“Required reading for anyone striving to understand the present through a considered analysis of the past.”
—Booklist
THE SECOND COMING OF THE KKK
The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition
Linda Gordon
“A revealing, well-researched—and, unfortunately, contemporarily relevant—investigation of the KKK’s wide support in the 1920s.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[The Second Coming of the KKK] is explicitly informed by the 21st-century rise of conservative populism in America, but Gordon largely leaves direct comparisons with contemporary politics to her readers. . . . This clear-eyed analysis illuminates the character and historic power of America’s own ‘politics of resentment.’”
—Publishers Weekly
Shedding light on the transformation of the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan into a mainstream social movement among the Anglo-Saxon middle class in the 1920s, THE SECOND COMING OF THE KKK is an explosive investigation into a movement that defined “Americanness,” and therefore “Unamericanness,” for years to come.
Distinguishing this second wave from the terrorist group of the 1870s, historian Linda Gordon reveals that this reiteration of the KKK took hold largely above the Mason-Dixon, with particularly strong roots in Oregon and Illinois. Borrowing from nativism, temperance, evangelicalism, and populism (and expanding its list of enemies to include Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and bootleggers) this twentieth-century revival drew nearly six million members.
Exploring the Klan’s methods of recruitment, Gordon reveals how the movement spread like wildfire with the help of the Southern Publicity Association and a hefty dose of demagoguery. Klansmen were offered financial incentives to recruit; leaders placed national advertisements and hosted pageants for mass naturalizations. A chorus of fake news stories about “non-natives” solidified these efforts—the success of such fearmongering likely doesn’t surprise today.
What is surprising are the many inherent contradictions Gordon uncovers in the Klan’s ideology. This KKK was adamantly anti-elitist; Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans called for “a return of power into . . . the entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanized, average citizen of the old stock.” Yet this attitude, conveniently, didn’t apply to the businessmen (or women) who backed the Klan. And while many Klanswomen avidly supported suffrage and fought for leadership roles in the WKKK, they continued to preach the importance of purist family values and censorship.
Most importantly, however, Gordon argues that this iteration of the Klan might have met its early end not only due to scandal, as previously thought, but also because it was remarkably successful. By operating in broad daylight, within the confines of democracy (even electing hundreds to public office), the Klan influenced the trajectory of “Americanism” for years thereafter; eugenics laws spread to 20 states, while population quotas for immigrants and discriminatory bans were kept in place until 1965.
But the biggest Klan victory was much less visible and remains far more urgent: the movement of the 20s altered the threshold for tolerable public discourse for decades. As Gordon chillingly asserts, “The Klannish spirit—fearful, angry, gullible to falsehoods, in thrall to demagogic leaders and abusive language, hostile to science and intellectuals, committed to the dream that everyone can be a success in business if they only try—lives on.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda Gordon winner of two Bancroft Prizes and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, is the author of Dorothea Lange and Impounded, and the coauthor of Feminism Unfinished. She is the Florence Kelley Professor of History at New York University and lives in New York and Madison, Wisconsin.
TITLE: THE SECOND COMING OF THE KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition
AUTHOR: Linda Gordon
PUBLICATION DATE: October 24, 2017
PAGES: 288 / PRICE: $27.95 hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-63149-369-0
For further information, please contact Cordelia Calvert, Senior Publicist, Liveright Publishing Corporation, at 212-790-7244 or ccalvert@wwnorton.com.
