![]() ![]() ![]() Condemning "urban" vices like liquor, prostitution, movies, and jazz as Catholic and Jewish "plots" to subvert American values, the rejuvenated Klan became entirely mainstream, attracting middle-class men and women through its elaborate secret rituals and mass "Klonvocations" before collapsing amid revelations of sordid sexual scandals, financial embezzlement, and Ponzi-like schemes. Responding to the "emergency" posed by the flood of immigrant "hordes"-Pope-worshipping Irish and Italians, "self-centered Hebrews," and "sly Orientals"-this "second Klan," as award-winning historian Linda Gordon vividly chronicles, spread principally above the Mason-Dixon Line in states like Indiana, Michigan, and Oregon. Boasting 4 to 6 million members, the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s dramatically challenged our preconceptions of hooded Klansmen, who through violence and lynching had established a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South. By legitimizing bigotry and redefining so-called American values, a revived Klan in the 1920s left a toxic legacy that demands reexamination today. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |