Customer Reviews

Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949

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This is an overwhelmingly direct and primarily dispassionate view of the influence the Ku Klux Klan exerted in Alabama during the first half of the Twentieth Century. Glenn Feldman's previous documentation of Alabama's racism history, FROM DEMAGOGUE TO DIXIECRAT: HORACE WILKINSON AND THE POLITICS OF RACE, was equally scholarly and ultimately thought-proviking.

Why document the Klan and its often violent history?

If you take the time to read this book entire, you'll begin to answer your own question. Feldman is relentless in peeling away the layers of political white privilege that existed in the Deep South, and few historical figures come away looking like saints. Membership in the Klan was perhaps as important as membership in a Christian church or the local Rotary Club--and merchants knew the importance of donating to the correct Klan-supported causes.

Most histories of racist attitude and policy tend to weigh down the reader, since there's very little evidence of a silver lining here. Studying the quiet but all-pervasive threats of violence and ostracism that the KKK utilized in its rule is not a merry activity. And the implications extend beyond the first half of the Twentieth Century. The Klan is not dead, nor are its attitudes. It is simply more institutionalized and appears in disguises much more subtle than white robes and funny hats.

Glenn Feldman has taken much of the emotion and hair-trigger rhetoric out of this subject, so that the reader can study actual data. Believe me, the data are more depressing than the casually informed layperson can digest. The culture of violence through oppression, lynchings, beatings, torture and hazing thrived during this period. This is the book that clearly documents this southern Holocaust. No reader can come away sloughing the subject matter off. Read and weep--but read and be better informed than you've ever imagined.

This is perhaps one of the most informative books I've read on the Ku Klux Klan. For those who are doing research on this gritty topic, along with people who just want to learn something different about part of the darkest area of US history, then this is the book for you. It explores such things as the horrific beatings in 1927, the discrimination, and even includes a few photographs. Definitely a must-read for research on this topic. Even if it's soley on the Alabamian Klansmen, it will still inform you well.