Threat to Democracy: The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s: A Warning from History - Hardcover

Linda Gordon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1445674769 ISBN 13: 9781445674766

Publisher: Amberley Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

Boasting 4 to 6 million members, the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s dramatically challenged our preconceptions of hooded Klansmen, who through violence and lynching had established a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South. Responding to the 'emergency' posed by the flood of immigrants - Irish and Italians, 'self-centred Hebrews', and 'sly Orientals' - this 'second Klan', as award-winning historian Linda Gordon vividly chronicles, spread across America. Condemning liberal, 'urban' vices like liquor, prostitution, movies and jazz as Catholic and Jewish 'plots' to subvert American values, the rejuvenated Klan became entirely mainstream, attracting middle-class men and women. It gre to include elaborate secret rituals and mass 'Klonvocations' before collapsing amid revelations of sordid sexual scandals, financial embezzlement, and Ponzi-like schemes. The Klan's brilliant melding of Christian values with racial bigotry and its lightning-like accretion of political power now becomes a sobering parable for the twenty-first century.

About this title

About the Author:

Linda Gordon is the winner of two Bancroft Prizes and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is the author of Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (WW Norton, 2015), and the co-author of Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements (WW Norton, 2012). She teaches at New York University.

Review:

`Threat to Democracy reminds us that Americans bid good riddance to serial aberrations in the civic and social life of our republic repeatedly, only to learn that these phenomena are as American as apple pie. Gordon's timely, crisply written, indispensable primer helps explain why another aberration is now upon us.' -- David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography `A first-rate historian can show us the past in a way that clarifies the present. That's what Linda Gordon does here ... Threat to Democracy reminds us that the sentiments that powered the reprise of the Klan have never been entirely absent from American life, and cannot be understood as an aberrant strain that might be entirely eliminated from the national character.' -- Nicholas Lemann, author of Redemption `An excellent historical treatment of an almost forgotten yet very dangerous period of hate in America. What a history lesson for today's electorate.' -- Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center `At once thoughtful, fair, and deeply troubling, Threat to Democracy exhibits the analytical wisdom of a master historian who sharply reminds us that popular mass mobilizations can be instruments of depredation.' -- Ira Katznelson, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning Fear Itself

About this edition

• Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1445674769
• ISBN 13: 9781445674766
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288