Linda Gordon: Live at Politics and Prose

The KKK was founded in 1865 by Confederate veterans. After a few turbulent years and federal efforts to outlaw it, it faded with Reconstruction. Then it rose again in the 1920s. This second incarnation flourished largely in the north, grounded in the same strains of racism, nativism, and Christian evangelicalism that had sparked the original group. In this detailed analysis of the new Klan’s agenda, strategies, and membership, Gordon, two-time Bancroft Prize winner and author of Dorothea Lange, documents how these seemingly respectable, mostly middle-class white Protestants used celebrations of “Americanism” combined with the perception of threats to white supremacy to gain control of 150 newspapers and usher in immigration restrictions and anti-miscegenation laws. Gordon’s account is especially chilling in its parallels between the KKK and the rise of the Tea Party and the Trump movement. http://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781631493690 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices