tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/ku-klux-klan-15605/articles
Ku Klux Klan – The Conversation
2023-12-15T16:25:51Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219287
2023-12-15T16:25:51Z
2023-12-15T16:25:51Z
100 years ago, the KKK planted bombs at a US university – part of the terror group’s crusade against American Catholics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565618/original/file-20231213-17-rh1lm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2879%2C2288&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A KKK rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Sept. 21, 1923.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dayton Metro Library</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was Dec. 19, 1923 – 100 years ago. The first day of Christmas break at the University of Dayton, with fewer than 40 students still on campus.</p>
<p>At 10:30 p.m., the quiet was shattered by <a href="https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=hst_fac_pub">a series of explosions</a>, as 12 bombs went off throughout campus. Frightened students discovered that, while damage was minimal, there was an eight-foot burning cross on the edge of campus. Running to tear it down, they were confronted by several hundred Klansmen screaming threats from 40 to 50 cars.</p>
<p>It wasn’t the first time Dayton’s residents <a href="https://www.daytondailynews.com/sports/college/recalling-the-day-football-routed-the-kkk/aGCpGKbQrF1wDENVDxRTEP/">had endured terror from the Ku Klux Klan</a>. Hundreds of neighbors poured out of their houses and charged at the hooded invaders. The Klansmen sped away, and the students and others extinguished the fire and tore down the cross.</p>
<p>The KKK is most infamous for violently terrorizing African Americans. But in the 1920s its hatred also had other targets, especially outside the South. This version of the KKK, known as the Second Ku Klux Klan, harassed Catholics, Jews and immigrants – including students and staff at Catholic universities like Dayton, where I am <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/history/trollinger_bill.php">a historian of American religion</a>. All of this is the focus of my 2013 article, “<a href="https://works.bepress.com/bill_trollinger/15/">Hearing the Silence</a>.”</p>
<h2>The Second Ku Klux Klan</h2>
<p>The KKK emerged in the South in the years immediately after the Civil War. Its goal was to use whatever means necessary – including <a href="https://eji.org/report/reconstruction-in-america/documenting-reconstruction-violence/#chapter-3-intro">a great deal of murderous violence</a> – to force newly freed African Americans into conditions close to slavery.</p>
<p>Having succeeded, the original Klan all but disappeared by the end of the 19th century. But in the wake of <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation">the blockbuster film</a> “Birth of a Nation” – which celebrated the original KKK as having “redeemed” the defeated South – the organization <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631493690">was reborn in Georgia in 1915</a>.</p>
<p>This second KKK <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631493690">only attracted a few hundred members</a> over the next few years. But it exploded upon the national scene in the early 1920s, thanks to anxieties about immigration, race and communism. In fact, the white-robed Klansmen with their <a href="https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/cross-burning/">fiery crosses – a symbol borrowed from “Birth of a Nation</a>” – very soon attracted between 1 million and 5 million members. </p>
<p>The second KKK was truly national, with more members in the Midwest and West than in the South. As the reporter <a href="https://www.timothyeganbooks.com/">Timothy Egan</a> powerfully chronicles in his book, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558306/a-fever-in-the-heartland-by-timothy-egan/">A Fever in the Heartland</a>,” “the Klan owned the state” of Indiana. In 1925, “most members of the incoming state legislature took orders from the hooded order, as did the majority of the congressional delegation.”</p>
<p>It is possible that Ohio had nearly as many members in the 1920s. Historian David Chalmers – <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/hooded-americanism">who counted 400,000 Ohioans</a> in the KKK at the organization’s peak – commented that “there was a time when it seemed the mask and hood had become the official symbol of the Buckeye State.”</p>
<p>The second KKK presented itself as a supremely patriotic organization: “100% American.” And to be 100% American, in their eyes, you had to be white and determined to keep African Americans in their place. Emulating the first KKK, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/behind-the-mask-of-chivalry-9780195098365">the second Klan used horrific violence</a>, including lynchings, to try to terrify African Americans into submission.</p>
<p>To be “100% American” also meant that you were Christian. The second KKK was <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700624478/">the quintessential white Christian nationalist organization</a>, and it defined ideal citizens by their race, creed and birth. When Klansmen were initiated into the organization, members sang “Just as I am Without One Plea,” a hymn that adores Jesus as the “Lamb of God.” Yet the group portrayed Jesus as one of them: the First Klansman.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565694/original/file-20231214-29-vitpg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph of two women with a baby between them, all dressed in white robes and white hoods, with their faces showing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565694/original/file-20231214-29-vitpg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565694/original/file-20231214-29-vitpg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565694/original/file-20231214-29-vitpg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565694/original/file-20231214-29-vitpg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565694/original/file-20231214-29-vitpg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565694/original/file-20231214-29-vitpg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565694/original/file-20231214-29-vitpg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anna Doss and Mrs. Theodore Heck, wife of the Ohio Commander of the Klan, with a baby at a Klan event in Ohio around 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/klanswomen-at-great-ohio-rally-here-are-shown-the-eldest-news-photo/515134196?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty News</a></span>
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<h2>Anti-Catholic campaigns</h2>
<p>Actually, being Christian wasn’t enough. To be 100% American, in the Klan’s view, meant that you were a white Protestant Christian.</p>
<p>In the years between 1890 and 1920, <a href="https://pluralism.org/catholic-and-jewish-immigrants">a flood of immigrants</a> from southern and eastern Europe came to America, a large percentage of whom were Catholic or Jewish.</p>
<p>While the Klan was – <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan">and still is</a> – strongly antisemitic, in the 1920s its members were particularly worried about Catholics, as there were many more of them. This was certainly the case in Dayton, where <a href="https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/13949806v1ch1.pdf">35% of churchgoers were Catholic</a>, thanks to an influx of immigrants who worked in the city’s factories.</p>
<p>In response to the Catholic “threat,” at least 10% of Daytonians – some 15,000 people – <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780929587820/The-Ku-Klux-Klan-in-the-City-1915-1930">joined the KKK in the early 1920s</a>, with some estimates placing the number as high as 40,000.</p>
<p>As was the case elsewhere in the Midwest, the Klan’s presence in Dayton was visible in rallies and parades that attracted thousands of Klansmen, Klanswomen and supporters – not to mention the burning crosses intimidating Catholics and Jews in working-class neighborhoods. As one Dayton resident of those years later recalled, the “<a href="https://works.bepress.com/bill_trollinger/15/">threat of Klan violence was always there</a>.” </p>
<p>The Klan directed much of its anti-Catholic hostility <a href="https://works.bepress.com/bill_trollinger/15/">against the University of Dayton</a>, which was founded by the <a href="https://www.marianist.com/">Society of Mary, also known as the Marianists</a>. As part of their intimidation campaign, KKK members repeatedly slipped onto campus to set crosses on fire. Rumor had it that the police force was filled with Klansmen; whether or not that was true, city authorities made little effort to intervene.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565695/original/file-20231214-15-b6cp2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a white robe and cap that says '69 Ohio' sits on a low stool outside pouring a drink from a pitcher." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565695/original/file-20231214-15-b6cp2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565695/original/file-20231214-15-b6cp2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565695/original/file-20231214-15-b6cp2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565695/original/file-20231214-15-b6cp2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565695/original/file-20231214-15-b6cp2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565695/original/file-20231214-15-b6cp2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565695/original/file-20231214-15-b6cp2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">N.W. Cleverly, a member of the Klan from Ashtabula, Ohio, before a Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., in 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cleverly-a-member-of-the-ku-klux-klan-from-ashtabula-ohio-news-photo/1211315045?adppopup=true">FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But as <a href="https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/linda-gordon.html">historian Linda Gordon</a> <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631493690">has noted</a>, “targets of Klan aggression were not always passive or nonviolent themselves.” Students at the University of Notre Dame, for example, <a href="https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268104344/notre-dame-vs-the-klan/">stopped a KKK parade and rally</a>, then damaged the headquarters of the local Klan. </p>
<p>University of Dayton students fought back, too. They repeatedly chased Klansmen off campus, calling on them to “show their faces.” At one point, football coach <a href="https://footballfoundation.org/hof_search.aspx?hof=1476">Harry Baujan</a>, hearing that another cross burning was about to commence, exhorted his players to “take off after them” and “<a href="https://works.bepress.com/bill_trollinger/15/">tear their shirts off</a>” or “whatever you want to do.”</p>
<h2>Lingering legacy</h2>
<p>The second KKK peaked in influence and membership around 1925. Over the next few years, however, the Klan was afflicted by a series of scandals, the most famous of which involved the leader of the Indiana KKK – in effect, the most powerful Klansman in America – <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558306/a-fever-in-the-heartland-by-timothy-egan/">who raped and murdered his secretary</a>. The KKK had faded from view by 1930, but not without achieving many of its aims.</p>
<p>For one thing, <a href="https://eji.org/report/reconstruction-in-america/documenting-reconstruction-violence/#chapter-3-intro">its extraordinary violence, including lynchings</a>, helped ensure that white supremacy would remain the order of the day in the South – as it did for the next few decades.</p>
<p>In addition, the Klan and its sympathizers won the fight on immigration. In 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1924-law-slammed-door-immigrants-and-politicians-who-pushed-it-back-open-180974910/">which remained on the books until the 1960s</a>. This law drastically reduced the number of immigrants who could enter the U.S. from Southern and Eastern Europe – that is, reducing the number of Catholic and Jewish immigrants – and essentially cut off all immigration from Asia. </p>
<p>One of the tragic effects came in the 1930s and 1940s, as the act <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/united-states-immigration-and-refugee-law-1921-1980">made it very difficult for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust to get into the U.S.</a>.</p>
<p>While the second KKK faded from view in the late 1920s, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan">a third emerged in the 1950s and 1960s</a> to lead the charge against the Civil Rights Movement. Today, Klan membership is miniscule, as the KKK has been supplanted by more tech-savvy hate groups.</p>
<p>The Second Ku Klux Klan argued that to be truly and fully American one must be the right race, the right ethnicity, the right religion. One century after the Dayton bombing, such sentiments persist in the United States.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219287/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Trollinger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Most of the Klan’s victims were African American, but many other groups have been targeted during the hate group’s century and a half of history.
William Trollinger, Professor of History, University of Dayton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202923
2023-08-04T12:28:44Z
2023-08-04T12:28:44Z
A brief history of the Ku Klux Klan Acts: 1870s laws to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, now being used against Trump
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541074/original/file-20230803-29-pqkkiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1306%2C80%2C5397%2C4362&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on an indictment against former U.S. President Donald Trump on Aug. 1, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/special-counsel-jack-smith-delivers-remarks-on-a-recently-news-photo/1586082375?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the indictment against former President Donald Trump and his role in the Jan. 6 violent attack against the U.S. Capitol, special prosecutor Jack Smith charged the former president with violating four different federal laws – and Trump pleaded not guilty to each one of them on Aug. 3, 2023. </p>
<p>Three of the charges in <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/trump-jan-6-indictment-2020-election/1f1c76972b25c802/full.pdf">United States of America v. Donald J. Trump</a> are fairly easy to understand. They require a jury to determine whether Trump tried to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election and if he knowingly conspired to obstruct the certification of results on Jan. 6, 2021, all in an attempt to remain in the White House. </p>
<p>But the fourth charge against Trump – of conspiring against the rights of the voters to cast ballots and have them fairly and honestly counted – is more complicated, and it comes from a dark time in U.S. history.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://english.cofc.edu/faculty-staff-listing/kelly-joe.php">a historian</a> who studies and writes about democracy and the American South, I believe the 1870s have something to teach us about the fourth count in the Jan. 6 case against Trump. </p>
<h2>Ku Klux Klan Acts</h2>
<p>The indictment asserts that Trump knowingly conspired “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”</p>
<p>That quote comes from a series of laws enacted in the 1870s called the Ku Klux Klan Acts. They are officially known as the <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html">Enforcement Acts</a> because they empowered the federal government to enforce the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=With%20the%20adoption%20of%20the,the%20civil%20rights%20of%20Americans.">Civil War amendments</a> – the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=Section%201.-,Neither%20slavery%20nor%20involuntary%20servitude%2C%20except%20as%20a%20punishment%20for,place%20subject%20to%20their%20jurisdiction.">13th</a>, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment#:%7E:text=No%20State%20shall%20make%20or,Section%202.">14th</a> and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/15th-amendment">15th</a> amendments that freed enslaved people and guaranteed equal protection of the laws and the right to vote.</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/civil-rights-law-could-be-used-indict-trump">Brennan Center for Justice</a> points out, in the 20th century the Supreme Court has ruled that all sorts of election infringements violate the Enforcement Acts, including stuffing ballot boxes and bribing voters. A suspect doesn’t have to commit violence against Black voters to violate the law.</p>
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<span class="caption">Former President Donald Trump with his attorneys inside the courtroom during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court on April 4, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-donald-trump-appears-in-court-at-the-news-photo/1250772070?adppopup=true">Seth Wenig/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Retreat from democracy</h2>
<p>When the Ku Klux Klan tried to steal the 1872 presidential election by <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/reconstruction-southern-violence/">killing and intimidating</a> newly enfranchised Black men, federal troops swooped into South Carolina and arrested hundreds of Klansmen. The Department of Justice <a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/proceedingsinkuk00unit/proceedingsinkuk00unit.pdf">secured convictions</a> in 140 cases by using the law that is being used to prosecute Trump.</p>
<p>Congress had to expand the attorney general’s staff into an entire <a href="https://www.justice.gov/history/timeline/150-years-department-justice#event-1195101">department of government</a> to handle the excessive case load.</p>
<p>The Klan prosecutions worked.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1872_Election/">1872 election</a> was relatively free and fair. In South Carolina, where the Black population outnumbered the white population, President Ulysses Grant, who had commanded the Union Army in the Civil War and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/ulysses-s-grant/">led it to victory</a> over the Confederacy, won with 75% of the vote.</p>
<p><iframe id="tYrfU" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tYrfU/9/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>After Grant was reelected, many champions of Black rights lapsed into what historians often characterize as a moral fatigue. According to historian Eric Foner’s “<a href="https://archive.org/details/reconstructionam0000fone/page/524/mode/2up?view=theater">Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution</a>,” a “resurgence of overt racism” in the North triggered a “retreat from Reconstruction.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746/">turning point</a> was at Colfax, Louisiana. </p>
<p>Just before Easter in 1873, federal soldiers steamed up Louisiana’s Red River to investigate reports of yet another wave of white terrorism against Black citizens. </p>
<p>As later described by <a href="https://archive.org/details/horriblemassacre00newo/page/14/mode/2up">Col. T.W. DeKlyne</a>, as the soldiers approached the town of Colfax, they saw neglected neglected crops and abandoned farmhouses. They followed a trail of corpses to the charred, smoking remains of the courthouse, whose grounds were strewn with more dead bloating in the sun. Some were burnt. Others had been shot, execution style, in the back of the head. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://archive.org/details/dayfreedomdiedco00lane/page/266/mode/2up?view=theater">history of the Colfax massacre</a>, journalist Charles Lane estimated that between 62 and 81 Black men were killed, most after they surrendered to the white militia. </p>
<p>Despite the bloodshed, Louisiana officials did nothing to hold the murderers accountable. </p>
<p>But federal attorneys indicted 98 men. Nine stood trial, including one <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/black-lives-civil-rights.html">William Cruikshank</a>, who Lane described as the “burly, self-confident” plantation owner who had supervised the executions. </p>
<p>Cruikshank was convicted not of murder but of the federal crime of <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/58/united-states-v-cruikshank#">conspiring to violate</a> the civil and voting rights of Americans – the same crime that Trump is charged with. </p>
<p><a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/92/542/">The case</a> was appealed to the Supreme Court, where justices heard all sorts of arguments on the authorities of state and federal governments to enforce voting rights laws. But the real issue was whether the federal government, 11 years after the end of the Civil War, still had the will to protect the civil rights of Black people.</p>
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<img alt="A white man dressed in a dark military uniform stands at a table with another white man dressed in a military uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this illustration, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, left, accepts the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/robert-e-lee-surrenders-to-general-u-s-grant-royalty-free-illustration/112873439?phrase=ulysses%20s%20grant%20robert%20lee&adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Supreme Court set William Cruikshank free, and white supremacists established racist regimes in every Southern state for nearly 100 years thereafter.</p>
<p>According to Nicholas Lemann, professor emeritus at Columbia University, the Civil War did not end <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/appomattox-court-house">in 1865 at Appomattox Court House</a> – the Virginia village where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.</p>
<p><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429923613/redemption">The last battle</a>, he contends, was fought at Colfax, and the South won. The South staged unfair elections for the nearly the next 100 years. Not until the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=This%20act%20was%20signed%20into,as%20a%20prerequisite%20to%20voting.">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a> did the federal government signal it would force states to hold free and fair elections.</p>
<h2>Civil War amendments today</h2>
<p>The latest retreat by the Supreme Court from defending Black civil rights might have begun in 2013, in its <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/570/529/">Shelby County v. Holder</a> ruling, in which the justices abolished a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that ensured federal oversight of voting rules in areas with a history of discrimination. The 5-4 majority held that states could be trusted to guarantee citizens’ voting rights.</p>
<p>Writing in dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared enforcing the Civil War amendments to “battling the Hydra,” the multiheaded monster that sprouted new heads after one was defeated. </p>
<p>In North Carolina, for instance, the Republican lawmakers tried to put what is known as the “independent state legislature theory” into practice. <a href="https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/independent-state-legislature-theory-federal-courts-and-state-law">That theory</a> holds that state legislatures are the supreme authority in federal elections. </p>
<p>But in the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1271_3f14.pdf">Moore v. Harper</a> case, Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed and wrote in the 6-3 majority opinion on June 27, 2023, that the “federal court must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review” over elections. </p>
<p>Given this long history of advance and retreat, it’s not surprising, then, that special counsel Jack Smith, in his use of a law to prosecute Trump that dates back to the Reconstruction Era’s laws protecting the Black vote, has reasserted the Department of Justice’s power to enforce the Civil War amendments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202923/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Patrick Kelly is affiliated with the Charleston County (SC) Democratic Party. </span></em></p>
One of the charges against Donald Trump dates back to the 1870s and was designed to give the federal government the power to ensure states held free and fair elections.
