The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930

For decades the most frightening example of bigotry and hatred in America, the Ku Klux Klan has usually been seen as a rural and small-town product an expression of the decline of the countryside in the face of rising urban society. Kenneth Jackson's important book revises conventional wisdom about the Klan. He shows that its roots in the 1920s can also be found in burgeoning cities among people who were frightened, dislocated, and uprooted by rapid changes in urban life. Many joined the Klan for sincere patriotic motives, unaware of the ugly prejudice that lay beneath the civic rhetoric.

Mr. Jackson not only dissects the Klan's activities and membership, he also traces its impact on the public life of the twenties. In many places from Atlanta to Dallas, from Buffalo to Portland, Oregon the Klan agitated politics, held immense power, and won elective office. The Ku Klux Klan in the City is a continuing and timely reminder of the tensions and antagonisms beneath the surface of our national life. "Comprehensively researched, methodically organized, lucidly written...a book to be respected." Journal of American History.

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Background Information

Portland, located at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, is the largest city in Oregon, having been named for Portland, Maine. Buffalo, the westernmost large city in New York State, owes its economic development primarily to the opening of the Erie Canal. The decade of the 1920's introduced America to new freedoms and ways of thinking.

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