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Happy 90th birthday, Second Ku Klux Klan! Like Homer Stokes' midget mascot, friend of the little man Jesse Walker considers how the Klan's Jazz Age antics overlapped with the mainstream labor, prohibition, pro-marriage, and political reform movements.
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|12.2.05 @ 3:50PM|#
Yeah, Glen's book is a tour de force. Glen is probably the smartest human being I've ever met.
|12.2.05 @ 4:01PM|#
1) Rooted in Protestant Pietism.
2) Anti-urban political machines.
3) Permeated by racism.
4) Grew to national scale after WW1.
You just described every single political movement of the era.
Jesse Walker|12.2.05 @ 5:14PM|#
You just described every single political movement of the era.
That's a ridiculous exaggeration, of course. But on a certain level, it's also the point.
|12.2.05 @ 5:41PM|#
joe,
You just described every single political movement of the era.
Not really.
|12.2.05 @ 5:42PM|#
We ain't GOT a constituency, Walker's got a constituency!! We're the damned incumbents!
|12.2.05 @ 6:19PM|#
"Glen is probably the smartest human being I've ever met."
Is he even smarter than your other personalities?
The Wine Commonsewer|12.2.05 @ 7:05PM|#
Fascinating stuff Jesse.
|12.2.05 @ 7:10PM|#
hmm using the state to repress blacks...looks like the progressive wing of the democratic party hasn't changed much now they just use the state to repress everyone. ;)
"You just described every single political movement of the era."
no Joe just the ones that later became the ones you like.
|12.3.05 @ 1:09AM|#
Nice work, Jesse.
BTW, lotsa years ago, I believe that it was Michael Harrington who I read inveighing against "enterprise zones" (low tax and low regulation enclaves) in Black ghettos cuz he said that they would engender too much upward mobility among the residents and thus render Blacks a less dependable voting block for the Dems!
|12.3.05 @ 8:39PM|#
Rick Barton's comment caused me to Google "alienation of affection" because the KKK is a kind of interloper into the already over-burdened "thought" processes of the hoi polloi.
Of the 12 zillion hits, I copied the North Carolina link below because that happens to be where I met the only person stupid enough to confide in me many years ago that he was a member of the KKK.
North Carolina is in the minority
The existence of continuing cases of this sort in North Carolina appears to surprise lawyers and residents in many other states because we are now in a very small minority of jurisdictions -- including�Hawaii, Illinois, Mississippi, New Mexico, South�Dakota and Utah�-- which still recognize both alienation of affection and criminal conversation. As of July 2003, 43 states and the District of Columbia had abolished the cause of action for alienation of affection. The states vary widely in the way they deal with this issue:�in some states, only one of the two causes of action continues to exist, and thus�proof of the claim and/or damages have been significantly curtailed in recent years. None of these reforms has altered the stance favoring such claims in this State.
fyodor|12.3.05 @ 10:54PM|#
Oy, those busy-bodies are all the same...
|12.4.05 @ 12:59PM|#
When you live in a forest all you see is a bunch of trees. I appreciate Jesse Walker's book reviews that have made me give more thought to the resurgence of KKK II. In Atlanta we always believed the second Klan was the direct outgrowth of the lynching of Leo Frank by the Knights Of Mary Phagan in August of 1915. It was a longer drive for the proto-Klaners to break the white, Jewish Frank out of the state prison in order to hang him than it was to go to Stone Mountain to burn the very cross Walker describes. The Knights' idea of corrupt government was lame duck Governor John Slaton commuting Frank's death sentance to life in prison. The website http://www.leofranklynchers.com/ claims to have identified many of the lynchers from the souvenir postcards that circulated afterwards, finding contemporary and former state legislators, sheriffs, judges, and bigwigs of the Democrat party. Many of them were on Stone Mountain that cold night four months later for the rebirth of the Klan.
Whatever motives or ideas they held in common with a large part of the American people in the 1920s, the group that lynched Leo Frank and started KKK II were goons who thought their idea of justice was more important than the law. It is all well and good to understand how KKK II fit into American society of the 1920s, but never lose sight of the fact that some of the members, at least, were downright evil.
|12.4.05 @ 10:21PM|#
I think Wyn Craig Wade's The Fiery Cross detailed how the 1920s Klan became a mail-order franchising/merchandising fad; send in your cash and application and get a kleagle certificate, or whatever other silly titles they had that you paid for. Several blacks sent in and got theirs and publicized it.
|12.5.05 @ 8:21PM|#
Has it been proved that Truman was an ex-Klansman? He always denied the rumor, and while he certainly may have been lying, I'm pretty sure that, pace Wikipedia, it was never proved.
Jesse Walker|12.6.05 @ 11:10AM|#
Truman's membership has been pretty well-established -- you might be thinking of Warren Harding, who was rumored to have joined the Klan in a secret ceremony at the White House, a dubious claim that has never been substantiated.