Question

Fan and Medal

How did the Ku Klux Klan become a national political force ?

Answer 1

Spreading far beyond its roots in the Reconstruction South, the resurgent Klan of the 1920s was a short-lived but potent phenomenon. By equating white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism with "true Americanism," it fueled intolerance for blacks, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. In the guise of protecting community morals, it expanded its victims of vigilante justice to those it deemed lawbreakers, bootleggers, unfaithful spouses, corrupt politicians, etc.—all with no judge or jury beyond the local secret "klavern." Whippings, tar-and-featherings, threats of violence, and for black victims, lynching, became common practice in some regions of the South, Southwest, and Midwest (Indiana was the stronghold of Klan power in the decade).

As the Klan marketed its message nationwide through paid "kleagles" and Klan membership climbed into the millions, many groups came to resemble community fraternal organizations rather than bands of masked nightriders. They sponsored public picnics, parade floats, and free speakers (and for the members, of course, secret nighttime cross-burnings), and they promoted Klan sympathizers for political office. Many eschewed violence, while yet fostering suspicion and prejudice toward local minority groups (e.g., French Canadians in Maine, Japanese in California, Native Americans in the southwest). "Such blending of the extreme and the ordinary was common in the Klan of the 1920s," writes historian Nancy MacLean; "indeed the blurring proved a source of strength."1 The resulting "overlap with the mainstream" led to several years of explosive growth and relative acceptability for the Klan, visible in its widespread political influence. After its heyday in the mid-1920s, the Klan fueled its rapid demise through internal feuding, financial scandal, and the sensational 1925 murder trial of Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson. By 1930 the Klan had virtually disappeared from the American political landscape, its membership less than 50,000. The Fiery Cross had self-immolated.