective Association (APA), 26–27, 113, 141, 237n
Ameringer, Oscar, 18
Anaheim, CA, 89, 99, 103, 243n
Ancient Order of United Workmen, 30
Anglo-Israelism, 53, 144, 158
anti-Catholicism
by American Protective Association (APA), 27, 141
black psywar, 45–48, 99, 117, 144
Catholic Church as foreign, 45, 48
conspiracy theories about Catholic plots, 20, 27, 46, 56, 149
contradictions in, 46, 57
corruption blamed on Catholics, 4, 35, 137
fake news stories, 5, 45–48, 57
Federation of Patriotic Societies (FoPS), 141
Indiana, 48, 56
Klan and, 27–28, 42, 45–49, 53–54, 56, 203
Masons, 30
nineteenth-century nativists, 45
Oregon, 28, 141, 142
by organizations and publishers, 22
stories about nuns, 47–48, 59, 142, 148
violations of Prohibition and, 96
see also parochial schools, attacks on
anti-elitism of Klan in 1920s, 3–4, 40, 42–43, 44–45
anti-immigrationism. see nativism
anti-intellectualism, 44, 200, 204, 209
anti-Japanese sentiment, 145–46
anti-Klan violence, 104–5
anti-miscegenation laws, 7, 130
Anti-Saloon League (ASL), 13, 28, 29, 101, 165, 222n, 247n
anti-Semitism
American Nazis, 49
cartoon from Sound Money magazine, 1896, 24
college admission quotas, 21
conservative anti-Semitism as anti-modernist, 50–51
conspiracy theories about Jewish plots, 20, 49, 176
contradictions in, 27, 53
fake news stories, 5, 50, 57
fascism and, 49, 203
Father Coughlin, 197, 203
German American Bund, 197
Henry Ford, 11
H. L. Mencken on, 22
immigration restriction and, 21–22, 27–28
Jews called Communists, 49, 203
Klan and, 27–28, 49–54, 203
nativism and, 27
violations of Prohibition and, 96
Woodrow Wilson and, 21
Arkansas City, KS, 100
Armstrong, Louis, 177
Aryan Nations, 198
Asbury Park, NJ, 96
Associated Farmers, 107
Astoria, OR, 147–48
Auburn, OR, 104, 142
automobiles in 1920s, 6, 95, 111
Babbitt (Lewis), 21, 179
Baker, George, 144, 240n
Balbo, Italo, 81
baptisms, 87
Barr, Daisy Douglas, 115–18, 122, 123, 174, 236n
Barr, Thomas, 115, 117
baseball, 86
Baylor, Orval W., 86
Beecher, Catharine, 45
Beecher, Lyman, 45, 149
Beiderbecke, Bix, 177
Bella Donna (movie), 176
Belleview College, 121
Bellingh
am, WA, 164
Bell, Leah H., 130
Birmingham, AL, 107
birth control, 60, 130–31, 239n
Birth of a Nation (film), 10, 11–12, 40, 97, 141, 218n
birthright citizenship, 195
Black, Hugo, 165
Black Legion (movie), 176
black psywar, 45–48, 99, 117, 144
Blee, Kathleen
conservative and right-wing movements, 207, 221n
economic boycotts, 174–75, 246n
employment of Klanswomen, 129–30, 188
Klan “invasion” of a church, 90
Klanswomen and anti-miscegenation laws, 130
Klan verbal rituals, 74
respectability of Klan in 1920s, 18
social movements and rhetoric, 5
WKKK charitable work, 133
Bloomfield, NJ, 104
B’nai B’rith, 31, 85
Bob Jones University, 91, 165
Bohn, Frank, 20, 22, 98
Borglum, Gutzon de le Mothe, 184
boycotts, 171–76, 178–79, 182, 207, 245n, 246n
Brandolini’s law (BAP, bullshit asymmetry principle), 55, 226n
Bryan, William Jennings, 32, 51, 91, 222n
Burner, David, 167
Burr, Arthur, 100
businessmen and entrepreneurs in Klan, 173, 181, 184–85, 187
California
class position of Klan members, 183–84
cooperation with Irish Catholics, 68, 147
election of 1922, 166
