Do You Think the Ku Klux Klan Will Happen Again
Klansville U.s.A. | Article
Top five Questions About the KKK
American Experience asked sociologist and Ku Klux Klan scholar David Cunningham to provide responses to the v questions he is nigh frequently asked most the Klan. The author of Klansville, U.s.a.A.: The Ascension and Autumn of the Civil Rights-Era KKK (Oxford University Press, 2013), Cunningham is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Brandeis University.
Before discussing the most pressing questions people tend to have about the KKK, let me add some background for basic context. The Ku Klux Klan was get-go formed in 1866, through the efforts of a pocket-size band of Confederate veterans in Tennessee. Quickly expanding from a localized membership, the KKK has become perhaps the well-nigh resonant representation of white supremacy and racial terror in the U.S. Part of the KKK'due south enduring describe is that it refers not to a single organization, but rather to a collection of groups bound by use of now-iconic racist symbols -- white hoods, flowing sheets, fiery crosses -- and a predilection for vigilante violence. The Klan's following has tended to rise and fall in cycles often referred to as "waves." The original KKK incarnation was largely halted post-obit federal legislation targeting Klan-perpetrated violence in the early 1870s. The Klan's 2nd -- and largest -- wave peaked in the 1920s, with KKK membership numbering in the millions. Post-obit the second-moving ridge Klan's dissolution in the early 1940s, cocky-identified KKK groups too congenital sizable followings during the 1960s, in reaction to the ascension Civil Rights Motility. Various incarnations have continued to mobilize since -- ofttimes through blended affiliations with neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate, and Christian Identity organizations -- just in small numbers and without significant touch on on mainstream politics.
The AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documentary Klansville, U.South.A. focuses on the civil rights-era KKK and tells the story of Bob Jones, the most successful Klan organizer since Earth State of war II. Beginning in 1963, Jones took over the North Carolina leadership of the South'south preeminent KKK organization, the United Klans of America, and past 1965 his "Carolina Klan" boasted more than than 10,000 members across the state, more than the rest of the South combined. Jones' story illuminates our understanding of the KKK'southward long history by and large, and in detail provides a lens to consider the questions that follow.
1. How big a threat is the KKK in the U.Southward. today?
In an important sense, this may be the key question well-nigh the KKK and whether we should still worry, or care, about the Klan today. Likely for that reason, literally every discussion I've had about the Klan -- whether in classrooms, community events, radio interviews, or cocktail parties -- comes effectually to some version of this business organisation. I typically answer, in short, that a greater number of KKK organizations exist today than at any other signal in the group's long history, just that most all of these groups are small, marginal, and lacking in meaningful political or social influence.
I might add two caveats to that reassuring portrait, however. The first is that marginal, isolated extremist cells themselves tin can get breeding grounds for unpredictable violence. At the peak of his 1960s influence, Bob Jones would oft tell reporters that, if they were truly concerned nigh violence perpetrated by Klan members, their greatest fearfulness should exist that he would disband the KKK, leaving individual members to commit mayhem free from the structure imposed by the grouping. As Jones' followers committed hundreds of terrorist acts authorized by KKK leadership, his merits was of form disingenuous, simply it also contained a grain of truth: Jones and his fellow leaders did dissuade members -- many of whom combined rabid racism with unstable assailment -- from engaging in violence non canonical by the KKK hierarchy. In the absenteeism of a broader arrangement with much to lose from a crack-downwards by authorities, racist violence tin can be much more difficult to forestall or police.
The second caveat stems from KKK's history of emerging and receding in pronounced "waves." Betwixt the group's periods of acme influence -- say, during the 1880s, or in the 1940s, or the 1980s -- the Klan'southward fortunes have e'er appeared moribund. But in each case, some "reborn" version of the KKK has managed to rebound and survive. And then, while today the KKK appears an anachronism and, mayhap, less of a threat than other brands of racist hate, we however should vigilantly oppose racist entrepreneurs who seek to exploit the historical cachet of the KKK to organize new campaigns advancing white supremacist ends. To me, this is 1 main lesson from the KKK's past, and a compelling reason not to forget or dismiss the indelible relevance of that history.
ii. Has the KKK had any lasting political impact?
Past most straightforward measures, the KKK appears a failed social movement. Despite the Klan's political inroads during the 1920s, when millions of its members succeeded in electing hundreds of KKK-backed candidates to local, state, and even federal role, the group proved unable to preserve its influence at the election box across that decade. After KKK waves have never been able to deliver on promises to rebuild this influential Klan voting bloc. Bob Jones' Carolina Klan came the closest to winning such influence, with mainstream candidates currying favor (sometimes publicly, and more than oft covertly at Klan rallies and other events) with Jones and other leaders in 1964 and 1968. But that effort appeared short-lived, with both Jones and the Carolina Klan all merely disappearing by the early on 1970s.
More by and large, the KKK'due south commitment to white supremacy, nigh clearly realized through Jim Crow-style segregation that endured for decades in the S, has by any formal measure receded as a real possibility in the U.Southward. Even so, in less overt means, the KKK'south affect can still exist felt. Recent studies that I've undertaken with fellow sociologists Rory McVeigh and Justin Farrell accept demonstrated how counties in which the KKK was agile during the 1960s differ from those in which the Klan never gained a foothold in 2 important ways.
First, counties in which the Klan was present during the civil rights era go along to exhibit higher rates of violent crime. This divergence endures even xl years later on the motility itself disappeared, and certainly isn't explained past the fact that former Klansmen themselves commit more crimes. Instead, the Klan's touch on operates more broadly, through the corrosive effect that organized vigilantism has on the overall community. By flouting law and order, a culture of vigilantism calls into question the legitimacy of established regime and weakens bonds that normally serve to maintain respect and club among community members. One time fractured, such bonds are difficult to repair, which explains why even today nosotros see elevated rates of violent crime in former KKK strongholds.