Joseph Patrick Kelly, Professor of Literature and Director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of Charleston
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200417
2023-04-25T12:27:16Z
2023-04-25T12:27:16Z
White power movements in US history have often relied on veterans – and not on lone wolves
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512087/original/file-20230223-4425-vmxhup.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A member of the Ku Klux Klan shouts at counterprotesters during a July 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va., calling for the protection of Southern Confederate monuments.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/member-of-the-ku-klux-klan-shouts-at-counter-protesters-news-photo/810860866?phrase=white%20supremacists%20rally&adppopup=true">Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>For decades, the white power movement has gained steady momentum in the U.S. <a href="https://history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core-faculty/kathleen-belew.html">Kathleen Belew</a> is an expert on the history of the white power movement and its current impact on American society and politics. Her book “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America</a>” examines how the aftermath of the Vietnam War led to the birth of the white power movement.</em></p>
<p><em>In March 2023, Belew spoke at the <a href="https://www.imaginesolutionsconference.com/">Imagine Solutions Conference</a> in Naples, Florida, about how the narrative of the “lone wolf” actor distracts from the broader threat of the white power movement in America. The Conversation asked Belew about her work. Her edited answers are below.</em></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Kathleen Belew speaks at the 2023 Imagine Solutions Conference.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is the white power movement?</h2>
<p>The white power movement is an array of activists that is, in all ways but race, remarkably diverse. Since the late 1970s, it has convened people of a wide variety of belief systems, including <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/ku-klux-klan">Klansmen</a>, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/neo-nazi">neo-Nazis</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/77.3.1221">white separatists</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/883115867/white-supremacist-ideas-have-historical-roots-in-u-s-christianity">proponents</a> of white supremacist religious theologies, and, starting in the late 1980s, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2016.1243349">racist skinheads</a> and militia movement members. These activists represent a <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">wide range</a> of class positions. The movement has long included men, women and children; felons and religious leaders; high school dropouts and holders of advanced degrees; civilians and veterans and active-duty military personnel. They have lived in all regions of the country, including suburbs, cities and rural areas.</p>
<h2>How has the legacy of US warfare fueled white power groups?</h2>
<p>After every major American war, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">the historical record</a> shows a surge in membership and activity among extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. In each example, <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/military-police-and-rise-terrorism-united-states">these groups also adopt</a> elements of military activity, like uniforms, weapons and the latest military tactics. But this doesn’t mean that these surges are entirely composed of veterans. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Violence-Military-Social-Weapons-ebook/dp/B00PSSF7UC?ref_=ast_author_dp">All measures of violence rise after warfare</a>, including acts carried out by women, children and older people. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan have been able to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bring-War-Home-Movement-Paramilitary/dp/0674237692/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678477040&sr=8-1">use this postwar opportunity</a> for their own purposes: recruitment and radicalization.</p>
<h2>When and why did the white power movement emerge in the US?</h2>
<p>The white power movement <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/the-secret-history-of-white-power.html">came together</a> in the late 1970s around a <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/605661710">shared narrative of the Vietnam War</a>. In this narrative, the war exemplifies the failure of government, the betrayal of the American people by the government and the betrayal of American men by the state. </p>
<p>Disillusioned veterans and civilians alike mobilized around a number of other <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Backlash-Undeclared-Against-American-Women/dp/0307345424">social grievances, such as dissatisfaction</a> with changes caused by feminism, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eyesontheprize-responses-coming-civil-rights-movement/">Civil Rights Movement</a> and other movements at home, as well as frustrations with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-74.2.366">economic changes like the farms crisis</a> and the general move to financialization in the 1970s that made it harder to find and keep a working-class job.</p>
<p>This disaffection allowed for the white power movement to recruit in two different ways: narrative force – the story that was used to hold these activists together; and contextual force – the social grievances many of them had in common.</p>
<h2>What role do women play in the white supremacist movement?</h2>
<p>People often think of the white power and militia movements as men’s movements. It’s true that the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/white-supremacy-returned-mainstream-politics/">majority of media reports heavily feature men</a>; that’s because those who participate in public demonstrations and those who get arrested because of underground activity tend to be men. But this is a movement that has relied in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190204204.013.37">extraordinarily heavy ways on women</a>. </p>
<p>Women have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190265144.003.0013">been tasked with normalizing</a> and legitimating violence, orchestrating recruitment and maintaining the relationships that allow this movement to operate as a social network. Take, for instance, the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">Aryan Nations World Congress</a>, a 1983 meeting in which the white power movement declared war on the United States. This meeting featured men’s speeches and ideological activities, a cross burning and a swastika burning. But it also featured matchmaking and a big spaghetti dinner, which socially bound activists together to enable the organization of violence. Women were indispensable for arranging these kinds of activities and for maintaining strong relationships between groups.</p>
<h2>Where do US veterans fit in?</h2>
<p>Veterans are specifically targeted for recruitment into white power groups because they and active-duty service members have a set of experiences and expertise that is very much in demand by these groups. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/24/us-military-white-supremacy-extremist-plot">Veterans have tactical training</a>, munitions expertise and weapons training that the white power movement wants because it is trying to wage war on the American government – in fact, this movement has <a href="https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/113968/witnesses/HHRG-117-VR00-Wstate-JonesS-20211013.pdf">directed recruitment</a> specifically aimed at veterans and active-duty troops. </p>
<p>While very few veterans returning from war join white power groups, the groups still feature an <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/02/06/signs-of-white-supremacy-extremism-up-again-in-poll-of-active-duty-troops/">enormous percentage of people who are veterans</a> or active duty – or falsely claim to be. This is because those military roles are in high demand among these groups – and their command structure within the movement mirrors military organization. </p>
<h2>How can the US address its lack of care toward veterans?</h2>
<p>The white power movement is one example of a broader social failure to support veterans and to reckon with the cost of warfare. This movement is able to <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2022/06/23/military-veterans-targeted-by-extremists-preying-on-patriots/">opportunistically mobilize disaffected people</a> in the aftermath of war because <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Failing-Our-Veterans-Vietnam-Generation/dp/0814724876">our society lacks robust social structures</a> to reintegrate people after warfare and to have a real public discourse about the price of war. </p>
<p>Before <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/magazine/fall-of-kabul-afghanistan.html">the fall of Kabul</a> in Afghanistan, my undergraduate students at Northwestern and the University of Chicago had been at war for their entire living memory. These are kids who don’t remember 9/11. And yet that war has not featured prominently even in the list of the top five or 10 crises facing our nation. In the recent past, war has not been at the center of our political conversation. We <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629612001178">don’t reckon with the massive impact</a> the people who serve in our armed forces shoulder for the nation. </p>
<p>In all of these ways, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/war-on-terror-timeline">global war on terror</a> has <a href="https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/113968/witnesses/HHRG-117-VR00-Wstate-Miller-IdrissC-20211013-U1.pdf">continued the cycle</a> of generating a recruitment opportunity for extremist groups. We are now in the middle of a <a href="https://acleddata.com/2022/12/06/from-the-capitol-riot-to-the-midterms-shifts-in-american-far-right-mobilization-between-2021-and-2022/">massive groundswell of white power</a> and militant right activity, both underground and in public-facing actions.</p>
<h2>What are you working on now that people might not be aware of?</h2>
<p>My next project departs from the white power movement to examine gun violence in America, specifically the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/1990s/columbine-high-school-shootings">Columbine shooting</a> – which happened when I was in high school, not far from where I was in high school – as a fulcrum point between the 20th century and the 21st. There were mass shootings at schools and elsewhere before Columbine. But Columbine really marks the moment when mass shootings became normalized. I think the event signals major fissures in the social fabric and reflects other massive changes in how society thinks about place, politics and violence – not only in Colorado but in the nation as a whole.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
An expert in American history explains the white power movement, its impact on veterans and women and how the Vietnam War was the impetus for extremist groups to gain new members.
Kathleen Belew, Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193808
2022-11-14T20:21:47Z
2022-11-14T20:21:47Z
Voter intimidation in 2022 follows a long history of illegal, and racist, bullying
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494758/original/file-20221110-22-d61eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C462%2C5511%2C3258&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite intimidation both current and historical, American voters turned out in near-record numbers on Nov. 8, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-vote-as-poll-workers-assist-at-a-polling-place-at-news-photo/1440122451">Mario Tama/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Travis County, Texas, home to Austin, a local Republican Party official allegedly knocked on people’s doors in November 2022 to accuse people who cast ballots by mail of <a href="https://www.tpr.org/government-politics/2022-11-04/texas-civil-rights-project-reports-multiple-instances-of-harassment-and-intimidation-at-the-polls">having been ineligible to vote</a>. </p>
<p>In Beaumont, Texas, 300 miles east, white poll workers allegedly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/midterm-election-results-livestream-voting-11-08-2022/h_f8b4d5887430f3bf7b0f22328cffa342">followed Black voters to voting machines</a> and stood close enough behind them to see how they voted. </p>
<p>In Arizona, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/cases-alleged-intimidation-arizona-ballot-boxes-continue-rise/story?id=92811526">armed citizens had stationed themselves near ballot drop boxes</a>, but a federal judge ordered them to stay away and forbade them from photographing or taking videos of people dropping off ballots, or speaking to them.</p>
<p>In North Carolina, several people allegedly <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/16-incidents-suspected-voter-intimidation-reported-nc-ahead/story?id=92822354">photographed or video-recorded voters</a>.</p>
<p>Those are just some of the cases of voter intimidation marring the generally orderly conduct of the 2022 midterm elections. And with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/us/politics/florida-federal-voting-monitors.html">Florida and Missouri blocking federal monitors</a> from polling places, any intimidation in those states may have gone unreported. Those states said most outsiders – people who are not voters or poll workers – are not allowed in polling places.</p>
<p>Intimidation doesn’t always include demanding a person vote for or against a specific candidate or ballot issue, or involve making specific threats. As a scholar of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zj3sJcwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">election law and voter suppression</a>, I know that any behavior reasonably calculated to dissuade a person from participating in an election counts as intimidation. This can include deceiving people about voting rules, questioning the legitimacy of their votes or accusing a person of a voting crime. </p>
<p>These problems may be getting more attention now, but voter intimidation has existed throughout American history, and it has almost always been directed at people of color. Yet the law provides opportunities for voters to respond to these illegal acts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A street scene shows people standing in a parking lot talking to each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C59%2C5000%2C3263&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Black activist group encourages people to vote – one of many efforts to counter racist voter intimidation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/attendees-walk-through-a-soul-to-the-polls-event-put-on-by-news-photo/1244573009">Scott McIntyre/for The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>Hundreds of years of voter intimidation</h2>
<p>Voter intimidation has marred elections throughout American history. As early as 1832, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” documented how the white majority in the free state of Pennsylvania had <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/815/pg815-images.html#link2HCH0037">intimidated African Americans from participating in elections</a>. That was just years before Pennsylvania, along with most other states with free Blacks, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/partisan-polarization-on-black-suffrage-17851868/D6FDE92281DC07500564FABBA5A82569#">banned or suppressed</a> the African American vote.</p>
<p>After the Civil War, white supremacist groups that wanted to restore the political order of slavery engaged in racially motivated voter intimidation. Probably the most famous example was the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746/">Colfax Massacre in 1873</a>, where white Louisianians killed approximately 150 African Americans in an attack precipitated by the disputed Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1872. Massacres like this sent the message to African Americans that voting was at their own risk. </p>
<p>Congress responded to the ongoing voter intimidation against African Americans by passing the <a href="https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/15032451486">Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871</a>, which included provisions explicitly outlawing conspiracies to deprive citizens of their voting rights. Those provisions <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1985">remain in law</a> today.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, violent voter intimidation persisted during the Jim Crow era. White supremacists continued attacking and killing African Americans in lynchings and race riots across the United States between the 1890s and the 1950s. In 1898, a mob of approximately 2,000 white men <a href="https://www.ncdcr.gov/1898-wilmington-coup">overthrew the Wilmington, North Carolina, local government</a> and massacred the city’s African American population for exercising their political and speech rights. Historians have estimated as many as <a href="https://www.history.com/news/wilmington-massacre-1898-coup">250 African Americans were killed</a>. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Give Us The Ballot’ speech in 1957.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The civil rights response</h2>
<p>In the mid-century civil rights era, white supremacist forces <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/civil-rights-memorial/civil-rights-martyrs">repeatedly murdered voting activists</a> to intimidate activists and African American voters from exercising their voting rights.</p>
<p>The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s made it a primary goal to obtain voting rights for African Americans. In 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke about this in a speech in Washington entitled “<a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/give-us-ballot-address-delivered-prayer-pilgrimage-freedom">Give Us The Ballot</a>.” He spoke of the “conniving methods” used to intimidate African American voters, such as lynching and mob violence. He demanded federal protection and new laws to codify African Americans’ right to vote.</p>
<p>After some false starts, Congress did respond again to the voter intimidation problem through the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a>. Though not often discussed or used as a basis for lawsuits, Section 11(b) of the act contains a <a href="https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:52%20section:10307%20edition:prelim)">broad prohibition</a> against voter intimidation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This law does not require proof that the person intended to intimidate a voter – just that their behavior can be reasonably seen as threatening, coercive or intimidating.</p>
<p>But voter intimidation did not simply go away because of these laws. After the passage of the Voting Rights Act, voter intimidation activities turned from overt terrorism to aggressive vigilance and challenging motivated by claims of fraud in voting. “Voting vigilante” groups, as many refer to them, continued to police voting by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31/politics/arizona-voter-intimidation-doj">following, photographing and otherwise menacing and threatening voters</a>. These groups claimed this was to protect “election integrity,” but they were in fact acts to intimidate Black and Hispanic voters.</p>
<p>For example, in 1981, the Republican National Committee <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-gop-just-received-another-tool-for-suppressing-votes/550052/">hired off-duty police officers</a> to carry weapons and patrol majority-minority neighborhoods in New Jersey, wearing armbands declaring them part of a “National Ballot Security Task Force” that had no governmental sanction. That was one of several actions that resulted in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-encouragement-of-gop-poll-watchers-echoes-an-old-tactic-of-voter-intimidation-147234">federal judge’s order that the Republican Party stop intimidating voters</a>. That order was extended several times, but <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/09/rnc-ballot-security-consent-decree-328995">expired in 2017</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1583976792062185472"}"></div></p>
<h2>21st-century voter intimidation</h2>
<p>But these activities extend beyond the GOP. Since around 2010, grassroots groups emerged in the name of protecting election integrity. These groups <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/retiree-latino-organizations-sue-group-alleged-voter-intimidation-ariz-rcna53887">alleged that there was rampant voter fraud</a> in American elections and took it on themselves to aggressively monitor elections.</p>
<p>Probably the most prominent of these groups is “True The Vote.” It and other groups like it claim they seek to root out voter fraud and protect American elections. Yet these groups have, as recently as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/06/us-far-right-groups-drop-box-voting-legal-issues">the 2022 midterms</a>, engaged in surveilling voters, made aggressive inquiries about voters’ practices and openly carried weapons while doing so. All of that is, arguably, voter intimidation. </p>
<p>Their motivation – unsupported by evidence, and in fact <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/truth-about-voter-fraud">comprehensively</a> <a href="https://scholars.org/sites/scholars/files/ssn_key_findings_minnite_on_the_myth_of_voter_fraud.pdf">contradicted</a> by it – is that massive voter fraud has affected the results of recent elections.</p>
<p>I argue that these claims serve to spread what I call the “<a href="https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview/vol63/iss4/2/">meme of voter fraud</a>.” One of the consequences of this dangerous meme is to justify voter intimidation against minority communities. And I have <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/jour_mlr/vol71/iss3/7/">analyzed</a> how this myth-making has increased with the voter fraud claims of former president Donald Trump. </p>
<p>Voter intimidation is still illegal and still damages American elections today. Protections <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1985">codified in the Ku Klux Klan Act</a> and the Voting Rights Act still allow citizens to <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol97/iss1/10">file civil lawsuits</a> against people who intimidate voters. These statutes, however, remain underused, probably because they have been overshadowed by larger provisions of the laws.</p>
<p>Yet, if more voters and civil rights organizations used these laws, they could confront aggressive voter intimidation and unmask its false claims of policing election integrity. These activities threaten to make American democracy inaccessible for millions of citizens whose voices deserve to be heard. And modern voter intimidation continues the ugliest racist trend of vote suppression from America’s past. </p>
<p>This history shouldn’t repeat itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193808/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Atiba Ellis is a consultant and expert witness in an ongoing voter intimidation lawsuit.</span></em></p>
Any behavior reasonably calculated to dissuade a person from participating in an election is intimidation.
