Ku Klux Kulture

The second coming in the 1920s of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has hardly escaped the attention of historians. Scholars have interpreted this Klan as a social movement, business, political machine, fraternal order, hate group, and vigilante organization. The focus has been on who joined and why and how Klansmen and women agitated their communities. In peeking under the hood and robe, historians have learned much about the inner workings of the Klan. The necessary next step is to broaden the context, to know more about the multifaceted relationship between this movement and the wider society. How did the sights and sounds of 1920s America shape a Klan already chameleon-like in proselytizing? How did a culture in transition adopt and adapt to the Klan? In this effort, Felix Harcourt's Ku Klux Kulture seeks to draw our attention away from the Klan organization—its internal affairs and operating structures—to a broader, imagined Klannish cultural movement. This ideological community reached men and women beyond the Klan core and counted those who believed in militant Protestantism, 100% Americanism, and white supremacy. For these bystanders and sympathizers, always critical in Klan election victories, mass culture and media outlets publicized the hooded order and glorified, sanitized, and legitimized it. Neither invisible nor secret, Klannishness represented a common cultural identity. It was featured in images and symbols on commercial radio and records and in pulp novels, nonfiction works, newspaper tabloids, theatrical performances, sporting events, and movies. As Americans consumed Klan images, thoroughly modern Kluxers embraced the new mass media of radio and film to spread their message. Resonating with the fads and trends of the decade, Klansmen revised the lyrics of Tin Pan Alley ditties to mock minorities, offered readers crossword puzzles with Kluxer themes, marketed sheet music of hooded favorites, sponsored jazz band concerts, and took opportunity in the sports craze of the period. The Klan was neither a fringe nor a marginal group. It swam in the mainstream of American life

Context (archaeology · Ideology · Media studies · Militant · Newspaper · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Sociology · White (mutation · American History and Culture · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies