What I’m Reading: The Second Coming of the KKK – 7 in a series – “In it, the first Ku Klux Klan stars as the defender of “white womanhood.”

This new series is an ongoing collection of quotes from the books I am currently reading. — Douglas


“TWO MEDIA EVENTS AND ONE LYNCHING CATALYZED the eruption of the second Ku Klux Klan. First came the film Birth of a Nation, released in 1915 as the adaptation of Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel The Clansman. 1 The film showed newly freed slaves rampaging, aiming to rape white women, with the collusion of northern “carpetbaggers.” In it, the first Ku Klux Klan stars as the defender of “white womanhood.”

The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition by Linda Gordon

What I'm Reading: The Second Coming of the KKK - 1 in a series

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