Atiba Ellis, Professor of Law, Marquette University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181548
2022-06-02T18:56:15Z
2022-06-02T18:56:15Z
What 5 previous congressional investigations can teach us about the House Jan. 6 committee hearings
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466595/original/file-20220601-49081-yb92dg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C0%2C3652%2C2422&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee Sam Ervin sits with Chief Counsel Sam Dash, Sen. Howard Baker, staffer Rufus Edmiston and others as they listen to a witness during the Watergate hearings. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chairman-of-the-senate-watergate-committee-sam-ervin-sits-news-photo/576823048?adppopup=true">Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Public hearings to be held in June by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection will attempt to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/23/capitol-attack-panel-public-hearings-trump">answer the question of whether</a> former President Donald Trump and his political allies broke the law in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results.</p>
<p>The Jan. 6 hearings are part of a <a href="https://time.com/5944289/jan-6-commission-history/">long history</a> of congressional investigation.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.levin-center.org/congress-first-investigation-general-st-clairs-defeat/">first congressional inquiry</a> occurred in the House in 1792 to investigate Gen. Arthur St. Clair’s role in the U.S. Army’s defeat in the Battle of the Wabash against the tribes of the Northwest Territory. The Senate conducted its <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3124558.pdf">first official investigation</a> in 1818, looking into Gen. Andrew Jackson’s conduct in the Seminole War.</p>
<p>A look back at five of the most noteworthy congressional investigations since those initial probes suggests that Congress regularly has used its constitutional authority to gather facts and draw public attention to important issues in the country.</p>
<h2>Ku Klux Klan hearings</h2>
<p>In 1871, Congress <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/01/08/1871-provides-roadmap-addressing-wednesdays-pro-trump-insurrection/">established a committee</a> to investigate violence against and intimidation of Black voters in several states.</p>
<p>A year later, the committee produced <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/metabook?id=insurrection1872">13 volumes</a> of evidence containing the testimony of over 600 witnesses describing systemic violence – including killings, beatings, lynchings and rapes – committed by the Ku Klux Klan, known also as the KKK. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466604/original/file-20220601-49330-yh83ah.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A drawing depicts a man labeled 'White League' shaking hands with a Ku Klux Klan member over a shield illustrated with an African American couple holding a possibly dead baby. In the background is a man hanging from a tree." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466604/original/file-20220601-49330-yh83ah.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466604/original/file-20220601-49330-yh83ah.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466604/original/file-20220601-49330-yh83ah.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466604/original/file-20220601-49330-yh83ah.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466604/original/file-20220601-49330-yh83ah.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466604/original/file-20220601-49330-yh83ah.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466604/original/file-20220601-49330-yh83ah.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Congress investigated the racist violence of the KKK in 1871.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3c28619/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite extensive media coverage and the wealth of information uncovered by the committee, many Americans at that time <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27919387">still questioned</a> the KKK’s existence.<br>
Such skepticism was supported by the Democratic minority report that accompanied Congress’ investigation. At a time when Democrats represented the party that had supported slavery, their report legitimized the KKK’s actions in undeniably racist language. Segments of the public <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/13/what-history-says-about-jan-6-committee-investigation/">adopted</a> the bigoted language and ideas contained in the minority report for decades to come.</p>
<h2>Teapot Dome scandal</h2>
<p>In 1922, news broke that President Warren G. Harding’s administration had secretly leased federal oil fields to political allies. At the time, these no-bid contracts were valued at around <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/11/bought-off-by-big-oil?context=amp">$200 million</a> – the equivalent of over $3 billion today.</p>
<p>The contracts were awarded by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Teapot-Dome-Scandal">Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall</a>, a former senator and a friend of the president’s. </p>
<p>Congress opened an investigation into the matter, <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1924/01/22/Senate-Committee-to-use-all-legal-powers-to-investigate-Teapot-Dome/8404631771198/">and a UPI news story said</a> on Jan. 22, 1924, “The assistance of Department of Justice agents, United States marshals and the federal courts will be invoked if necessary, senators said, to force the truth from reluctant witnesses.” </p>
<p>As a result of the investigation, Fall resigned and was later convicted of bribery. He was the <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/harding/essays/fall-1921-secretary-of-the-interior">first former Cabinet official</a> in history to be sentenced to prison because of misconduct in office.</p>
<p>Harding is <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1879648_1879646_1879696,00.html">considered</a> to be one of the country’s worst presidents, in part because of the scandal and corruption brought to light by Congress’ investigation. </p>
<h2>Organized crime and the Kefauver Committee</h2>
<p>In 1950, Congress formed a special committee <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/10449541">in response</a> to a series of news articles suggesting that organized crime was corrupting many local government officials. It was referred to as the Kefauver Committee after its chairman, Democratic Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. The committee launched an investigation, traveling to 14 major cities in the process.</p>
<p>The committee’s hearings rank among the <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/kefauver.htm">most widely viewed congressional investigations</a> in history. It is estimated that <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-senator-and-the-gangsters-69770823/">90% of televisions</a> in America were tuned in to the hearings.</p>
<p>In part, what made the investigation such good TV was the <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/resources/pdf/kefauver-committee-full-citations.pdf">cast of characters</a> subpoenaed to testify. Mobsters, their girlfriends, former elected officials and their lawyers paraded into the hearings, all captured on live television.</p>
<p>Not all witnesses complied with the subpoenas. In fact, the Senate approved <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal51-889-29670-1406711">45 contempt of Congress citations</a> in 1951 alone. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lasvegas-kefauver/">Litigation over witness noncompliance continued</a> in most cases even after the committee issued its over 11,000-page final report. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466591/original/file-20220601-48778-yx23wp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowded room where a handful of men are sitting at a raised desk, while one woman talks in the audience" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466591/original/file-20220601-48778-yx23wp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466591/original/file-20220601-48778-yx23wp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466591/original/file-20220601-48778-yx23wp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466591/original/file-20220601-48778-yx23wp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466591/original/file-20220601-48778-yx23wp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466591/original/file-20220601-48778-yx23wp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466591/original/file-20220601-48778-yx23wp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Virginia Hill Hauser, onetime girlfriend of mobster Bugsy Siegel, talks as members of the Kefauver Senate Crime Investigating Committee listen to her testimony during interstate crime probe hearings at a federal courthouse in New York City on March 15, 1951.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirginiaHillHauser/86b0ef78e34f4517aa4b75dc64b0bb6e/photo?Query=Kefauver%20committee&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=65&currentItemNo=15">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Watergate</h2>
<p>In 1973, after seven men from President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, <a href="https://www.levin-center.org/the-watergate-hearings/">the Senate voted 77-0</a> to establish a committee to investigate the break-in.</p>
<p>Throughout the investigation, President Nixon <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/watergate.htm">refused to cooperate</a> with the committee’s requests for information and directed his aides to do the same. He claimed <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/anniversary-of-united-states-v-nixon">executive privilege</a> gave him the right to refuse to hand over White House records, including audiotapes, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/02/07/presidential-records-act-trump-nixon/">planned</a> for many of them to be destroyed. </p>
<p>The battle between the president and Congress went to court and, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/10/03/inside-supreme-court-ruling-that-made-nixon-turn-over-his-watergate-tapes/">hours before</a> the House was scheduled to start debating whether to impeach him, the Supreme Court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/418/683/">ruled</a> against Nixon.</p>
<p>The tapes showed Nixon had, despite his denials, taken part in the cover-up. Nixon lost the support of prominent Republicans in Congress, and he resigned shortly thereafter to <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-resigns">avoid impeachment</a>. </p>
<h2>Intelligence community and the Church Committee</h2>
<p>In addition to revealing presidential misconduct, the Watergate Committee investigation found evidence that the U.S. intelligence community was conducting <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm">potentially unconstitutional</a> domestic operations, including spying on U.S. citizens. </p>
<p>Then, in 1974, The New York Times published an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/12/22/archives/huge-cia-operation-reported-in-u-s-against-antiwar-forces-other.html">extensive investigation</a> by reporter Seymour M. Hersh suggesting that the CIA maintained at least 10,000 intelligence files on U.S. citizens.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466606/original/file-20220601-48874-a0wqb1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men sitting at a table, one holding up an oddly shaped gun." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466606/original/file-20220601-48874-a0wqb1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466606/original/file-20220601-48874-a0wqb1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466606/original/file-20220601-48874-a0wqb1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466606/original/file-20220601-48874-a0wqb1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466606/original/file-20220601-48874-a0wqb1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466606/original/file-20220601-48874-a0wqb1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466606/original/file-20220601-48874-a0wqb1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chairman Frank Church, D-Idaho, of the Senate Intelligence Committee, displays a poison dart gun Sept. 17, 1975, as Co-Chairman John G. Tower, R-Texas, looks at the weapon during the panel’s probe of the Central Intelligence Agency.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CHURCHTOWER/b870744467e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo?Query=Church%20Committee%20hearing&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=82&currentItemNo=9">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response, Congress established a special committee to investigate. The committee’s <a href="https://www.levin-center.org/frank-church-and-the-church-committee/">16-month inquiry</a> exposed the attempted assassinations of foreign political leaders, experiments conducted on U.S. citizens, and covert operations to recruit journalists to monitor private citizens’ communications and to spread propaganda over the media. </p>
<p>The committee found that <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm">every presidential administration</a> from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon had abused its authority. </p>
<p>“Intelligence agencies have undermined the constitutional rights of citizens,” <a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/resources/intelligence-related-commissions">the final report concluded</a>, “primarily because checks and balances designed by the framers of the Constitution to assure accountability have not been applied.”</p>
<h2>Mainstream oversight</h2>
<p>A few common themes run throughout these five noteworthy congressional investigations. </p>
<p>First, as the legacy of the Church Committee suggests, public hearings help provide a layer of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/27/in-the-1970s-congress-investigated-intelligence-abuses-time-to-do-it-again/">transparency</a> to government.</p>
<p>Congress and the media can be <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691171852/investigating-the-president">allies</a> in investigation. Investigative reporting like in the work that revealed the <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/clip/33493758/wall-street-journal-reports-on-sinclair/">Teapot Dome scandal</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321316118/40-years-on-woodward-and-bernstein-recall-reporting-on-watergate">Watergate</a> can lay the groundwork for congressional probes. And media coverage of proceedings like the <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/resources/pdf/kefauver-committee-full-citations.pdf">Kefauver Committee’s investigation</a> not only raises public awareness but also puts pressure on federal, state and local government officials to act.</p>
<p>But party can get in the way. In one example, partisan infighting and the Democrats’ rejection of the KKK proceedings hindered Congress’ effectiveness and <a href="https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-jan-6-panel-must-avoid-fate-of-congress-klan-report/">provided a narrative</a> that helped justify Jim Crow laws and other racist policies.</p>
<p>Similarly, party loyalty led many Republicans to remain <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/it-took-a-long-time-for-republicans-to-abandon-nixon/">vocal in support of Nixon</a> until the full scope of the president’s actions were revealed through the Watergate investigation.</p>
<p>These moments in history also illustrate the importance of examining elected officials’ political support networks. </p>
<p>When President Harding assumed office, he placed <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/07/the-greatest-hearings-in-american-history-215237/">loyal allies</a> in government positions. While these allies helped reinforce Harding’s pledge to reorganize government and “<a href="https://millercenter.org/issues-policy/us-domestic-policy/making-teapot-dome-scandal-relevant-again">return to normalcy</a>,” they also perpetuated corruption. </p>
<p>Likewise, the Watergate investigation prompted <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/02/why-did-nixons-team-order-watergate-break-in-in-the-first-place">criminal charges</a> against 69 people, including two Cabinet officials. Additionally, dozens of major corporations pleaded guilty to illegally financing Nixon’s reelection campaign.</p>
<p>While the upcoming hearings of the House Jan. 6 investigative committee will be dealing with unprecedented events in American history, the very investigation of these events has strong precedent. Congress has long exercised its power to investigate some of the greatest problems facing the nation. In that way, the upcoming hearings fit squarely into the mainstream of American government oversight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181548/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The views expressed in this article are solely the views of the author and not the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy.</span></em></p>
The public hearings of the House Jan. 6 investigative committee will deal with unprecedented events in American history, but the very investigation of these events has strong precedent.
Jennifer Selin, Co-director, Washington Office, Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, Wayne State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/153676
2021-01-22T15:58:32Z
2021-01-22T15:58:32Z
Capitol mob wasn’t just angry men – there were angry women as well
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380067/original/file-20210121-15-17vtax2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C16%2C5523%2C3715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There were women among the crowd that marched to the Capitol and stormed the building.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-supporters-near-the-u-s-capitol-on-january-06-2021-in-news-photo/1230476985?adppopup=true">Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/capitol-insurrection-visual-timeline/">terror inflicted on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6</a> laid bare <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-boogaloo-and-who-are-the-rioters-who-stormed-the-capitol-5-essential-reads-153337">America’s problem with violent extremism</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-law-enforcement-is-using-technology-to-track-down-people-who-attacked-the-us-capitol-building-153282">The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have begun to piece together</a> the events of that day, while attempting to thwart any impending attacks. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/storytelling/capitol-riot-mob-arrests/">Scores of people have been arrested and charged</a> over the attack – the vast majority being men. </p>
<p>In the wake of these events, there were stories attributing the violence and destruction to “<a href="https://www.thelily.com/what-happened-at-the-capitol-was-pure-white-male-privilege/">white male rage</a>” “<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/capitol-riot-male-rage.html">violent male rage</a>” and “<a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/capitol-breach-white-rioters-protesters-georgia-election-20210111.html">angry white men</a>.” </p>
<p>But what about the women?</p>
<p>To distill the violent insurrection into a tale of angry male rage is to overlook the threat that women in the mob posed to congressional officials, law enforcement and U.S. democracy that day. </p>
<h2>Long history of women’s involvement</h2>
<p>Several women have been identified as alleged participants in the events of Jan. 6. Among those women are a <a href="https://www.cleveland19.com/2021/01/11/still-no-charges-against-former-cmsd-employee-linked-capitol-riots/">former school occupational therapist</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-protest-officials-insight/off-duty-cops-other-officials-face-reckoning-after-rallying-for-trump-in-d-c-idUSKBN29I315">an employee of a county sheriff’s office</a>, a <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/jenna-ryan-texas-realtor-capitol-riots-sign-vandalised-1560515">real estate broker</a> and a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/13/we-mock-the-rioters-as-ignorant-at-our-peril-459072">former mayoral candidate</a>. </p>
<p>At least <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/oath-keepers-capitol-riot.html">one woman</a> is being investigated for her role in organizing the attack with fellow members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia movement. And <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/07/ashli-babbitt-dead-capitol-riot/">Ashli Babbit, a female veteran</a>, was shot dead by police while attempting to breach the Senate floor.</p>
<p>The women who took part in the siege of the Capitol are part of a long history of women’s participation in extremist violence, both in the United States and abroad. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380060/original/file-20210121-23-1ci8szt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A headshot of Jessica Watkins." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380060/original/file-20210121-23-1ci8szt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380060/original/file-20210121-23-1ci8szt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380060/original/file-20210121-23-1ci8szt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380060/original/file-20210121-23-1ci8szt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380060/original/file-20210121-23-1ci8szt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380060/original/file-20210121-23-1ci8szt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380060/original/file-20210121-23-1ci8szt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jessica Watkins, seen here in a photo from the Montgomery County jail, is facing federal charges that she participated in the assault on the U.S. Capitol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CapitolBreachArrests/b6464e489c5c4245a59807864fb2fd4a/photo?Query=Capitol%20AND%20Breach&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1239&currentItemNo=21">Montgomery County Jail via AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women have buoyed American far-right organizations and causes for centuries. In <a href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/seyward-darby/sisters-in-hate/9780316487771/">her recent book</a> on women at the forefront of contemporary white nationalism, author <a href="https://seywarddarby.com/">Seyward Darby</a> writes that women are not “incidental to white nationalism, they are a sustaining feature.” </p>
<p>Since the late 1800s, women have supported and enabled the terrorist white supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan, while hundreds of thousands joined its female affiliate, Women of the Ku Klux Klan, and its predecessors. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178170?pq-origsite=summon&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Women helped establish</a> the Klan’s culture, bolstered its recruitment efforts and manufactured its propaganda. Despite its hyper-masculine ideology, which identifies white men as the primary arbiters of political power, women have also held leadership positions <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00380237.2016.1135029">within the modern-day Klan</a>. </p>
<p>More recently, women have joined the far-right Proud Boys movement, which has <a href="https://www.wiisglobal.org/not-convinced-a-gender-perspective-matters-to-todays-political-activism-meet-the-proud-boys-and-their-girls/">openly recruited female foot soldiers</a>. In December, a growing rift between male and female Proud Boys was reported. After experiencing intense sexist backlash from men in the organization, women led by <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/proud-boys-are-at-war-with-their-proud-girls-female-extremist-wing?ref=home">MMA fighter Tara LaRosa</a> began their own group, the Proud Girls USA. </p>
<p>To leave one extremist organization in order to form another suggests a deep commitment to the far-right cause.</p>
<h2>Discounting is dangerous</h2>
<p>A 2005 study <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10576100601101067?casa_token=5Up9CxiwQpAAAAAA%3ATmDm-CtsOasDz__iRni78NJf3UFY-tylaKfYChMRuwCqsdr1uVeH__sOjOGQ4qtA3EvR0qWuIYCE">noted a disconnect between the rise in women</a> within American right-wing terrorist organizations and the attention it received from law enforcement. </p>
<p>Despite a marked increase in women’s engagement in acts of terror against the state and racial minorities, security officials <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10576100601101067">have largely failed to publicize</a>, search and interrogate women operatives in these organizations, even after they become known to law enforcement. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10576100601101067">There is also evidence</a> that American far-right women have drawn inspiration and tactical knowledge from women engaged in extremist violence abroad. </p>
<p>Evidence from the global war on terror points to the potential dangers of ignoring the growth of violent extremism among women. In Iraq, for example, female terrorists carried out large numbers of deadly suicide attacks against American assets during the U.S. occupation. </p>
<p>The rest of the world has since been forced to grapple with the reality of violent women after female terrorists staged lethal attacks in Nigeria, Somalia, Tunisia, the Philippines, Indonesia and France. </p>
<p>Recent terror attacks in American cities such as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/12/02/one-year-after-san-bernardino-police-offer-a-possible-motive-as-questions-still-linger/">San Bernardino</a>, California, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/24/las-vegas-cop-killers-packed-ammo-and-wore-adult-diapers-as-they-prepared-for-their-revolution/">Las Vegas</a> that featured women among the perpetrators confirm violent women have already inflicted damage on U.S. soil.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380069/original/file-20210121-13-1lwibg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Ku Klux Klan security guards escorting two women members." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380069/original/file-20210121-13-1lwibg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380069/original/file-20210121-13-1lwibg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380069/original/file-20210121-13-1lwibg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380069/original/file-20210121-13-1lwibg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380069/original/file-20210121-13-1lwibg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380069/original/file-20210121-13-1lwibg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380069/original/file-20210121-13-1lwibg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ku Klux Klan security guards escort two female members after a Klan meeting in Castro Valley, California, in 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/KuKluxKlan1979Women/a1d3e8cff91c4ccdaa56b3f0d2e2f257/photo?Query=women%20Ku%20Klux%20Klan&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=17&currentItemNo=7">AP Photo/PS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Gender bias can be deadly</h2>
<p>In fact, <a href="http://www.jakanathomas.com/research.html">my research</a> suggests that attacks by female terrorists are often more destructive than those executed by their male counterparts.</p>
<p>In an analysis of over 2,500 global suicide attacks, I show disparities in the severity of male and female attacks are greatest where gender stereotypes suggest that women are neither violent nor political. Such tropes can blind security officials and civilians to the threat posed by women terrorists, causing them to overlook the potential for female complicity. </p>
<p>Female terrorists, including in <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/isis-female-suicide-bombers-battle-mosul-631846">Iraq,</a> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3395973.stm">Israel</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/world/africa/nigeria-vexed-by-boko-harams-use-of-women-as-suicide-bombers.html">Nigeria</a>, have been able to deflect suspicion because they were women. My research shows that gender bias can become deadly when it stops effective counterterrorism policies, such as surveillance, searches and interrogations, from being implemented. </p>
<p>Additionally, since ordinary citizens played an unusual role in exposing the identities of the Capitol attackers, gender biases among civilians are also relevant. Failure to accept women’s complicity in the Capitol siege and the broader movement may prevent the identification of female offenders and impedes efforts to punish and deter future attacks.</p>
<p>American women have been key pillars of support for violent right-wing extremists for centuries. They have been right-wing extremists themselves – racist skinheads, neo-Nazis and Klanswomen. Women are also Oath Keepers, <a href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2020/05/26/what-to-know-about-kentucky-three-percenters-group/5258749002/">Three Percenters</a> and Proud Boys. They were capitol rioters.</p>
<p>To construct an accurate account of the Capitol attack, it’s necessary to ask “Where are the women?” And the answer is, “Right there.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153676/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jakana Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
To distill the violent insurrection at the US Capitol into a tale of angry male rage is to overlook the threat that women in the mob posed.
Jakana Thomas, Associate Professor, Michigan State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/153375
2021-01-21T19:57:57Z
2021-01-21T19:57:57Z
US could face a simmering, chronic domestic terror problem, warn security experts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379815/original/file-20210120-21-1rz7y7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C5507%2C3644&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some 25,000 National Guard troops protected Joe Biden's presidential inauguration due to fears of a far-right extremist attack.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-national-guard-gather-near-the-u-s-capitol-news-photo/1297445025?adppopup=true">Stephanie Keith/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/us/politics/biden-president.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage">President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021</a> without any violent incidents, many in the United States and worldwide breathed a sigh of relief. </p>
<p>The respite may be brief. The ingredients that led an incensed pro-Trump mob to break into the Capitol and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurations-capitol-siege-8828a6a920198d0ea1ee0c73a49d8847">plant pipe bombs</a> at other federal buildings on Jan. 6 remain. </p>
<p>Several U.S. security experts say they now consider <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/domestic-terrorism-has-superseded-the-threat-of-international-terrorism-warns-ex-nyc-police-commissioner.html">domestic extremism a greater threat to the country than international terror</a>. According to my <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.polisci.12.031607.094133">research on political violence</a>, the U.S. has all the elements that, combined, can produce a low-intensity terrorist conflict: extreme polarization and armed factions willing to break the law, in a wealthy democracy with a strong government.</p>
<h2>Terror can thrive in affluent democracies too</h2>
<p>Chronic domestic terror is not the same as civil war. </p>
<p>In the modern era, civil wars usually take place in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002706289303">poor countries where the government is too weak and unstable to maintain control over a sprawling, often mountainous territory</a>. Rebels take over swaths of the country and seek to replace the authorities in those areas. This is happening in Afghanistan, India and Nigeria, to name a few places. </p>
<p>In the United States, one of the world’s more powerful nations, armed factions have a hard time permanently seizing land. Several dramatic standoffs between fringe extremists and American authorities – including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-capitol-siege-recalls-past-acts-of-christian-nationalist-violence-153059">1993 Waco siege</a> and the Bundy family’s 41-day <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/01/armed-occupation-of-malheur-refuge-was-dress-rehearsal-for-violent-takeover-of-nations-capitol-extremist-watchdogs-say.html">occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge</a> in 2016 – ended <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-deaths-of-76-branch-davidians-in-april-1993-could-have-been-avoided-so-why-didnt-anyone-care-90816">poorly for the extremists</a>. </p>
<p>A huge asymmetry of power between the state and armed factions prevents militants from openly battling to usurp its authority, as rebel groups like the Taliban do and the American Confederates did. It <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002711431800">forces armed groups to act underground</a>, hiding among the general population. Because democratic states cannot, at least on paper, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546559408427271">openly violate human rights by systematically persecuting militants or torturing prisoners</a>, underground armed rebels can thrive in democracies. </p>
<p>But operating in secret <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2015.1059103">imposes heavy logistical constraints</a>, my research shows.</p>
<p>It limits the number of operations they can sustain, meaning thinner ranks than full-fledged insurgencies and fewer overall fatalities than in civil wars. And although all rebels may dream of <a href="https://theconversation.com/fidel-castro-and-the-revolution-that-almost-wasnt-69659">Che Guevara-style guerrilla adventures</a> – heroically liberating “the people” from tyranny – in practice, militants working underground cannot avoid resorting to quintessential terrorist tactics such as bombs, shootings, bank robberies and kidnappings. </p>
<p>Take Italy’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Red-Brigades">Red Brigades</a>, for example. In the 1970s, this far-left organization aimed at overthrowing the capitalist system, but the Italian state was too strong. So the group resorted to terrorism. For two decades, the Red Brigades carried out a low-intensity campaign that killed perhaps 500 people, mainly with bombings and assassinations. They used violence <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/historical-roots-of-political-violence/67C092F25F02FFF74C7DC88CD1499D74">as a strategy to raise consciousness about communism and provoke an insurrection</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379805/original/file-20210120-13-o5k892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white image of a crowd looking at a bullet-riddled car with shatters windshields and windows" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379805/original/file-20210120-13-o5k892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379805/original/file-20210120-13-o5k892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379805/original/file-20210120-13-o5k892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379805/original/file-20210120-13-o5k892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379805/original/file-20210120-13-o5k892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379805/original/file-20210120-13-o5k892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379805/original/file-20210120-13-o5k892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crowd surveys the damage after a Red Brigades attack in Rome, May 3, 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-police-car-hit-by-the-bullets-of-the-red-brigades-news-photo/935698506?adppopup=true">Stefano Montesi - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In reaction to this communist violence, far-right groups like Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari responded with indiscriminate attacks, including a <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/02/italy-remembers-the-victims-of-the-bologna-massacre-40-years-on">no-warning 1980 train bombing in Bologna that killed 85 civilians</a>. They sought to create a level of disruption so high that it would <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343310392890">justify military intervention against the “enemies of the state”</a> – a fascist coup d'etat.</p>
<p>Both sides lost. There was no insurrection, no intervention. Italian democracy prevailed.</p>
<h2>Lone wolf terror</h2>
<p>The U.S, too, has experience with coordinated domestic terror. </p>
<p>Throughout the early 20th century, the Ku Klux Klan waged vicious campaigns against Black Americans in the South. As the <a href="https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-6765.1986.tb00852.x">tide of the civil rights movement</a> ebbed in the late 1960s, radical Marxists like the <a href="https://time.com/4549409/the-weather-underground-bad-moon-rising/">Weather Underground</a> and the <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/s/sclead/umich-scl-bla?view=text">Black Liberation Army</a> emerged, using violence to oppose American military intervention in Vietnam and push for racial equality. </p>
<p>Between 1969 and 1981, these two groups – one predominately white, the other Black – conducted some 200 attacks, from bank robberies to prison breaks. Fifteen people were killed, most of them security officers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379816/original/file-20210120-21-1ymsjze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two Black men in handcuffs in a paddy wagon smile at the camera" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379816/original/file-20210120-21-1ymsjze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379816/original/file-20210120-21-1ymsjze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379816/original/file-20210120-21-1ymsjze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379816/original/file-20210120-21-1ymsjze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379816/original/file-20210120-21-1ymsjze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379816/original/file-20210120-21-1ymsjze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379816/original/file-20210120-21-1ymsjze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alleged Black Liberation Army member Henry Brown, center, was arrested in the slayings of two New York City police officers, Oct. 4, 1973. He was later acquitted.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/black-liberation-army-member-henry-brown-left-accused-in-news-photo/540674374?adppopup=true">Vic DeLucia/New York Post Archives /(c) NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The FBI engaged in heavy-handed repression, particularly against Black militants. And Americans had scant interest in far left-wing goals like helping the oppressed peoples of the world. Both groups dwindled without much fanfare. </p>
<p>U.S. history has also featured a smattering of fringe, <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-age-of-lone-wolf-terrorism/9780231181747">lone wolf terrorists</a>, from the Unabomber on the left to the Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph on the right. This trend has recently accelerated, with a deadly new massacre each year. Individual white supremacists, in particular, have attacked immigrants and people of color, in Charleston, South Carolina, El Paso, Texas and beyond.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.adl.org/media/14107/download">According to the Anti-Defamation League</a>, which tracks hate crimes, 2019 was one of the deadliest years for “domestic extremist-related killings” since 1970, with 42 victims in 17 separate incidents.</p>
<h2>Trump’s militias</h2>
<p>Attacks characterized by lone wolf perpetrators have the advantage of limiting legal scrutiny on the extremist milieu. But <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/58/2/336/2963248">with coordination, armed campaigns can scale up to do much more damage</a>.</p>
<p>To overcome the lone wolf stage, disparate militant groups must organize around a common theme that gives coherence to their violence. <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-yorkers-knew-donald-trump-first-and-they-spurned-him-before-many-american-voters-did-148303">Trump’s electoral defeat</a> gave his <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-supporters-seeking-more-violence-could-target-state-capitols-during-inauguration-heres-how-cities-can-prepare-153285">armed followers a big one</a>: the <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-twitter-feed-shows-arc-of-the-hero-from-savior-to-showdown-152888">myth of a stolen election</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379813/original/file-20210120-17-1h5gtqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3735%2C2480&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man in militia gear lies face down on the ground in handcuffs with police standing over" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379813/original/file-20210120-17-1h5gtqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3735%2C2480&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379813/original/file-20210120-17-1h5gtqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379813/original/file-20210120-17-1h5gtqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379813/original/file-20210120-17-1h5gtqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379813/original/file-20210120-17-1h5gtqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379813/original/file-20210120-17-1h5gtqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379813/original/file-20210120-17-1h5gtqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police arrest a far-right protester during a pro-Trump rally on Sept. 7, 2020 in Salem, Ore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/police-arrest-a-far-right-protester-after-a-clash-with-news-photo/1228394654?adppopup=true">Nathan Howard/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Trump presidency emboldened a <a href="https://theconversation.com/police-soldiers-bring-lethal-skill-to-militia-campaigns-against-us-government-153369">cabal of armed groups with a far-right agenda</a>. Seeing their leader out of power will only grow this feeling of frustration. So will new repression of the far right, in the form of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-extremists/u-s-intelligence-reports-warn-of-extremist-threat-around-election-idUSKBN26K2J7">arrests, surveillance</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-deplatforming-work-to-curb-hate-speech-and-calls-for-violence-3-experts-in-online-communications-weigh-in-153177">social media clampdowns</a>.</p>
<p>With Democrats controlling Washington and elections perceived as rigged, American far-right groups may believe further violence is the only way to counter what they see as federal overreach. </p>
<p>If they pursue terrorism, <a href="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isec.2006.31.2.42">history shows</a> their chances of succeeding are negligible. But this won’t stop them from trying.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153375/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis De la Calle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Far-right extremists in the US have the potential to mount a coordinated, low-intensity campaign of political violence. It wouldn’t be the country’s first experience with domestic terror.
