The 2nd Coming of the Invisible Empire: The KKK & the 1920s

[William Thornton]

Nope. Not about current political stuff but the Ku Klux Klan revival from roughly 1915-1944. Sure, there are various Klan groups today but it was the Klan of the 1920s that had millions of members and wielded considerable power and influence. Mercer Univ. press has this new publication on it which my library has and I just finished.



The 2nd version of the Klan was established with a cross burning on Stone Mountain which is near me. My grandfather, a prominent pharmacist in Athens, received a Klan recruitment letter about 1925. I know that because I have the letter. "Daddy never joined," my mother quickly said when shown the letter.

A few observations:

The Klan regalia and some rituals were balk knockoffs of the first blockbuster movie, a silent movie, "Birth of a Nation." The hooded garments, burning crosses and the like were straight from D. W. Griffiths.

The KKK was a huge moneymaker for a few leaders who personally pocketed a good chunk of membership fees. Consider it an early success story for modern marketing methods built off of the many fraternal organizations operating at the time.

Xenophobia was as much or more of a motivator for Klan membership surges as was racism.

Yes, a few Baptist preachers made the book but none, I daresay, anyone here ever heard of.

No one Fox ever named here is in the book but I'd bet he had ancestors who were Klansmen.

IMagine if was seen in DC today or the numbers shown below.

[Sandy]

I'll have to check and see if my library has it. If not, I'll buy a copy and then give it to the school library when I'm finished with it. I wrote a thesis on the social and cultural influences on World War 2, and a lot of people don't realize that the rise of this particular era of the Klan in the United States parallels the rise of Fascism in Europe. Does this author make that connection, William?

[William Thornton]

[Stephen Fox]

was in the Klan for a while. His Grandson Stephen and I talked about it when he came to Collinsville at my invitation in March 2006.

Will read this book in time, but was already aware of the Stone Mtn Revival of the Klan from reading the 400 pages on leo Frank And the Dead Shall Rise, the last review of Marshall Frady NYbooks.com

Klan was loose ended by the time they bombed a house on College Drive in Gaffney in 56, six years before the Foxes came to town.

My next read is the lynching in Forsyth Co Ga in 1912 and the difference just a county away across the Chattahoochee in Hall where they had a better sheriff who tamped down on this "night ridin" stuff.

Lee Atwater legacy with Jesse Helms in the Fundy Takeover of the SBC in latter days of Jim Crow should be your focus, William. But glad your in the stacks of Mercer publications.

See my blog the Foxes leave Cherokee Co SC

[Stephen Fox]

Moses, Jesus and the Trickster. Mercer lectures of 2008 where the author watched the Obama election with President Underwood.

That's the better perspective going back before the Civil War with Ga Presbyterian theologian Charles Colcock Jones and his apologetics for slavery.

[ET]

William, I think it was PBS that ran a show on the klan last year some time. I can't remember the title, but it detailed the same time period, apparently, as your book - the 1920s and the "rise and fall" of the group. What was interesting to me was the influence it had in the north, particularly Ohio if I recall correctly.

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

I think I will wade in on one of these two books before I explore William's Klan Territory.

However William I do hope you get your hands on Anatomy of a Schism soon and do a blog review. I thought you did much more than a satisfactory job on the Lottie Moon bio a few years ago.

Here for the deep waters

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10 ... americans/