2d, past Klan presence likewise helps to explain the most significant shift in regional voting patterns since 1950: the Due south's pronounced move toward the Republican Party. While back up for Republican candidates has grown region-wide since the 1960s, nosotros detect that such shifts take been significantly more than pronounced in areas in which the KKK was agile. The Klan helped to produce this event by encouraging voters to move abroad from Autonomous candidates who were increasingly supporting civil rights reforms, and also by pushing racial conflicts to the fore and more clearly adjustment those issues with party platforms. As a result, past the 1990s, racially-conservative attitudes amid southerners strongly correlates with Republican back up, just only in areas where the KKK had been active.
three. Is the KKK a move more often than not in the rural South?
While many of the Klan'due south most infamous acts of mortiferous violence -- including the 1964 Freedom Summer killings, the 1965 murder of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, and the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald that led to the 1987 lawsuit that ultimately put the United Klans of America out of business for good -- occurred in the Deep South, during the 1920s the KKK was truly a national movement, with urban centers like Detroit, Portland, Denver, and Indianapolis boasting tens of thousands of members and significant political influence.
Fifty-fifty in the 1960s, when the KKK's public persona seemed synonymous with Mississippi and Alabama, more than dues-paying Klan members resided in North Carolina than the residuum of the Southward combined. KKK leaders institute the Tar Heel Country fertile recruiting ground, despite -- or perhaps because of -- the state'due south progressive paradigm, which enabled the Klan to claim that they were the only group that would defend white North Carolinians against rising civil rights pressures. While this message resonated in rural areas across the state's eastern coastal plainly, the KKK built a significant post-obit in cities like Greensboro and Raleigh every bit well.
Today, the Southern Poverty Constabulary Center reports active KKK groups in 41 states, though nigh all of those groups remain marginal with tiny memberships. And so, while the KKK originated after the Civil War every bit a distinctly southern effort to preserve the antebellum racial order, its presence has extended well beyond that region throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
4. Why practice KKK members wear white hoods and burn crosses?
Some of the virtually recognizable Klan symbols date back to the group's origins following the Ceremonious War. The KKK'south white hoods and robes evolved from early on efforts to pose as ghosts or "spectral" figures, cartoon on then-resonant symbols in folklore to play "pranks" against African-Americans and others. Such tricks speedily took on more politically sinister overtones, equally sheeted Klansmen would commonly terrorize their targets, using hoods and masks to disguise their identities when carrying out acts of violence under the cover of darkness.
Fiery crosses, maybe the Klan's most resonant symbol, have a more surprising history. No documented cross burnings occurred during the showtime Klan wave in the 19th century. Nevertheless, D.West. Griffith's ballsy 1915 moving picture The Nascence of a Nation, which adapted Thomas F. Dixon, Jr.'s novels The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots to portray the KKK equally heroic defenders of the Quondam S and white womanhood more often than not, drew on textile from The Clansman to describe a cross-burning scene. The symbol was quickly appropriated by opportunistic KKK leaders to help spur the group's subsequent "rebirth."
Through the 1960s, Klan leaders regularly depicted the cross as embodying the KKK's Christian roots -- a means to spread the light of Jesus into the countryside. A bestselling 45rpm tape put out by United Klans of America included the Carolina Klan's Bob Jones reciting how the peppery cross served as a "symbol of sacrifice and service, and a sign of the Christian Organized religion sanctified and made holy nigh 19 centuries ago, by the suffering and blood of 50 million martyrs who died in the most holy religion." He emphasized cantankerous burnings every bit "driv[ing] away darkness and gloom… by the fire of the Cross nosotros mean to purify and cleanse our virtues past the fire on His Sword." Such grandiose rhetoric, of course, could not dispel the reality that the KKK oftentimes deployed burning crosses equally a means of terror and intimidation, and also as a spectacle to draw supporters and curious onlookers to their nightly rallies, which always climaxed with the ritualized called-for of a cross that frequently extended 60 or lxx feet into the heaven.
5. Has the KKK e'er functioned as a fierce terrorist group?
The KKK's emphasis on violence and intimidation as a means to defend its white supremacist ends has been the primary abiding across its various "waves." Given the group'due south cruel history, validating Klan apologists who minimize the grouping'south terroristic legacy makes little sense. However, during the periods of peak KKK successes in both the 1920s and 1960s, when Klan organizations were often significant presences in many communities, their appeal was predicated on connecting the KKK to varied aspects of members' and supporters' lives.
Such efforts meant that, in the 1920s, alongside the KKK's political campaigns, members also marched in parades with Klan floats, pursued civic campaigns to support temperance, public education, and child welfare, and hosted a range of social events aslope women'due south and youth Klan auxiliary groups. Similarly, during the ceremonious rights era, many were drawn to the KKK's militance, but besides to leaders' promises to offer members "racially pure" weekend fish frys, turkey shoots, dances, and life insurance plans. In this sense, the Klan served as an "authentically white" social and borough outlet, seeking to insulate members from a changing broader earth.
The Klan'southward undoing in both of these eras related in office to Klan leaders' inability to maintain the delicate balancing act between such borough and social initiatives and the group'southward association with violence and racial terror. Indeed, in the absence of the latter, the Klan'due south emphasis on secrecy and ritual would have lost much of its nefarious mystique, only KKK-style lawlessness often went hand-in-hand with corruption among its own leaders. More importantly, Klan violence likewise ofttimes resulted in a backfire against the group, both from authorities and among the broader public.
Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/klansville-faq/
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