Luis De la Calle, Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and Associate Professor in Political Science, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/152867
2021-01-07T18:02:53Z
2021-01-07T18:02:53Z
US Capitol protesters, egged on by Trump, are part of a long history of white supremacists hearing politicians’ words as encouragement
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377628/original/file-20210107-16-rpdrh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C20%2C6639%2C4376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Proud Boys outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-proud-boys-outside-the-us-capitol-in-washington-dc-on-news-photo/1230463103?adppopup=true">(Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“President Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress incited a violent attack Wednesday against the government they lead,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/trump-capitol-dc-protests.html">The New York Times’ editorial board wrote</a> on Jan. 6, summing up much of the response to the incursion into the Capitol by rioting Trump supporters that day.</p>
<p>At a rally that morning, Donald Trump <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-01-06/news-analysis-trumps-violent-rhetoric-incites-supporters-capitol-takeover">had urged those supporters</a> to march on the Capitol, saying he would “never concede” and that they should show “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” </p>
<p>The Times was joined in laying the blame at Trump’s feet by many others, including <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/07/mitt-romney-riot-violence-reaction-capitol-certification-sot-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/congress-certifies-electoral-college-vote/">Republican Sen. Mitt Romney</a>, who said what happened at the Capitol was “an insurrection incited by the president of the United States.”</p>
<p>Among the protesters at the Capitol were members of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/proud-boys-white-supremacist-group-law-enforcement-agencies">white supremacy groups, including the Proud Boys</a>. Their participation in the Jan. 6 events, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/insurrection-capitol-extremist-groups-invs/index.html">egged on by Trump</a>, reflects a long history in the U.S. of local, state and national political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to challenge or overthrow democratic governments. </p>
<p>During Reconstruction, the post-Civil War period of forming interracial governments and reintegrating former Confederate states into the Union, white city and state leaders in the South tacitly encouraged violence against black voters by state militias and groups like the <a href="http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2934">Ku Klux Klan</a>. They did it in a way that allowed those leaders to look innocent of any crimes. </p>
<p>Those groups used that chaos to end federal power in their states and reestablish white-dominated Southern state governments. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-to-reopen-the-us-economy-137044">white supremacists hope the political chaos they contribute to will lead to</a> <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">race war</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-reopen-protesters-really-saying-137558">and the creation of their own white nation</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cartoon by Thomas Nast in an 1868 Harper’s Weekly, ‘This is a white man’s government,’ skewering Southern white supremacists fighting Reconstruction laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/98513794/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reconstruction violence</h2>
<p>Moments of changing social and political power in U.S. history have led to clashes – <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed">often armed</a> – between white supremacists and interracial alliances over voting rights.</p>
<p>That history includes the period following the Civil War, when white supremacist organizations saw the postwar rule over Southern states of Radical Republicans and the federal government as illegitimate. They wanted to return to the prewar status quo of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/14301/slavery-by-another-name-by-douglas-a-blackmon/">slavery by another name</a> and white supremacist rule.</p>
<p>As a historian of <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/4113/discussions/157750/register-kentucky-historical-society-vol-115-no-1-now-available">protests and Reconstruction</a>, I study how those paramilitary groups or self-proclaimed “regulators” consequently spread fear and terror among black and white Republican voters with the support of the anti-black Democratic Party in Southern states. </p>
<p>They targeted elections and vowed to “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=U7hpAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA2101&lpg=PA2101&dq=%E2%80%9Ccarry+the+election+peaceably+if+we+can,+forcibly+if+we+must.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=vZU88x92mU&sig=ACfU3U34H7Xb-2aUHMGrMKULNiHBUi1D4w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxyZvYgKrpAhXRKs0KHXiiCuUQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Ccarry%20the%20election%20peaceably%20if%20we%20can%2C%20forcibly%20if%20we%20must.%E2%80%9D&f=false">carry the election peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must</a>.” </p>
<p>Still, many courageous black and white voters <a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_nine_documents/document_4">fought back</a> by forming political organizations, daring to vote and <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/black-south-carolinians-form-militia-protection-1874">assembling their own armed guards</a> to protect themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335429/original/file-20200515-138610-f56wxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A leader of the Three Percenters militia movement, Matt Marshall, speaks at an anti-lockdown protest, April 19, 2020 in Olympia, Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/matt-marshall-of-the-right-wing-group-washington-state-news-photo/1210404370?adppopup=true">Getty/Karen Ducey</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Gentlemen of property and standing’</h2>
<p>Then, as today, white supremacists received encouraging signals from powerful leaders. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gentlemen-Property-Standing-Anti-Abolition-Jacksonian/dp/0195013514">gentlemen of property and standing</a>” often led or indirectly supported anti-abolition mobs, slave patrols, lynch mobs or Klan attacks. </p>
<p>Federal investigators in Kentucky in 1867 found that “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572671/pdf">many men of wealth and position</a>” rode with the armed groups. One witness in the federal investigation testified that “many of the most respectable men in the county belong in the ‘Lynch’ party.” Future South Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman reflected on his participation in the <a href="http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/hamburg-massacre/">Hamburg massacre</a> of 1876, arguing that “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ben_Tillman_and_the_Reconstruction_of_Wh/dOA4CQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=having+the+whites+demonstrate+their+superiority+by+killing+as+many+as+was+justifiable&pg=PA67&printsec=frontcover">the leading men</a>” of the area wanted to teach black voters a lesson by “having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many as was justifiable.” At least six black men were killed in the Hamburg attack on the black South Carolina militia by the <a href="http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/red-shirts/">Red Shirts</a>, a white rifle club.</p>
<p>White supremacists knew that they would not face consequences for their violence. </p>
<p>An agent of the federal <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/freedmens-bureau">Freedmen’s Bureau</a> – set up by Congress in 1865 to help former slaves and poor whites in the South – stated that the “<a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_nine_documents/document_3">desperadoes</a>” received encouragement and were “screened from the hands of justice by citizens of boasted connections.” </p>
<p>President Ulysses S. Grant <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.2070020a/?sp=2&st=text">condemned</a> the Hamburg massacre, arguing that some claimed “the right to kill negroes and Republicans without fear of punishment and without loss of caste or reputation.” </p>
<p>Facing community pressure, and without the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674743984">presence of the U.S. Army</a> to enforce laws, local sheriffs and judges refused or were unable to enforce federal laws. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Armed rioters shown in the aftermath of the multiracial Wilmington, North Carolina, government being overthrown by white supremacists in 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/photos/?q=Wilmington,+N.C.+race+riot">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Witnesses were often afraid to challenge local leaders for fear of attack. The “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572671/pdf">reign of terror</a>” was so complete that “men dare not report outrages and appear as witnesses.”</p>
<p>When the U.S. District Court in Kentucky brought charges against two men for lynching in 1871, prosecutors could not find witnesses willing to testify against the accused. The <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn82015463/">Frankfort Commonwealth</a> newspaper wrote, “He would be hung by a [mob] inside of twenty-four hours, and the dominant sentiment … would say ‘served him right.’”</p>
<h2>State militias</h2>
<p>As Southern states threw off federal military occupation and elected their own white-dominated governments, they no longer had to rely solely on white terror organizations to enforce their agenda. </p>
<p>Instead, these self-described “<a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/redeemer-democrats">redeemers</a>” formed state-funded militias that served similar functions of intimidation and voter suppression with the support of prominent citizens. </p>
<p>At political rallies and elections throughout the South, official Democratic militias paraded through towns and <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/For_Slavery_and_Union/D917BgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=democratic%20partisan%20militia">monitored polling stations</a> to threaten black and white Republican voters, proclaiming that “<a href="https://vtext.valdosta.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10428/1130/butler-joshua-w_almost-too-terrible-to-believe_history_thesis_2012.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">this is our country and we intend to protect it or die</a>.” </p>
<p>In 1870 the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84020086/">Louisville Commercial</a> newspaper argued, “We have, then, a militia for the State of Kentucky composed of members of one political party, and designed solely to operate against members of another political party. These militia are armed with State guns, are equipped from the State arsenal, and to a man are the enemies of the national government.” </p>
<p>By driving away Republican voters and claiming electoral victory, these Democratic leaders gained power through state-supported militia violence. </p>
<p>White militias and paramilitary groups also confiscated guns from black citizens who tried to protect themselves, claiming “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xvIYAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1057&lpg=PA1057&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+did+not+think+they+had+a+right+to+have+guns.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=30R_twS8pK&sig=ACfU3U2HxA-pbH0zCkMHuGweuTsTwmODWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicxtWNgKXpAhWCaM0KHbwYAMsQ6AEwAHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CWe%20did%20not%20think%20they%20had%20a%20right%20to%20have%20guns.%E2%80%9D&f=false">We did not think they had a right to have guns</a>.” </p>
<p>White terror groups and their allies in law enforcement were especially hostile to politically active black Union veterans who returned home with their military weapons. Local sheriffs confiscated weapons and armed bands raided homes to destroy their guns. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon, ‘The Union as it was,’ Thomas Nast critiques violent white supremacist organizations for forcing African Americans into a position ‘worse than slavery.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2001696840/">Library of Congress/Thomas Nast from Harpers Weekly</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Guerrilla race war</h2>
<p>During Reconstruction, paramilitary groups and official Democratic militias found support from county sheriffs up to state governors who encouraged violence while maintaining their own innocence.</p>
<p>Today, white supremacists appear to interpret politicians’ remarks as support for their cause of a <a href="https://gizmodo.com/report-over-100-militant-groups-have-been-promoting-se-1843051231">new civil war</a> to create a white-dominated government. </p>
<p>These groups <a href="https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/extremists-are-using-facebook-to-organize-for-civil-war-amid-coronavirus">thrive on recent protests against stay-at-home orders</a>, especially the ones featuring <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/27/why-are-people-bringing-guns-anti-quarantine-protests-be-intimidating/">protesters with guns</a>, creating an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/us/coronavirus-businesses-lockdown-guns.html">intimidating spectacle</a> for those who support local and state government authority. </p>
<p>Beyond “<a href="https://belonging.berkeley.edu/blog-revisiting-dog-whistle-politics">dog whistle</a>” politics, as in the past, these statements – and the actions encouraged by them – can lead to real <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/massachusetts-bomb-jewish-nursing-home.html">violence</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/senate-democrats-demand-action-cdc-doj-curb-covid-19-racism-n1201491">hate crimes</a> against any who threaten supremacists’ concept of a white nation.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-a-history-of-white-supremacists-interpreting-government-leaders-words-as-encouragement-137873">article originally published</a> May 18, 2020.</em></p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon M. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The protests that ended in the storming of the US Capitol included members of white supremacy groups, the latest example of such groups being encouraged by politicians to challenge government.
Shannon M. Smith, Associate Professor of History, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/151188
2020-12-22T20:59:59Z
2020-12-22T20:59:59Z
A forgotten coup in the American heartland echoes Trump
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376075/original/file-20201221-57996-13xg9io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C34%2C1888%2C1238&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A bronze statue in Tulsa, Okla., commemorating the abuse and terrorism suffered by Black people in the city, much of it at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK successfully overthrew a governor who tried to outlaw the organization.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pexels)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The governor orders the National Guard to string barbed wire around the capitol building and take up defensive positions with machine guns. </p>
<p>The Ku Klux Klan, after a campaign of terror against the governor’s supporters, calls for his ouster. The governor <a href="https://libraries.ou.edu/locations/docs/westhist/pdf/WaltonJohnCalloway.pdf">promises to pardon anyone who shoots a klansman</a>. </p>
<p>The KKK taunts the governor in the press, and <a href="https://tulsaworld.com/september-9-1923-gov-walton-begins-war-against-ku-klux-klan/article_3eb826ee-6894-11e6-a590-ff407aa1b51a.html">headlines tell citizens to prepare for war</a>. </p>
<p>No, this is not some <em>The Plot Against America</em>-style alternative history on Netflix. It is the scene-setting for an actual coup d’etat in the American heartland in the 1920s.</p>
<p>Nearly a century later, the media have reported that Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/20/media/stelter-trump-martial-law/index.html">continuing and ongoing threats to a peaceful transition of power</a> are unprecedented in American history. Indeed, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/06/dc-protests-trump-rally-live-updates/">the president literally incited a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol</a> as Congress was about to certify Joe Biden’s win on Jan. 6, 2021, in what amounted to an attempted coup. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1346947575975272448"}"></div></p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-poses-an-unprecedented-threat-to-the-peaceful-transition-of-power/2016/10/17/f97f8f82-947f-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html"><em>Washington Post</em> editorial board</a> remarked that when Americans see defeated political factions take up arms or send opponents to jail, a common response is, “this can happen in Zimbabwe … or Russia, or Cambodia, but not here. Not in the United States.” </p>
<p>But Americans don’t have to look overseas for antecedents of political coups. They can look at the Oklahoma State Capitol in 1923. What took place there fits the dictionary definition of a <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coup%20d'etat?src=search-dict-box">coup d’etat</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A sudden, decisive exercise of force in politics.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And it is almost entirely forgotten, with historical documentation filed away in an undigitized archive at the University of Oklahoma. <a href="https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/4165/7701815.PDF?sequence=1">For this detailed historical account, much of it based on 1920s news coverage</a>, <a href="https://law.okcu.edu/people/c-blue-clark/">C. Blue Clark</a>, a historian and legal scholar, uncovered the Klan’s role in what had been remembered as a simple case of corruption. </p>
<p>He wrote in the preface to his 1976 dissertation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Enter a room filled with people and inquire about the Klan and the result is similar to turning on a light at night in a kitchen and watching cockroaches scatter.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Echoes of today’s unrest</h2>
<p>The Klan’s overthrow of a governor is worth recalling, in part, because the 1922 Oklahoma election echoed many divisions present today in the United States.</p>
<p>The Democrat, Jack C. Walton, had his own version of the centrist versus progressive split in the party. Like President-elect Joe Biden, Walton stitched together a coalition of leftists, centrists and people of colour. <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SO001">The Socialist Party had been surprisingly strong in Oklahoma during the 1910s</a>, but had never achieved real power. The remnants of that party backed Walton.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375777/original/file-20201217-17-5sqq1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a man in a suit and tie" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375777/original/file-20201217-17-5sqq1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375777/original/file-20201217-17-5sqq1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375777/original/file-20201217-17-5sqq1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375777/original/file-20201217-17-5sqq1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375777/original/file-20201217-17-5sqq1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375777/original/file-20201217-17-5sqq1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375777/original/file-20201217-17-5sqq1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jack C. Walton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the campaign, Walton denounced the lynching of an African American man named Jake Brooks in Oklahoma City, while the Republican quietly accepted the endorsement of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130hr6v">Ku Klux Klan</a>. </p>
<p>Moderate white voters in the cities of Tulsa and Oklahoma City were slow to perceive the insidious influence of the KKK in the political mainstream. But the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 had proven the organization was not the “benevolent society” of its propaganda. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-rally-in-tulsa-a-day-after-juneteenth-awakens-memories-of-1921-racist-massacre-140915">Trump rally in Tulsa, a day after Juneteenth, awakens memories of 1921 racist massacre</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>When the KKK built a massive convention building called Beno Hall on Tulsa’s Main Street, the organization marketed “Beno” as short for “benevolent.” But everyone knew it meant “<a href="https://thislandpress.com/2011/09/03/beno-hall-tulsas-den-of-terror/">be no immigrants, be no Jews, be no [n-word]</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376067/original/file-20201220-19-1o36r7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cavernous white building with a cross attached as a marquee." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376067/original/file-20201220-19-1o36r7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376067/original/file-20201220-19-1o36r7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376067/original/file-20201220-19-1o36r7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376067/original/file-20201220-19-1o36r7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376067/original/file-20201220-19-1o36r7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376067/original/file-20201220-19-1o36r7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376067/original/file-20201220-19-1o36r7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cavernous white building built by the Klan, seen here in the 1970s, later served as an evangelical church.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new Oklahoma Grand Dragon was a pharmaceutical salesman from Oklahoma City named N.C. Jewett. He went on a public relations campaign to assure anxious moderates that the KKK’s aim was to help maintain law and order. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A person could not drive on the roads outside Tulsa without being hijacked,” <a href="https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/4165/7701815.PDF?sequence=1">Jewett told the press</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Klan promised to fix all that. </p>
<h2>A terrorism campaign</h2>
<p>In reality, the KKK conducted a campaign of terrorism backed by <a href="https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/the-white-knight-vigilantes-exposing-the-founders-of-tulsas-kkk/">police and city officials</a>. Lynchings were the most notorious acts, but more common — even everyday — occurrences were whippings, beatings and death threats. Police often stood by as the Klan carried out activities, and its intimidating behaviour inspired copycats, including one group who kidnapped a Black police officer and <a href="https://tulsaworld.com/archive/fanning-the-flames/article_719bcba7-0980-5d06-8fcc-390a25623f0b.html">cut off his ear</a>. </p>
<p>After winning a decisive election against the Republican, Gov. Walton sought to suppress the KKK, but with little luck. In Tulsa, a Jewish man suspected of dealing narcotics was kidnapped and beaten. <a href="https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/4165/7701815.PDF?sequence=1">Walton read that the man’s penis was flayed open and he was near death in hospital</a>. The governor demanded accountability, but was met with silence from local investigators. </p>
<p>Walton had toyed with Klan support during his campaign, but now he was ready for total war. “There cannot be two governments in Oklahoma while I am governor,” he declared to the press. Everyone responsible for the Klan’s terror would face justice. He deployed the National Guard to find Klansmen and set up military tribunals to try them. </p>
<p>Jewett <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130hr6v">shot back</a> in the KKK-sympathetic dailies: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Jack Walton and all his cohorts will never be able to break the power of the Klan in Oklahoma.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://libraries.ou.edu/locations/docs/westhist/pdf/WaltonJohnCalloway.pdf">A military tribunal in Tulsa revealed just how deeply the Klan had infiltrated the city’s power structure</a>. Seemingly every elected official in the city was a Klan member; <a href="https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/4165/7701815.PDF?sequence=1">one historian</a> estimated that a majority of the elected legislators were Klansmen. Walton declared martial law in Tulsa and sent a censor to muzzle the <em>Tulsa Tribune</em>’s Klan-sympathetic editor, <a href="https://www.tulsapeople.com/no-apology/article_d76c97dd-6154-56bc-8d92-4c8a9139a7a4.html">Richard Lloyd Jones</a>. </p>
<h2>Walton impeached</h2>
<p>Legislators started impeachment proceedings against Walton for an abuse of power. </p>
<p>By sending out the troops, censoring the press and declaring martial law, the governor lost support from former backers who hated the Klan, but feared the state was descending into a dictatorship. The governor ordered the legislature to disperse and said that “the troops will be ordered to shoot to kill if that is necessary to prevent the assembly.”</p>
<p>Fist fights broke out among legislators as barbed wire and machine guns appeared at the capitol. <a href="https://oklahoman.com/article/2221498/early-oklahomans-impeached">Legislators took up impeachment hearings at Oklahoma City’s swanky Skirvin Hotel</a>. Walton was ultimately impeached and removed from office.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A massive brick building, lit up at dusk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376074/original/file-20201221-23-1tr0mcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376074/original/file-20201221-23-1tr0mcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376074/original/file-20201221-23-1tr0mcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376074/original/file-20201221-23-1tr0mcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376074/original/file-20201221-23-1tr0mcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376074/original/file-20201221-23-1tr0mcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376074/original/file-20201221-23-1tr0mcq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oklahoma City’s Skirvin Hotel, now the Skirvin Hilton Hotel, today. Impeachment hearings against Walton were held here.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Skirvin Hilton Hotel)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Less than a year later, a special train car of Oklahoma Klansmen pulled into Dallas for the Texas State Fair. A banner on the car read: <a href="https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/4165/7701815.PDF?sequence=1">“Did We Impeach Walton? Hell Yes.”</a></p>
<p>This episode is misremembered as a tale of corruption in the state’s highest office. Three governors were impeached between 1910 and 1930, and if Walton is remembered at all, it is for misusing the National Guard. As with the <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=TU013">Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921</a>, the white establishment of the state wanted this episode forgotten. </p>
<h2>No aberration</h2>
<p>The Klan’s overthrow of Walton is a pointed reminder that white nationalists once wielded raw power in American politics. It is also not an aberration. In 1898, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/wilmington-massacre/536457/">white nationalists in Wilmington, N.C.</a>, massacred the city’s Black population and overthrew its newly elected mayor. </p>
<p>We downplay seemingly ridiculous white nationalist groups like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/far-right-boogaloo-movement-is-using-hawaiian-shirts-to-hide-its-intentions-142633">Boogaloo Boys</a> at our peril. And rhetoric about the exceptionalism of American democracy is neither helpful nor accurate. </p>
<p>There is, however, one hopeful note in this story of a forgotten coup in the American heartland. </p>
<p>By 1925, even the white populace of Oklahoma had seen enough. Anti-Klan movements in small towns sprung up as self-defensive leagues (Antifa in rural America!). Voters tired of a secret society choosing candidates in Beno Hall and beating up anyone who strayed from the Klan’s white fundamentalist world view. Membership declined and <a href="http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.pd.031">masked crusaders became the object of scorn in popular media</a>.</p>
<p>If only our story ended there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Cobb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Some downplay seemingly ridiculous white nationalist groups like the Boogaloo Boys at our peril. Looking back at a successful coup engineered by the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma shows us why.
