Deeply troubled by the course upon which I was embarking - the co-authorship of a book explaining in personal detail the inner workings of the modern Ku Klux Klan - I took solace one Saturday evening in the thoughts of others who have by choice or chance crossed into unfamiliar territory where the only guide is one's own moral compass.
To be truthful, I was a little frightened, not by the thought of the guns and rough rhetoric of these angry people who dare to don hoods and burn crosses in the 1990s, but rather by the anticipation of brushing so closely with people who journalists and historians clearly consider beyond the pale.
Would I become contaminated?
Would I write a contaminated book?
The first question my wife asked me upon learning I intended to travel the following weekend in the company of the Imperial Wizard of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to a rally he promised would bring out an angry mob of Chicago-area blacks and Hispanics, was "How do you feel about that."
I told her honestly, "Not very good."
Not overly concerned about my own safety - my earlier experience with Klan rallies had made me realize it was generally safer to be on the Klan side of the police line than anywhere else - I was instead gravely concerned about my own integrity, as well as my ability to tell a truthful, unbiased story. Would I paint these people as the idiots most presume they are, even if I learned otherwise? Or worse, given my tendency to believe in the general good nature of all human beings, would I find myself liking them and overlooking their hateful behavior?
Being a congenital optimist, I generally forgive quirkiness and find myself even drawn to it. In my 30 years as a journalist I have interviewed two murderers. I like both these people, would gladly be seen in a restaurant eating dinner with them, and found myself laughing and feeling empathetic during the hours I spent with them in jail.
Similarly and more recently, during the winter of 1996, I spent some time in southern Mexico as a human rights observer, living in a remote Mayan village high in the cloud forests of Chiapas. My job was to accompany the indigenous villagers and to document any actions of the nearby Mexican army, which maintained a heavily fortified outpost supplied only by helicopter, as no passable roads traversed those jungles. One day I trudged through the torpid heat to the top of a hill overlooking our collection of thatched and tin-roofed huts, where a sandbagged bunker maintained its ominous vigilance. I was simply curious. I wanted to see for myself what these soldiers were like, to know just a little better these heavily armed, grim-faced men who had been accused of the worst of atrocities towards the traditional Mayan people. Looking beyond their camouflage fatigues and flak jackets, ignoring their German-made Hockler assault rifles, I discovered young men - almost boys - as grateful for a smile and a friendly word as any other human being.
So what would I find when I hung out with the Klan?
Knowing that soon enough I would discover my own answers, as I traveled with these robed men and women to their rallies and cross burnings, I deliberately turned away from the great historical analyses of the Klan and sought instead for answers among my favorite authors and historical figures.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., writing in his 1986 "Cycles of American History," had an interesting clue for me.
Speaking of the lack of forthrightness in our own national political dialog, in which indiscriminate bombing runs over Hanoi (substitute today Baghdad) are called "surgical strikes" and the gun toting thugs who killed innocent villagers in Nicaragua during the Contra War were called "freedom fighters", he notes: "Vietnam and then Watergate left a good many Americans with a hatred of double-talk and a hunger for bluntness and candor."
The Klan, as these pages will reveal, is anything if not blunt and candid. With eerie prescience to our own political age of Clintonesque double speak about sex and lies, Schlesinger adds, "In this season of semantic malnutrition, who is not grateful for a public voice that blurts out what the speaker honestly believes?"
Listening to their message - viewing tapes of their rallies and participating in two myself as a photographer and journalist - I was constantly reminded of Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass. In this childhood classic, Alice puzzles over language in a book that looks oddly familiar but that she can't quite read. When she finally holds a looking glass up to the pages, she can read the sonorous poem, "Jabberwocky," only to realize to her dismay that although it is a great poem, the words fail to make sense. Humpty Dumpty, however, soon comes to her rescue. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less," goes the famous line. Alice, somewhat in a huff, retorts, "The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things."
Therein lies the allure of the Klan.
Shouting rhetoric from courthouse steps that stirs dim memories of our own shared history, modern Klansmen (and their women) skillfully belie the misconception that they are simply ignorant white trash. Quoting the Bible and the Constitution, they use familiar words to suit their own meanings.
In fact, as these pages will reveal, a Klan rally is much like an American History lesson seen through Alice's looking glass.
But beyond the childish allure of Klan rallies and their nightmarish cross "lightings" that often follow is their own grim reminder that sets the theme for their late 1990's procession across the Midwest and central eastern states: "You can ignore us if you want to, but we'll always be here."
