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xv Introduction The prevailing idea of the Ku Klux Klan in today’s popular discourse overwhelmingly involves a sinister and violently terroristic secret brotherhood, operating at society’s marginal, criminal, and racist extremes. Brought to mind, even just by mention of the initials KKK, are ghoulish images of menacing figures prowling the night, garbed in trademark white hoods and robes, plotting—or even carrying out—unspeakable acts of racial hatred by the light of an ominous fiery cross. Such striking scenes, perpetuated by countless cultural depictions of anti-black vigilante violence in both the Reconstruction and Civil Rights eras of American history, are by no means unreasonable in their portrayal of the Klan in either period. Despite almost a century of separation, the distinct Klan movements emerging in and around the 1860s and the 1960s shared many common characteristics, with a small but fanatical membership, a firm focus upon racial violence, and a concentration largely confined to the Southern states. At the same time, however, these scenes fall short of providing an entirely accurate and full account of the American experience with the hooded organization. Sandwiched chronologically between its Civil War–era predecessor and its Civil Rights–era successor was a very different Klan, surfacing all over the United States in the early 1920s. Unusual for its wide-ranging popular appeals to Protestant morality, prohibition, and law enforcement, rather than an overt reliance upon vigilantism, this “second” Klan achieved staggering membership figures that dwarfed all other Klan movements in America before or since. With recruits numbering well into the millions by mid-decade, the 1920s Klan transcended the borders of the old South to attain widespread national prominence, and was able to successfully present itself, for a brief period, as a positive force in American life before finally fading into obscurity even before the onset of the Great Depression. Though ultimately short-lived, it is apparent that the 1920s version of the Ku Klux Klan exercised a peculiarly compelling allure, its pull reflected in its sheer numerical popularity in towns and cities nationwide. Unlike its historical namesakes, the organization involved largely ordinary citizens, from all xvi| Introduction walks of life. In this sense, it is the mainstream rather than the extreme period of Klan history upon which this book concentrates. CHANGING INTERPRETATIONS OF THE 1920s KLAN: A SELECTED HISTORIOGRAPHY “The Ku Klux Klan,” wrote Outlook journalist Stanley Frost in 1924, “has become the most vigorous, active and effective organization in American life, outside business.” Controlling whole towns, counties, and states, he continued, “it is growing with tremendous speed. Its members are already beyond four millions and are increasing at the rate of a hundred thousand a week.” In its brief blaze of glory—from its reemergence in 1915 as a men’s secret fraternal order to its steep decline by 1926—the second Ku Klux Klan’s “Invisible Empire” would eventually gain up to six million members nationwide and score political victories of varying enormities all across the United States. Its national leaders, in Frost’s unlikely sounding words, were ultimately “reaching for the Presidency,” with a growing political presence beginning to exercise an influence in virtually every area of the country.1 Commanding such a broad base of popular support, it is difficult to imagine that the Klan’s appeal was based purely upon the vicious and bigoted doctrines with which it is most often associated. This, however, is exactly the assumption that has been made by Klan scholars up until relatively recently, and the first writers to commentate upon the 1920s KKK described it in similar fashion to its historical Reconstruction namesake. For them, this was a deeply racist, excessively violent movement, and a vehicle by which economically backward and socially conservative residents of rural, primarily Southern, backwaters of the United States could express a fundamentalist rage against the onset of big-city cosmopolitanism. The most influential work in this vein was sociologist John Moffat Mecklin’s The Ku Klux Klan: A Study of the American Mind, written at the very peak of the Klan’s popularity in 1924. Mecklin’s thesis held that the typical Klansman dwelt rurally, suffered from the “petty impotence of the small-town mind,” and carried around with him an unsophisticated “provincial fear of all things foreign.” Preyed upon by a cynical and calculated hate movement, he was “the most dangerous weakness in a democracy . . . the uninformed and unthinking average man.” In this and similar interpretations , the Klansman represented the “loser” in a...

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