Russell Cobb, Associate Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Alberta
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/146170
2020-09-20T11:56:41Z
2020-09-20T11:56:41Z
Canadian viewers of HBO’s ‘Watchmen’ should know the KKK helped bring down a provincial government in 1929
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357976/original/file-20200914-22-1sde2tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C5%2C1192%2C652&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 'Watchmen,' Angela Abar (Regina King) finds KKK garb in the closet of Judd Crawford (Don Johnson), her late friend who was Tulsa’s police chief.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(HBO)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The HBO show <em>Watchmen</em>, which <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/arts/television/emmy-awards.html">won 11 awards</a> at the <a href="https://www.emmys.com/awards/nominees-winners">72nd Emmy Awards held Sept. 20</a>, has used <a href="https://www.wired.com/2019/12/geeks-guide-watchmen/">science fiction and the superhero genre</a> to probe white supremacy, police corruption, trauma and institutional racism across time. The show, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/23/17383826/damon-lindelof-watchmen-remix-original-characters-remake">a “re-mix” based on the original <em>Watchmen</em> comic series</a> engages the subject of policing and the Ku Klux Klan.</p>
<p>Beyond <em>Watchmen</em>, the Klan may be most familiar to some contemporary Canadians
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/movies/spike-lee-blackkklansman.html">through its high-profile American and Hollywood portrayals</a>.</p>
<p>But as I trace in my book <em><a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/keeping-canada-british">Keeping Canada British: The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Saskatchewan</a></em>, the Klan also existed in Canada, first appearing here in 1921. And nowhere else in Canada did the Klan achieve the influence it <a href="https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.9_09493/1?r=0&s=1">attained in Saskatchewan — where it helped bring down a government</a>.</p>
<h2>Origins in ex-Confederate soldiers</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flood-klan/">In 1866</a>, immediately after the American Civil War, a group of ex-Confederate soldiers in Pulaski, Tenn., formed an organization called the Ku Klux Klan, after the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.33752">Greek word “kuklos,” which means circle</a>.</p>
<p>The Klan propped up white racial supremacy by means of violence and intimidation, including beatings, torture, sexual assault and murder. The Klan faded out in the 1870s, but was <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/strangers-in-the-land/9780813531236">revived in 1915 when a small group of men gathered at Stone Mountain outside Atlanta</a>, where <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/08/the-preacher-who-used-christianity-to-revive-the-ku-klux-klan">before an altar beneath a fiery cross</a> they swore allegiance to the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. </p>
<p>By the fall of 1921 there were 100,000 members in the United States. The peak membership is <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flood-klan/">estimated at three million to six million (or higher) in the 1920s</a>, but the precise number is not known <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807846278/citizen-klansmen/">because the records at Atlanta headquarters were destroyed</a>.</p>
<h2>First appearance in Canada</h2>
<p>The Klan’s first <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ku-klux-klan">appearance in Canada was in 1921</a>, when branches were formed in Montréal and West Vancouver. </p>
<p>Cross burnings were sighted in various locations, for example, in Fredericton, N.B., at the Mount Saint Vincent convent in Nova Scotia, and at the St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic church in Melville Cove, near Halifax. The Klan reported as many as <a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/jcs.30.3.156">7,000 enrolled just in the Toronto chapter, although as political scientist Allan Bartley notes this claim may be exaggerated</a>. </p>
<p>He finds the Klan “initially exercised its strongest appeal in southwestern Ontario,” where Black people were “targets of rising racism.” But “the Klan also exploited traditional Protestant animosities against Catholics and French Canadians. There were diatribes against Blacks, Jews and foreigners, and avowals of respect and loyalty to British traditions and institutions.” </p>
<p>In Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, the Klan advanced its capacity to exploit local prejudices against those who didn’t fit neatly into moulds of British Protestant Canadian nationalism. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hooded figures stand in front of a cross" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357992/original/file-20200914-14-1q7d6at.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357992/original/file-20200914-14-1q7d6at.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357992/original/file-20200914-14-1q7d6at.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357992/original/file-20200914-14-1q7d6at.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357992/original/file-20200914-14-1q7d6at.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357992/original/file-20200914-14-1q7d6at.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357992/original/file-20200914-14-1q7d6at.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A gathering of the Ku Klux Klan in Kingston, Ont., July 31, 1927.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(John Boyd/Library and Archives Canada, PA-087848)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Klan organizers Lewis Scott and Pat Emmons, both from South Bend, Ind., arrived in Saskatchewan in late 1926. They preached white supremacy, and to that extent the message was the same as it was in the United States. But the message was tailored to local conditions. </p>
<p>The 1931 census showed that for the first time since Saskatchewan was established as a province, people of non-British origin formed the majority of the settler population. There was a <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/blacks-in-canada--second-edition--the-products-9780773516328.php">small Black population in Saskatchewan</a>, and a growing number of <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/ukrainian-canadians-a-study-in-assimilation/oclc/4510680">immigrants from central and Eastern Europe</a>.</p>
<h2>Preserving ‘traditional’ social order</h2>
<p>For many British Protestants, who fashioned themselves as <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Patterns_of_Prejudice.html?id=yqUVAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">rightful “nativists,” it seemed that “foreigners” were taking over the country</a>. Combined with this was a desire to preserve their traditional gender and moral order. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.saskarchives.com/Suffrage">Votes for women</a> and more women in the paid work force, women smoking or bobbing their hair <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=PEkiAAAAMAAJ&dq=editions:ISBN0773047417">suggested that gender roles were changing</a>.
The Klan did not want this, partly because they thought that controlling women’s sexuality was essential to keeping the white race pure.</p>
<h2>Saw themselves as ‘moral arbiters’</h2>
<p>The 1920s was also the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sale-of-liquor-debate-in-saskatchewan-goes-back-100-years-1.3288058">era of prohibition of alcohol</a>, a regime that was difficult to enforce. There was also a general anxiety about prostitution, opium and gambling all of which were disproportionately blamed on the non-British population. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358676/original/file-20200917-18-j8crvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The frontpage of a newspaper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358676/original/file-20200917-18-j8crvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358676/original/file-20200917-18-j8crvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358676/original/file-20200917-18-j8crvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358676/original/file-20200917-18-j8crvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358676/original/file-20200917-18-j8crvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358676/original/file-20200917-18-j8crvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358676/original/file-20200917-18-j8crvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ku Klux Klan publication, Western Freedman - masthead and headline, v. 1, no. 10, April 5, 1928. Publication directed by J.J. Maloney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan/R-A6902)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As scholar William Calderwood noted in his 1973 article, “<a href="https://www.saskarchives.com/sites/default/files/sh_feature_articles_tableofcontents_fin_2017_12_12.pdf">Religious Reactions to the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan</a>,” Protestant clergymen were prominent in the ranks of the Klan. (Calderwood also wrote an 1968 master of arts thesis, <em>The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan</em> while at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus). </p>
<p>They saw the Klan as a bulwark against the moral collapse of society. Canadians had fought in the First World War in large part for the British Empire, and its fresh psychological wounds <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/shades-of-right-1">influenced the rise of right and fascist politics</a>. </p>
<h2>25,000 members in Saskatchewan</h2>
<p>The Klan declared that Canada must not allow what had been won in the trenches of Belgium and France to be lost on the plains of Saskatchewan. For all these reasons, the Klan took off like wildfire, signing up an <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/ku-klux-klan-saskatchewan-history-1.4251309">estimated 25,000 members in the province</a>.</p>
<p>One notable event was a huge rally and cross burning outside Moose Jaw on June 7, 1927. An estimated 8,000 people attended the rally. Newspaper reports of the time estimated more than 1,000 automobiles at the scene. On Empire Day, May 24, 1928, crosses burned in communities across the province. </p>
<p>In September 1927, Klan organizers Emmons and Scott fled the province, taking with them money they had collected for membership fees and from the sale of Klan regalia. Emmons was brought back and put on trial for embezzlement, but acquitted because he had acted in accordance with Klan rules. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A man in a business suit and tie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358682/original/file-20200917-14-rn9ik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358682/original/file-20200917-14-rn9ik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358682/original/file-20200917-14-rn9ik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358682/original/file-20200917-14-rn9ik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358682/original/file-20200917-14-rn9ik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358682/original/file-20200917-14-rn9ik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358682/original/file-20200917-14-rn9ik9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gardiner lost the election of 1929 partly because of backlash to his anti-Klan crusade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Alexandra Studio/Library and Archives Canada/PA-052491)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At this point the Saskatchewan Klan might have collapsed, but instead it restructured itself as a locally run organization. All ties with the American Klan were severed. Robes and hoods, part of Klansmen’s or <a href="https://search.saskarchives.com/klanswomen-uniforms">Klanswomen’s garb</a>, were no longer worn in public. </p>
<p>The new locally run Klan explicitly emphasized that it rejected violence and its main purpose was to keep Canada British and follow constitutional methods to achieve that goal. But cross burnings, verbal attacks on the non-British and explicitly racist pronouncements were, if not physically violent, hateful and deeply intimidating. </p>
<p><a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/jimmy-gardiner-2">Liberal Premier Jimmy Gardiner</a>, continued to attack the Klan, saying that it was an alien American import and that it had left a trail of bloodshed everywhere it went in the U.S. However, he was unable to cite specific instances of bodily violence perpetrated by the Klan in Saskatchewan. Gardiner <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/prairie-liberalism-1">lost the election of 1929, the first defeat for the Liberals since 1905, partly because of the backlash against his anti-Klan crusade</a>.</p>
<h2>Pervasive racism</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358884/original/file-20200918-22-y1memq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358884/original/file-20200918-22-y1memq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358884/original/file-20200918-22-y1memq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358884/original/file-20200918-22-y1memq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358884/original/file-20200918-22-y1memq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358884/original/file-20200918-22-y1memq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358884/original/file-20200918-22-y1memq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358884/original/file-20200918-22-y1memq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christian flag (Protestant), From ‘Women of the Ku Klux Klan, a Catalogue of Official Robes and Banners,’ ca. 1928.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan/R-A12825-1)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gardiner’s own archives are significant textual sources for documenting the Klan in Saskatchewan. Both Gardiner’s collection of newspaper clippings and his correspondence provide insight into this strange and complex history.</p>
<p>Gardiner, who began his career as a teacher and was a Protestant, stood against the Klan’s hateful expression of an idealized exclusive white British Protestant social order. </p>
<p>At the same time, his archives, as well as many other <a href="https://www.osgoodesociety.ca/book/colour-coded-a-legal-history-of-racism-in-canada-1900-1950/">sources, show how there was an atmosphere of accepted racist discourse and legally established stuctural racism</a>. Such laws pertained to and impacted both colonial settler relations with Indigenous peoples and non-British racialized groups.</p>
<p>Gardiner had to walk a line of being anti-Klan: He couldn’t denounce the clan in frankly anti-racist terms, because there was so much racism in the general population including among his own supporters. He mainly denounced them because they had originated in the U.S. and for their blatant hucksterism.</p>
<p>Lest Canadians believe that the Klan was only an American phenomenon, it’s important to critically examine our own histories and legacies — <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-kkk-has-a-history-in-canada-and-it-can-return">including the many waves of white supremacist activity</a> — and levels and nuances of structural racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146170/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James M. Pitsula does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The KKK appeared in Canada in 1921. Nowhere else in Canada did the Klan achieve the influence it attained in Saskatchewan, where it helped bring down a government.
