https://dansinker.com/posts/2025-02-23-dale/
'I've spent many hours since the election reading about the Ku Klux Klan in the
1920s. It started the day after election day when I had hours to kill in the
lobby of a Hampton Inn, waiting for a room to open up. I loaded a library
archive page up on my phone, and read newspapers from a hundred years ago about
the KKK and how powerful they were in the '20s.
It's not a history you learn about in school—we were whitewashing history long
before the current executive orders—but the Klan in the '20s was everywhere.
There were millions of Klan members across the country. People joined it like
they were joining a golf club or the Elks Lodge. There was a women's auxiliary.
There was the Ku Klux Kiddies, for children. Klan rallies were held across the
country; thousands would turn up at fairgrounds for the marching bands and
cross burnings. In 1925, the Klan even held a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in
Washington DC. Tens of thousands strong, crowds were six deep in the streets to
watch and cheer. They did it again the next year.
The Klan of the '20s was a little different than what you might think of now.
They didn't just hate Black people (though, obviously, anti-Blackness was a
central driver), they also went hard after immigrants, Jews, and Catholics too.
The Klan's slogan at the time? "America First." The
Immigration Act of 1924,
which established the US Border Patrol and basically set the stage for all of
this country's immigration policy for the 20th Century, was viewed as a huge
victory for the Klan.
The Klan in the '20s felt inescapable.
That was especially true at the local level, where the Klan infiltrated all
walks of life. In Indiana by the mid-'20s, two-thirds of the statehouse were
Republican Klansmen. The governor was Klan. And in any given town, the Klan was
everywhere. The mayor, the councilmen, the cops, the prosecutors, the
judges—Klan Klan Klan Klan Klan.
Of course, part of what made the Klan so insidious was you never quite knew who
was a Klansmen—they wore the hoods for a reason. But also you knew. You knew
not to cross them, not to question them, not to make trouble. That is, if you
knew what was good for you.
Of course, thankfully, not everyone knows what's good for them.'
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
