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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
MacLean, who teaches history at Northwestern University, offers a deft, close study of the Klan, which became in the 1920s "the most powerful movement of the far right that America has produced." In this post-WW I era, white male Christian supremacy was challenged by black labor resistance, the budding of feminism and economic uncertainty. Analyzing a typical local Klan in Clarke County, Ga., MacLean describes its members as economically fragile and insecure middle-class men who responded to the group's "reactionary populism:" a mix of Protestant fundamentalism, anti-statist individualism, anti-Communism and anti-Wall Street capitalism. She describes Klan efforts to enforce morality regarding alcohol, gambling and prostitution, and how Klansmen used racial hatred--against blacks, Jews and immigrants--to displace their fears of change. MacLean suggests, counter to the claims of others, that the Klan was indeed violent. The group waned by the end of the decade; unlike in Europe, where fascism flourished, an improved economy as well as receding efforts by labor and blacks assuaged the fears of would-be Klan participants. Then, in the 1930s, MacLean notes, a "strong and inclusive working-class movement" precluded Klan resurgence. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
A well-researched and convincing analysis of the most powerful reactionary movement in American history: the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Dormant since the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, the Ku Klux Klan broke out with an even more virulent strain of terrorism in 1915. Yet, as MacLean (History/Northwestern) demonstrates, it did not really hit its stride until after WW I, amid social disruptions ``that appeared to eviscerate discipline, stability, and predictability.'' MacLean is less interested in the organization's use of terror (though the few incidents she recounts are horrifying enough) than in the frightened worldview of its members. She takes issue with the common depiction of its rank and file as ``poor white trash,'' instead identifying the typical Klansman as a solid family man who found the settled certitudes of his life under a multipronged assault from changing relations between the sexes, Prohibition violations, strikes, and civil rights agitation. Such men, threatened by concentrated wealth above and labor insurgency below, felt as unmanned in the workplace as they did in the home. With between one and five million members at its height, the Klan was so powerful that no president in the 1920s dared to denounce its violence against African-Americans, Roman Catholics, Jews, and union activists. MacLean focuses on Clarke County, Georgia, where the Klan's Athens chapter left a cache of records surprisingly rich for an organization so famed for secrecy. At the same time, she carefully anchors this local study in a larger international perspective that takes in the post-World War I reactionary movements that produced fascism and Nazism. Masterly scholarship that unravels the murderous racial, gender, and class resentments underpinning a terrorist organization as American as apple pie. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
MacLean, who teaches history at Northwestern University, offers a deft, close study of the Klan, which became in the 1920s "the most powerful movement of the far right that America has produced." In this post-WW I era, white male Christian supremacy was challenged by black labor resistance, the budding of feminism and economic uncertainty. Analyzing a typical local Klan in Clarke County, Ga., MacLean describes its members as economically fragile and insecure middle-class men who responded to the group's "reactionary populism:" a mix of Protestant fundamentalism, anti-statist individualism, anti-Communism and anti-Wall Street capitalism. She describes Klan efforts to enforce morality regarding alcohol, gambling and prostitution, and how Klansmen used racial hatred--against blacks, Jews and immigrants--to displace their fears of change. MacLean suggests, counter to the claims of others, that the Klan was indeed violent. The group waned by the end of the decade; unlike in Europe, where fascism flourished, an improved economy as well as receding efforts by labor and blacks assuaged the fears of would-be Klan participants. Then, in the 1930s, MacLean notes, a "strong and inclusive working-class movement" precluded Klan resurgence. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
A well-researched and convincing analysis of the most powerful reactionary movement in American history: the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Dormant since the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, the Ku Klux Klan broke out with an even more virulent strain of terrorism in 1915. Yet, as MacLean (History/Northwestern) demonstrates, it did not really hit its stride until after WW I, amid social disruptions ``that appeared to eviscerate discipline, stability, and predictability.'' MacLean is less interested in the organization's use of terror (though the few incidents she recounts are horrifying enough) than in the frightened worldview of its members. She takes issue with the common depiction of its rank and file as ``poor white trash,'' instead identifying the typical Klansman as a solid family man who found the settled certitudes of his life under a multipronged assault from changing relations between the sexes, Prohibition violations, strikes, and civil rights agitation. Such men, threatened by concentrated wealth above and labor insurgency below, felt as unmanned in the workplace as they did in the home. With between one and five million members at its height, the Klan was so powerful that no president in the 1920s dared to denounce its violence against African-Americans, Roman Catholics, Jews, and union activists. MacLean focuses on Clarke County, Georgia, where the Klan's Athens chapter left a cache of records surprisingly rich for an organization so famed for secrecy. At the same time, she carefully anchors this local study in a larger international perspective that takes in the post-World War I reactionary movements that produced fascism and Nazism. Masterly scholarship that unravels the murderous racial, gender, and class resentments underpinning a terrorist organization as American as apple pie. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
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