James M. Pitsula, Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Regina
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/141928
2020-07-14T12:40:31Z
2020-07-14T12:40:31Z
Through protest and resistance, Lumbees seek to reconcile past with present
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345873/original/file-20200706-3980-1wm0s0x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C951%2C634&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lumbee Reverend Dr. Mike Cummings, center with his back to the camera, prays for protesters in Pembroke, North Carolina.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Krista Davis</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It may not have seemed unusual when a protest in support of Black lives and against police brutality moved through the town of Pembroke, North Carolina, in late June and faced off with counterprotesters.</p>
<p>But it was unusual because of who was involved – on both sides. The march was organized by several students from the <a href="https://www.uncp.edu/">University of North Carolina at Pembroke</a>, the state’s <a href="https://www.uncp.edu/about/history">historically American Indian university</a>. </p>
<p>Today, UNC Pembroke is <a href="https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities-south/campus-ethnic-diversity">recognized as one of the most ethnically diverse universities in the South</a>. According to one witness, “the people who participated were very diverse” and included African American and Native American students. </p>
<p>The marchers were met by <a href="https://wpde.com/news/local/robeson-county-town-grieved-by-mistreatment-of-people-during-peaceful-protests">a group of counterprotesters</a> who reportedly used racial slurs, threw beer and brandished rifles and knives in a stated attempt to “<a href="https://www.fayobserver.com/opinion/20200629/letter-lumbees-should-not-have-abused-unc-p-black-lives-matter-protesters-in-pembroke">protect their property</a>” from destruction. </p>
<p>The counterprotesters were mostly <a href="https://www.lumbeetribe.com/history--culture">Lumbees</a>, a state-recognized Native American tribe with about 55,000 enrolled members, of which I am one. </p>
<p>Pembroke, in Robeson County, is the seat of the Lumbee Tribe; Native Americans make up <a href="https://datausa.io/profile/geo/pembroke-nc">more than half of the town’s population</a>. Some Lumbees marched too, in solidarity with their Black neighbors and relatives. Many Lumbees publicly lamented the attacks on the marchers. </p>
<p>In a letter published the following day in the local newspaper, Lumbee historian <a href="http://malindalowery.web.unc.edu/">Malinda Maynor Lowery</a> said, “<a href="https://www.fayobserver.com/opinion/20200629/letter-lumbees-should-not-have-abused-unc-p-black-lives-matter-protesters-in-pembroke">Our ancestors did not fight for our lives</a> only for us to turn around and abuse our neighbors, co-workers and family members.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345571/original/file-20200703-33931-10ozm3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345571/original/file-20200703-33931-10ozm3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345571/original/file-20200703-33931-10ozm3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345571/original/file-20200703-33931-10ozm3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345571/original/file-20200703-33931-10ozm3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345571/original/file-20200703-33931-10ozm3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345571/original/file-20200703-33931-10ozm3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345571/original/file-20200703-33931-10ozm3a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester in Pembroke, North Carolina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Krista Davis</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lowery and I both, as historians, saw 200 years of Lumbee history reflected in this encounter. It is a complex 200-year history of struggle, protest and resistance to white supremacy and its social effects, one shared by Indigenous and African Americans across the nation. </p>
<h2>The Lowry War</h2>
<p>Lumbees are no strangers to injustice. Beginning in the early 19th century, Native Americans in North Carolina suffered, as skin color became the determining factor for one’s status in society. In 1835, under the <a href="https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/constitution-of-1835/">revised state Constitution</a>, American Indians and other <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/slavesfree/slavesfree.html">free people of color</a> lost their right to vote. </p>
<p>In “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=yUJwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=a+nation+of+white+people+james+bryan&source=bl&ots=k_pIJ4glJQ&sig=ACfU3U3U8SOrt1_BTLPYMMOnYXzV7yWQhw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjp6KCwyrvqAhWBmHIEHQCmD54Q6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=a%20nation%20of%20white%20people%20james%20bryan&f=false">a nation of white people</a>,” as North Carolina lawyer and lawmaker <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/bryan-james-west">James W. Bryan</a> described it in 1835, all people of color – including American Indians – in North Carolina would be considered legally inferior.</p>
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<p>After their disenfranchisement, Lumbees suffered legal and economic harassment and suppression for decades to come. Indians became increasingly antagonistic toward their white neighbors as <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/lumbee/19th-century">oppressive policies</a> such as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=owy00ho7Zs8C&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=tied+mule+incidents&source=bl&ots=yRl7bib8Ra&sig=ACfU3U1RxcbaTxT6oIjZlMx9KPncapOvKQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjurDbq7HqAhWVlXIEHQbRBbgQ6AEwAnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=tied%20mule%20incidents&f=false">“tied mule” incidents</a> exploited Indian labor and confiscated Indian-owned land. </p>
<p>In addition, free people of color in North Carolina <a href="https://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/learning/educators/timelines/nineteenth-century-north-carolina-timeline">lost their right to own and bear arms</a> in 1840, leaving many defenseless to attacks. </p>
<p>As the Civil War ripped the nation apart, hostilities between American Indians and white elites in Robeson County led to an <a href="https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/477/to-die-game/">eight-year guerilla war</a> from 1864 to 1872 led by Indian vigilante <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/lowry-henry-berry">Henry Berry Lowry</a> and his “gang” of neighbors and kin. </p>
<p>The Lowry gang staged robberies and murdered proponents of white supremacy in violent protest of oppression. In response, Lowry and his associates were outlawed and sought after by bounty hunters.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345321/original/file-20200702-111305-14vnhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345321/original/file-20200702-111305-14vnhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345321/original/file-20200702-111305-14vnhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345321/original/file-20200702-111305-14vnhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345321/original/file-20200702-111305-14vnhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345321/original/file-20200702-111305-14vnhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345321/original/file-20200702-111305-14vnhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345321/original/file-20200702-111305-14vnhe3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sketch of Henry Berry Lowery and his gang in a North Carolina swamp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/north-carolina-state-archives/9093553472/in/photostream/">Harper's Weekly, March 30, 1872, via North Carolina State Archives/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Henry Berry Lowry vanished in 1872, his bounty was never collected, and no one knows his fate for certain. </p>
<p>Now, many Lumbees celebrated Lowry as a hero, while other Lumbees view him as a criminal, condemning his use of violence and lawlessness. Historian William McKee Evans wrote that Lowry’s legacy serves as a symbol of resistance, giving Indians in Robeson County “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wnF0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=william+mckee+evans+a+new+confidence+that+despite+generations+of+defeat,+revitalized+their+will+to+survive+as+a+people&source=bl&ots=Ga7w7pdSjp&sig=ACfU3U10O84UW6_ldjicbvnJ-dWLrbQlog&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6laWr-LnqAhVphHIEHcK6BgkQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=william%20mckee%20evans%20a%20new%20confidence%20that%20despite%20generations%20of%20defeat%2C%20revitalized%20their%20will%20to%20survive%20as%20a%20people&f=false">a new confidence that despite generations of defeat, revitaliz[ing] their will to survive as a people</a>.”</p>
<p>Trouble for Indians did not end following the Civil War or the Lowry War. The decade following Reconstruction became informally known as the “<a href="https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1560/only-land-i-know-the/">decade of despair</a>” for Lumbees. Despite the restoration of the Indian right to vote in 1868, the county witnessed violence against Indians and Blacks as the Ku Klux Klan made its presence known in southeastern North Carolina. </p>
<p>At the turn of the 20th century, Lumbees began their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/08/20/feature/what-makes-someone-native-american-one-tribes-long-struggle-for-full-recognition/">fight for recognition</a>, not just as people of color but as Native Americans. <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807871119/lumbee-indians-in-the-jim-crow-south/">Jim Crow laws</a> affected them as well as African Americans, and American Indians resisted segregation, setting out to <a href="https://museum.unc.edu/exhibits/show/american-indians-and-chapel-hi/the-croatan-normal-school--pem">better their communities through education</a>. </p>
<h2>Routing the Klan</h2>
<p>The Klu Klux Klan most famously entered the Lumbee story again in 1958. After the 1954 <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka">Brown v. Board of Education</a> Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation, Klan activity increased across North Carolina. </p>
<p>Klan leader <a href="https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/ead/findingaids/0040/">James W. “Catfish” Cole</a> targeted Lumbees, denying their Indigenous identity and accusing them of being mixed-race people, partly white and partly Black. </p>
<p>Cole staged two cross burnings in Robeson County, one to confront a Lumbee family who moved into a white neighborhood and another to threaten an Indian woman dating a white man. </p>
<p>On Jan. 18, 1958, a Klan rally was planned in Robeson County at <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/battle-of-hayes-pond-the-day-lumbees-ran-the-klan-out-of-north-carolina-RN9W5-vIJUKsXc6TqZWO9g">Hayes Pond</a> to “put Indians in their place.” Word spread quickly around the county, and the 50 Klansmen found themselves surrounded by 500 Lumbee men and 50 Lumbee women, armed with guns and knives. Lumbees fired their guns into the air, causing Cole and his followers to flee.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345323/original/file-20200702-111247-asaesy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345323/original/file-20200702-111247-asaesy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345323/original/file-20200702-111247-asaesy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345323/original/file-20200702-111247-asaesy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345323/original/file-20200702-111247-asaesy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345323/original/file-20200702-111247-asaesy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345323/original/file-20200702-111247-asaesy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345323/original/file-20200702-111247-asaesy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Life magazine spread from 1958 reporting on and showing images of the Battle of Hayes Pond, when Lumbees fought the Ku Klux Klan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Life magazine, Jan. 27, 1958.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this armed protest, Lumbees <a href="https://www.scalawagmagazine.org/2020/01/ambush/">ironically used the same type of lawless behavior</a> embodied by the Klan while taking the fight for justice into their own hands. </p>
<p>Just like the Lowry War, the legacy of the Lumbee routing of the Ku Klux Klan is complex. While “Catfish” Cole was charged for inciting a riot, many believed that the Lumbees were the aggressors, attacking the Klan’s right to free speech. Regardless, the Klan has not held a publicized rally in North Carolina in the more than 60 years since then – another victory for Indian resistance to white supremacy.</p>
<h2>A common ground</h2>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Dial">Adolph Dial</a>, the first scholar to write a comprehensive history on the Lumbees, recognized that in his lifetime, issues of injustices still pervaded the Lumbee community. He famously noted that to be a Lumbee is “<a href="https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1560/only-land-i-know-the/">to find some of one’s basic rights</a> as an American and a human being restricted if not denied. Indeed, shorn of all frills, the history of the Lumbees is a history of struggle.”</p>
<p>Lumbees have a shared experience of pursuing justice even though there have always been disagreements about how to accomplish it.</p>
<p>In her responses to the protest on June 26, 2020, Lumbee scholar Malinda Maynor Lowery also wrote, “<a href="https://www.fayobserver.com/opinion/20200629/letter-lumbees-should-not-have-abused-unc-p-black-lives-matter-protesters-in-pembroke">Black lives matter to Lumbees</a> because we have a responsibility to account for our own racism if we are to ever achieve our goals as an American Indian nation.” </p>
<p>If the Lumbee struggle is truly one for justice, it would appear contradictory not to support that goal for our Black neighbors and family members, or worse – to participate in their oppression ourselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346202/original/file-20200707-194396-15q88t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346202/original/file-20200707-194396-15q88t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346202/original/file-20200707-194396-15q88t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346202/original/file-20200707-194396-15q88t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346202/original/file-20200707-194396-15q88t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346202/original/file-20200707-194396-15q88t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346202/original/file-20200707-194396-15q88t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346202/original/file-20200707-194396-15q88t1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters carry signs in Pembroke, North Carolina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Krista Davis</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the conclusion to Adolph Dial’s 1975 book, “<a href="https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1560/only-land-i-know-the/">The Only Land I Know</a>,” he wrote, “The problems of today plead for attention and demand answers … The question now is, what is to come?” </p>
<p>During present times of social unrest, the Lumbee narrative continues to serve as a reminder that history is complicated. Despite disagreements and contradictions, history is a record of shared pasts, shared struggles and shared pursuit of justice and reconciliation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica R. Locklear is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.</span></em></p>
The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina has a long history of struggle, protest and resistance to white supremacy and its social effects.
Jessica R. Locklear, History Ph.D. Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/140147
2020-06-09T12:23:39Z
2020-06-09T12:23:39Z
What – or who – is antifa?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340129/original/file-20200605-176554-1mgeqve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C26%2C4500%2C2964&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A police officer pushes an antifa demonstrator out of the way during a 2019 protest in Washington, D.C.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/police-officer-pushes-an-antifa-protester-out-of-the-street-news-photo/1154309606">Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The movement called “antifa” gets its name from a short form of “anti-fascist,” which is about the only thing its members agree on.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump and some far-right activists and militants have claimed antifa is allegedly conspiring to foment violence amid the protests sweeping the U.S. In my forthcoming book, “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/American-Antifa-The-Tactics-Culture-and-Practice-of-Militant-Antifascism/Vysotsky/p/book/9780367210601">American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism</a>,” I describe antifa as a decentralized collection of individual activists who mostly use nonviolent methods to achieve their ends.</p>
<p>Their goal is to resist the spread of fascism. That word can be an inexact term, but generally antifa activists see fascism as the <a href="https://www.akpress.org/fascism-today.html">violent enactment and enforcement</a> of biological and social inequalities between people.</p>
<h2>Opposed to violent supremacy</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340132/original/file-20200605-176571-rr4unf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340132/original/file-20200605-176571-rr4unf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340132/original/file-20200605-176571-rr4unf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340132/original/file-20200605-176571-rr4unf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340132/original/file-20200605-176571-rr4unf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340132/original/file-20200605-176571-rr4unf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1085&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340132/original/file-20200605-176571-rr4unf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1085&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340132/original/file-20200605-176571-rr4unf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1085&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An anti-fascist protest in Berlin, 1928.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-05976,_Berlin,_Pfingstreffen_der_Rot-Front-K%C3%A4mpfer.jpg">Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-05976/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fascists go beyond viewing particular categories of people as inferior, based on gender identity, race and ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. They believe it is imperative to use violence to oppress and ultimately eliminate those groups. In addition, they use violence to oppose their ideological enemies, even if they are from groups they believe are not inferior, such as heterosexual white men.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/antifa/">initial anti-fascist movements</a> were founded in Europe and North America between the world wars, and were primarily organized by anarchists, communists and socialists – three groups that were frequently targets of fascist violence.</p>
<p>The modern-day anti-fascist movement in the United States, including antifa, grew out of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Racist_Action">Anti-Racist Action Network</a>, a decentralized activist movement resisting racist skinhead subcultures and public demonstrations by neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan organizations in the 1980s and 1990s.</p>
<p>Anti-fascists’ objections aren’t simply that they disagree with fascists. Their problems with fascism are much more fundamental.</p>
<h2>Personal and collective self-defense</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340133/original/file-20200605-176595-15udyg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340133/original/file-20200605-176595-15udyg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340133/original/file-20200605-176595-15udyg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340133/original/file-20200605-176595-15udyg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340133/original/file-20200605-176595-15udyg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340133/original/file-20200605-176595-15udyg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340133/original/file-20200605-176595-15udyg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340133/original/file-20200605-176595-15udyg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The arts have long been a part of anti-fascist efforts, including by American singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie in the 1940s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Woody_Guthrie_NYWTS.jpg">Al Aumuller/New York World-Telegram and Sun/Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My own research has found that a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/American-Antifa-The-Tactics-Culture-and-Practice-of-Militant-Antifascism/Vysotsky/p/book/9780367210601">significant proportion of anti-fascists</a> are women, people of color, members of LGBTQ communities, or otherwise have some characteristics fascists seek to control or eliminate.</p>
<p>These anti-fascists, therefore, often see fascists as a threat to their personal existence, and their physical and emotional well-being – as well as presenting threats of violence or vandalism to their communities and shared gathering spaces. They perceive their opposition as very much in personal and collective self-defense.</p>
<p>Because opposing fascism is a viewpoint rather than a formal organization, people’s actions vary widely. Informal or everyday anti-fascism can include speaking out against bigotry, standing up for victims of fascist harassment or confronting fascists in public places. Generally, these are relatively spontaneous actions that happen when anti-fascists encounter fascism in the normal course of their regular lives.</p>
<p>More formal anti-fascism can include large, well-funded mainstream organizations like the <a href="https://www.adl.org/">Anti-Defamation League</a> and the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/">Southern Poverty Law Center</a>, who monitor fascist activity and provide the public information on its scope.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D71bwVKWxRE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A CNN report on antifa participants.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Local action</h2>
<p>But the antifa label is most often applied to smaller-scale groups of like-minded people who live in the same community, working to prevent fascists from threatening their targets and from attracting new followers.</p>
<p>These groups are rarely militant or violent. Most of them engage in commonly accepted forms of political activism. For instance, anti-fascists often work to find out where fascist groups and people are active in an area, and then share that information with the wider community, bringing that activity to public attention.</p>
<p>Anti-fascist activists also take advantage of the general social stigma associated with being a fascist, and <a href="https://psmag.com/news/doxxing-the-alt-right-racists">identify people who participate in fascist events or post fascist messages online</a>.</p>
<p>Culture is another part of anti-fascist work, including art and music. By creating T-shirts and stickers with inclusive messages, and hosting concerts, film screening and art shows, anti-fascists work to create an environment of inclusion and equality that doesn’t directly attack fascism but simply exists in opposition to it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340134/original/file-20200605-176542-qz4cd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340134/original/file-20200605-176542-qz4cd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340134/original/file-20200605-176542-qz4cd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340134/original/file-20200605-176542-qz4cd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340134/original/file-20200605-176542-qz4cd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340134/original/file-20200605-176542-qz4cd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340134/original/file-20200605-176542-qz4cd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340134/original/file-20200605-176542-qz4cd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Antifa members have taken part in the anti-racist marches that have emerged in cities nationwide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hundreds-of-protesters-gather-at-government-center-news-photo/1216817055">Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Some direct confrontation</h2>
<p>There are more militant anti-fascists, too, who mostly engage in non-militant activism but are willing, at times, to use more confrontational tactics. These people are more open to counterprotesting, sabotage and the use of force, which includes acts of violence.</p>
<p>The varied and decentralized nature of anti-fascist efforts means it includes virtually anyone who opposes violent enforcement of social inequalities to engage in activism. A diverse range of participants and tactics falls under the umbrella of a broad effort to stop fascism.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140147/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stanislav Vysotsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The anti-fascist movement is a decentralized collection of individual activists who mostly use nonviolent methods to achieve their ends.