Klan in Southern California, 68, 89, 147
police patrolling in Klan robes, 103
targeting of farmworkers, 107
targeting of Mexican Americans, 68, 102, 107, 147
vigilantism, 99, 102, 103
see also specific locations
California Citizens Association, 107
Canadian Klansmen, 105–6, 235n
Capone, Al, 192
Carmichael, Hoagy, 177
Carnegie, PA, 104–5
Catholics. see anti-Catholicism
Cavalier Moving Picture Company, 176
Chamberlain, George, 155
Chaplin, Charlie, 50, 175
Chazars (Khazars), 53, 226n
Chicago, IL, 21, 81, 184, 229–30n
children
child custody in divorce, 122
child-size Klan robes, 71
effect of motion pictures, 50
Klan stories about Catholic children, 45, 48, 56, 149
at picnics and spectacles, 1, 81, 129
republican motherhood and, 59, 227n
US Children’s Bureau, 111
WCTU concern for, 28, 160
in youth groups of fraternal orders, 30
youth groups of the Klan, 81, 133–34, 157
see also parochial schools, attacks on
christenings, 86, 87
Christian Defense League, 198
Christian Identity movement, 198
Christian Science, 120
citizens, as defined by Klan, 65
The Clansman (Dixon), 11
Clarke, Edward Young
about, 13–14
Anti-Saloon League (ASL), 13, 222n
arrest for disorderly conduct, 114
control of Klan, 114, 236n
film company launch, 177
firing by Evans, 16, 177
manufacture and sale of Klan costumes, 66
partnership with Tyler, 13, 14, 16, 113–14
profiteering from Klan, 15, 16, 66, 114
promotion of Klan with Simmons and Tyler, 13, 14–15, 63–64, 114
prosecution by FBI, 192
share of Klan revenue, 14
Southern Publicity Association, 13, 113
southern recruiting strategy, 64
class
class identity as a process, 182
class position of Klan members, 3, 181–83, 184–85, 186–87, 189
eugenics and, 22
Klan costumes and, 71, 128
middle class as protector of Americanism, 3
middle class redefined by Klan, 182–83
“middling” classes, 181, 182, 184, 185
petit bourgeoisie, 183, 185
route into middle class through Klan, 3, 143, 182–83, 187, 189
social class as a process, 181–82
Cleveland, Grover, 17
clubs and family activities sponsored by Klan, 84–85
Coburn, William S., 191
Colorado Springs, CO, 170
Colored Masons, 30
congressional hearings about Ku Klux Klan, 19–20, 114–15, 220n
conspiracy theories
African American plots, 56, 61
Catholic plots, 20, 27, 46, 56, 149
difficulty in disproving, 54–55
elites’ disdain for, 55
evolutionary theory and, 51
fear instilled by, 55–56
Hollywood plots, 176
Jewish plots, 20, 49, 176
in Klan recruitment, 5, 35
in social movements, 55
Cook, Ray, 96
Coolidge, Calvin, 6, 164, 165, 166
costumes and robes
colored robes, 57, 71
cost, 66
manufacture and sale of Klan costumes, 66
purity symbolism, 57, 71
required pieces of, 71
ritual function, 70–72
secrecy and, 70, 71
Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), 128
Coughlin, Charles, 197, 203
creationism, 156
crime rate increase in 1920s, 95–96
crime talk as recruitment strategy, 96–97
cross-burnings
anti-Klan reaction against, 104
Democratic convention of 1924, 167
in New Jersey, 98, 168
in Ohio, 51
in Oregon, 142
at spectacles and events, 83–84, 104, 121, 163, 179
by third Klan, 83
vigilantism, 98, 101, 105, 163, 179
Darrow, Clarence, 20, 29, 32, 222n
Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), 26–27, 124, 237n
Davis, John W., 170
Davis, Rush, 158–59, 160, 243n
days of the week, Klan names, 73, 127
Dayton, OH, 51, 81, 101, 103, 104
demagoguery of Klan rhetoric, 5, 35, 39, 183, 200–201
Democratic convention of 1924, 165, 166–70
Denver, CO, 46, 99, 101–2, 119, 130, 184
Detroit, MI, 21
Dever, Lem, 144, 145, 148, 159
Dixon, Thomas, 11
“dog whistle” methods, 19, 166
dues
amount per member, 65, 66
exemptions from, 145, 186
failure to pay, 66–67, 191, 194
profiteering from, 15, 66–67, 191
from southern elites, 64
WKKK, 126, 158
Duluth, MN, 103
duties of Klan members, 172, 245–46n
economic warfare and the Klan
attacks on Hollywood immorality, 176–77
attacks on jazz, blues, and “immoral” music, 177
attempts to remove “aliens” from jobs, 156, 172, 173, 178
boycotts, 171–76, 178–79, 182, 207, 245n, 246n
members pressured to comply with boycotts, 177–78
motives for economic strategies, 172
TWK (Trade with Klansmen), 172–73
Eco, Umberto, 199, 204
Eddy, Mary Baker, 120
Elduayen, Fidel and Angela, 102
Elford, W. C., 154
elites
about, 3–4
attitudes toward Klan, 44
disdain for conspiracy theories, 55
Jews perceived as, 4, 44
responses to populism, 20
target of Klan resentment, 3–4, 40, 42–43, 44–45
Elmer Gantry (Lewis), 21, 182
Elmira, N
Y, 173
emotionality of Klan. see structures of feeling
eugenics
acceptance in 1920s, 22–23
compulsory sterilization laws, 23, 145, 194–95
Elizabeth Tyler and, 113
Jews and, 27, 52
Klan race thought and, 22–23, 60, 153
Margaret Sanger’s birth control movement, 131
evangelicalism
criticism of Klan’s evangelical theology, 5, 21
girl evangelists, 115, 119
Klan recruitment of evangelical Protestants, 29, 88–91, 231n
ministerial cooperation with Klan, 5, 55, 89–91, 142, 186
mission of, 32
as parent of Klan, 14–15, 32, 42, 88, 198
Simmons on, 14
Evans, Hiram
about, 16
anti-Catholicism, 56
anti-intellectualism, 44
anti-Semitism, 41, 53
boycotts and, 172
coup against Simmons, 15–16
on education, 150
firing of Clarke and Tyler, 16, 177
on immigrants, 44, 195
as Imperial Wizard, 16–17, 41–42, 44, 56, 112, 150
on liberalism and “Bolshevist platform,” 196
on Philip Fox scandal, 191
protection of Klan’s respectability, 97
reforms, 16–17, 67
speeches and songs recorded at Gennett, 177
Stephenson’s trial by Klan tribunal, 193
on threats to Americanism, 41–42
Evansville, IN, 68, 187
evolutionary theory, 51, 156, 204
Exalted Cyclops, defined, 73, 211
fake news stories, 5, 35, 45–48, 50, 57, 239n
Farmingdale, NJ, 81
fascism and fascist groups
anti-Communism, 49
anti-Semitism, 49, 203
Italian fascism, 81, 199
Klan comparison to, 200–209
lack of definition, 199
racialized nationalism, 201, 249n
reasons to avoid using term, 199
see also Nazis and Nazism; populism
Federation of Patriotic Societies (FoPS), 141, 151, 154, 242n
feeling rules, 39, 43
Fellowship Forum, 17, 224n
feminism and the KKK, 109–37
conservative gender system and, 59–60, 112, 132, 133
contradictions within conservative feminism, 109, 112, 133, 136, 160–61, 206–7
formation of early women’s KKK groups, 112–13, 124, 236n
Kamelia, 112, 118, 238n, 243n
Ladies of the Invisible Empire (LOTIE), 112, 128, 157–60