Stanislav Vysotsky, Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137873
2020-05-18T13:01:07Z
2020-05-18T13:01:07Z
There’s a history of white supremacists interpreting government leaders’ words as encouragement
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377618/original/file-20210107-23-vom98g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=70%2C70%2C6569%2C4376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Proud Boys outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-proud-boys-outside-the-us-capitol-in-washington-dc-on-news-photo/1230463103?adppopup=true">Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/03/26/white-supremacists-see-coronavirus-opportunity">White supremacist</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-to-reopen-the-us-economy-137044">militia</a> organizations are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/16/835343965/-a-perfect-storm-extremists-look-for-ways-to-exploit-coronavirus-pandemic">exploiting</a> the government’s chaotic response to the coronavirus for recruitment efforts. </p>
<p>Whatever his intention, these groups interpret President Donald Trump’s tweets to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/trump-s-liberate-tweets-extremists-see-call-arms-n1186561">“LIBERATE” states</a> and calling armed protesters “<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/01/echoing-praise-charlottesville-neo-nazis-trump-calls-armed-anti-lockdown-fanatics">very good people</a>” as support for their cause.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/extremists-are-using-facebook-to-organize-for-civil-war-amid-coronavirus">Recent research by the Tech Transparency Project into social media accounts of white supremacists</a>, a nonprofit that researches “the influence of the major technology platforms” on politics, policy and people’s lives, found that “some members of private … Facebook groups reacted to the president’s rhetoric (about lockdown protests) with memes of celebration.” </p>
<p>The white supremacists’ response reflects the United States’ history of local, state and national political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to challenge or overthrow democratic governments. </p>
<p>During Reconstruction, the post-Civil War period of forming interracial governments and reintegrating former Confederate states into the Union, white city and state leaders in the South tacitly encouraged violence against black voters by state militias and groups like the <a href="http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2934">Ku Klux Klan</a>. They did it in a way that allowed those leaders to look innocent of any crimes. </p>
<p>Those groups used that chaos to end federal power in their states and reestablish white-dominated Southern state governments. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-white-supremacists-protesting-to-reopen-the-us-economy-137044">white supremacists hope the political chaos they contribute to will lead to</a> <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078">race war</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-reopen-protesters-really-saying-137558">and the creation of their own white nation</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335430/original/file-20200515-138629-j429aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cartoon by Thomas Nast in an 1868 Harper’s Weekly, ‘This is a white man’s government,’ skewering Southern white supremacists fighting Reconstruction laws.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/98513794/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reconstruction violence</h2>
<p>Moments of changing social and political power in U.S. history have led to clashes – <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/this-nonviolent-stuffll-get-you-killed">often armed</a> – between white supremacists and interracial alliances over voting rights.</p>
<p>That history includes the period following the Civil War, when white supremacist organizations saw the postwar rule over Southern states of Radical Republicans and the federal government as illegitimate. They wanted to return to the prewar status quo of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/14301/slavery-by-another-name-by-douglas-a-blackmon/">slavery by another name</a> and white supremacist rule.</p>
<p>As a historian of <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/4113/discussions/157750/register-kentucky-historical-society-vol-115-no-1-now-available">protests and Reconstruction</a>, I study how those paramilitary groups or self-proclaimed “regulators” consequently spread fear and terror among black and white Republican voters with the support of the anti-black Democratic Party in Southern states. </p>
<p>They targeted elections and vowed to “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=U7hpAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA2101&lpg=PA2101&dq=%E2%80%9Ccarry+the+election+peaceably+if+we+can,+forcibly+if+we+must.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=vZU88x92mU&sig=ACfU3U34H7Xb-2aUHMGrMKULNiHBUi1D4w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxyZvYgKrpAhXRKs0KHXiiCuUQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Ccarry%20the%20election%20peaceably%20if%20we%20can%2C%20forcibly%20if%20we%20must.%E2%80%9D&f=false">carry the election peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must</a>.” </p>
<p>Still, many courageous black and white voters <a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_nine_documents/document_4">fought back</a> by forming political organizations, daring to vote and <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/black-south-carolinians-form-militia-protection-1874">assembling their own armed guards</a> to protect themselves.</p>
<h2>‘Gentlemen of property and standing’</h2>
<p>Then, as today, white supremacists received encouraging signals from powerful leaders. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gentlemen-Property-Standing-Anti-Abolition-Jacksonian/dp/0195013514">gentlemen of property and standing</a>” often led or indirectly supported anti-abolition mobs, slave patrols, lynch mobs or Klan attacks. </p>
<p>Federal investigators in Kentucky in 1867 found that “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572671/pdf">many men of wealth and position</a>” rode with the armed groups. One witness in the federal investigation testified that “many of the most respectable men in the county belong in the ‘Lynch’ party.” Future South Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman reflected on his participation in the <a href="http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/hamburg-massacre/">Hamburg massacre</a> of 1876, arguing that “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ben_Tillman_and_the_Reconstruction_of_Wh/dOA4CQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=having+the+whites+demonstrate+their+superiority+by+killing+as+many+as+was+justifiable&pg=PA67&printsec=frontcover">the leading men</a>” of the area wanted to teach black voters a lesson by “having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many as was justifiable.” At least six black men were killed in the Hamburg attack on the black South Carolina militia by the <a href="http://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/red-shirts/">Red Shirts</a>, a white rifle club.</p>
<p>White supremacists knew that they would not face consequences for their violence. </p>
<p>An agent of the federal <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/freedmens-bureau">Freedmen’s Bureau</a> – set up by Congress in 1865 to help former slaves and poor whites in the South – stated that the “<a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_nine_documents/document_3">desperadoes</a>” received encouragement and were “screened from the hands of justice by citizens of boasted connections.” </p>
<p>President Ulysses S. Grant <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.2070020a/?sp=2&st=text">condemned</a> the Hamburg massacre, arguing that some claimed “the right to kill negroes and Republicans without fear of punishment and without loss of caste or reputation.” </p>
<p>Facing community pressure, and without the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674743984">presence of the U.S. Army</a> to enforce laws, local sheriffs and judges refused or were unable to enforce federal laws. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335434/original/file-20200515-138644-1sdk9y9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Armed rioters shown in the aftermath of the multiracial Wilmington, North Carolina, government being overthrown by white supremacists in 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/photos/?q=Wilmington,+N.C.+race+riot">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Witnesses were often afraid to challenge local leaders for fear of attack. The “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/572671/pdf">reign of terror</a>” was so complete that “men dare not report outrages and appear as witnesses.”</p>
<p>When the U.S. District Court in Kentucky brought charges against two men for lynching in 1871, prosecutors could not find witnesses willing to testify against the accused. The <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn82015463/">Frankfort Commonwealth</a> newspaper wrote, “He would be hung by a [mob] inside of twenty-four hours, and the dominant sentiment … would say ‘served him right.’”</p>
<h2>State militias</h2>
<p>As Southern states threw off federal military occupation and elected their own white-dominated governments, they no longer had to rely solely on white terror organizations to enforce their agenda. </p>
<p>Instead, these self-described “<a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/redeemer-democrats">redeemers</a>” formed state-funded militias that served similar functions of intimidation and voter suppression with the support of prominent citizens. </p>
<p>At political rallies and elections throughout the South, official Democratic militias paraded through towns and <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/For_Slavery_and_Union/D917BgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=democratic%20partisan%20militia">monitored polling stations</a> to threaten black and white Republican voters, proclaiming that “<a href="https://vtext.valdosta.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10428/1130/butler-joshua-w_almost-too-terrible-to-believe_history_thesis_2012.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">this is our country and we intend to protect it or die</a>.” </p>
<p>In 1870 the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84020086/">Louisville Commercial</a> newspaper argued, “We have, then, a militia for the State of Kentucky composed of members of one political party, and designed solely to operate against members of another political party. These militia are armed with State guns, are equipped from the State arsenal, and to a man are the enemies of the national government.” </p>
<p>By driving away Republican voters and claiming electoral victory, these Democratic leaders gained power through state-supported militia violence. </p>
<p>White militias and paramilitary groups also confiscated guns from black citizens who tried to protect themselves, claiming “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xvIYAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1057&lpg=PA1057&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+did+not+think+they+had+a+right+to+have+guns.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=30R_twS8pK&sig=ACfU3U2HxA-pbH0zCkMHuGweuTsTwmODWg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicxtWNgKXpAhWCaM0KHbwYAMsQ6AEwAHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CWe%20did%20not%20think%20they%20had%20a%20right%20to%20have%20guns.%E2%80%9D&f=false">We did not think they had a right to have guns</a>.” </p>
<p>White terror groups and their allies in law enforcement were especially hostile to politically active black Union veterans who returned home with their military weapons. Local sheriffs confiscated weapons and armed bands raided homes to destroy their guns. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335459/original/file-20200515-138654-ndapxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon, ‘The Union as it was,’ Thomas Nast critiques violent white supremacist organizations for forcing African Americans into a position ‘worse than slavery.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2001696840/">Library of Congress/Thomas Nast from Harpers Weekly</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Guerrilla race war</h2>
<p>During Reconstruction, paramilitary groups and official Democratic militias found support from county sheriffs up to state governors who encouraged violence while maintaining their own innocence.</p>
<p>Today, white supremacists appear to interpret politicians’ remarks as support for their cause of a <a href="https://gizmodo.com/report-over-100-militant-groups-have-been-promoting-se-1843051231">new civil war</a> to create a white-dominated government. </p>
<p>These groups <a href="https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/extremists-are-using-facebook-to-organize-for-civil-war-amid-coronavirus">thrive on recent protests against stay-at-home orders</a>, especially the ones featuring <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/27/why-are-people-bringing-guns-anti-quarantine-protests-be-intimidating/">protesters with guns</a>, creating an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/us/coronavirus-businesses-lockdown-guns.html">intimidating spectacle</a> for those who support local and state government authority. </p>
<p>Beyond “<a href="https://belonging.berkeley.edu/blog-revisiting-dog-whistle-politics">dog whistle</a>” politics, as in the past, these statements – and the actions encouraged by them – can lead to real <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/massachusetts-bomb-jewish-nursing-home.html">violence</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/senate-democrats-demand-action-cdc-doj-curb-covid-19-racism-n1201491">hate crimes</a> against any who threaten supremacists’ concept of a white nation.</p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137873/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon M. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
White supremacists’ protests against COVID-19 lockdowns reflect the US history of political leaders encouraging white supremacist groups to challenge or overthrow democratic governments.
Shannon M. Smith, Associate Professor of History, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/133301
2020-03-16T12:18:50Z
2020-03-16T12:18:50Z
Closing polling places is the 21st century’s version of a poll tax
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319986/original/file-20200311-116240-1slu37o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=103%2C8%2C2892%2C2205&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Californians wait in line to vote on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/CA-Election-2020-California-Voting/37d4681bbfce4cac95f3d2e09edbe765/14/0">AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Delays and long lines at polling places during recent presidential primary elections – such as voters in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/long-voting-lines-in-texas-spotlight-concerns-about-access-to-the-polls/2020/03/04/e729486a-5e2e-11ea-b014-4fafa866bb81_story.html">Texas</a> experienced – represent the latest version of decades-long policies that have sought to reduce the political power of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting">African Americans</a> in the U.S.</p>
<p>Following the Civil War and the extension of the vote to African Americans, state governments worked to <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-everyone-should-know-about-reconstruction-150-years-after-the-15th-amendments-ratification-122117">block</a> black people, as well as poor whites, from voting. One way they tried to accomplish this goal was through poll taxes – an amount of money each voter had to pay before being allowed to vote. </p>
<p>This practice was abolished by the passage of the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xxiv">24th Amendment</a> in 1964. Further protections for nonwhite voters came with the Voting Rights Act, which closely followed the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/selma-montgomery-march">Selma to Montgomery civil rights protest marches</a> 55 years ago, in March 1965.</p>
<p>But in recent years, new barriers have gone up that, we believe, constitute a new type of poll tax on working people and minority voters. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=yi48Sl4AAAAJ">We</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xoubpW0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">are</a> scholars of the American civil rights movement, including the <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1660274">Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s voting rights efforts</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike past poll taxes, the modern poll tax isn’t paid in money, but in time – how long it takes a person to get to a polling place, and, once there, how long it takes for them to actually cast their ballot.</p>
<h2>Securing the right to vote</h2>
<p>Almost immediately after the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxv">15th Amendment</a> gave African Americans the right to vote in 1870, state governments in the South passed a series of laws seeking to limit <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/race-and-voting-in-the-segregated-south">freed blacks’ voting power</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, white supremacist organizations like the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/02/the-long-history-of-black-voter-suppression-in-american-politics/">Ku Klux Klan</a> used violence to intimidate African Americans from casting ballots.</p>
<p>This situation remained largely unchallenged for almost a century, until the 1960s, when the years of protest by the civil rights movement bore fruit in the abolition of poll taxes and federal protection of citizens’ voting rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319988/original/file-20200311-116291-175fbbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319988/original/file-20200311-116291-175fbbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319988/original/file-20200311-116291-175fbbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319988/original/file-20200311-116291-175fbbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319988/original/file-20200311-116291-175fbbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319988/original/file-20200311-116291-175fbbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319988/original/file-20200311-116291-175fbbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319988/original/file-20200311-116291-175fbbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Lyndon Johnson signs the 24th Amendment, Feb. 4, 1964, abolishing poll taxes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Signing_of_the_Constitutional_Amendment_on_the_Poll_Tax.jpg">Cecil W. Stoughton/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Creating a new poll tax</h2>
<p>Since the 1960s, there have been efforts by state and local officials to limit these hard-won victories. </p>
<p>The most recent chapter in this battle is the 2013 Supreme Court decision in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96">Shelby County v. Holder</a>, which lifted restrictions on states that have historically blocked African Americans from voting, so state governments no longer need to seek federal approval before taking actions that might disproportionately harm black citizens’ <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/how-shelby-county-broke-america/564707/">right to vote</a>. </p>
<p>Since the Shelby County decision, local election boards and state governments have closed over <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/report-more-than-1600-polling-places-have-closed-since-the-supreme-court-gutted-the-voting-rights-act/">1,600 polling places</a>. That is approximately 8% of total voting locations within jurisdictions affected by the Shelby decision. </p>
<p>The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan independent study group started in 1957, found that states claimed polling-place closures were intended to save money, centralize voting operations, and complying with Americans with Disabilities Act – but really the goal was <a href="https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018/Minority_Voting_Access_2018.pdf">reducing voter turnout</a>, particularly among minority voters who were historically disenfranchised. Using publicly available data, federal lawsuits brought against states and counties the report documents clear patterns of discrimination.</p>
<p>These closures, often done with little notice or public accountability, have occurred across communities of varying racial and <a href="https://civilrights.org/democracy-diverted/">demographic characteristics</a>. What unites these places are <a href="https://uknowledge.uky.edu/klj/vol104/iss4/5/">the costs they impose</a> on voting – from longer wait times to transportation obstacles – experienced disproportionately by voters of color, older voters, rural voters, voters with disabilities and poor working <a href="https://civilrights.org/democracy-diverted/">people in general</a>.</p>
<p>In the 2016 election, for instance, scholars at UCLA found that voters in black neighborhoods waited, on average, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.00024">29% longer to vote</a> than voters in predominantly white communities. The study found, “Even within the same county, voters in a hypothetical all-black precinct would wait 15 percent longer than voters in an all-white precinct.” </p>
<p>The study found voters in majority black precincts were far more likely to <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.00024">wait longer than half an hour</a> to cast a ballot than voters in majority white precincts. A study of the 2012 election found that the voters who waited in long lines paid, collectively, over <a href="https://doi.org/10.1089/elj.2014.0292">half a billion dollars</a> in lost wages.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320259/original/file-20200312-111232-1h18azh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320259/original/file-20200312-111232-1h18azh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320259/original/file-20200312-111232-1h18azh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320259/original/file-20200312-111232-1h18azh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320259/original/file-20200312-111232-1h18azh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320259/original/file-20200312-111232-1h18azh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320259/original/file-20200312-111232-1h18azh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320259/original/file-20200312-111232-1h18azh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Voters in Houston, Texas, wait in line to vote on Super Tuesday 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voters-line-up-at-a-polling-station-to-cast-their-ballots-news-photo/1204959570">Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Considering time</h2>
<p>We believe that polling place closures represent a modern-day version of the poll tax. </p>
<p>In our view, access to polling places is a key element of citizens’ <a href="https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914b24dadd7b0493475f116">right to vote</a>. People need fair and equitable access to places to vote – and determining what that means should include time and travel costs imposed on voters. This would expand traditional understandings of access to polling places beyond narrow legal opinions and take into account the full range of racial and class barriers to being able to participate in U.S. democracy. </p>
<p>Everybody’s time is valuable. But wait times have different effects depending upon a person’s socioeconomic status. </p>
<p><a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/tndl85&div=7&g_sent=1&casa_token=b6sHA4AGfu8AAAAA:lRaEeXP_zforinl7vSd2bTvYfwkXqH_K479KZkRxBDv2h_RFdUaRleSa3PJ2K8C_dskseFpF7Q&collection=journals">Working people calculate daily</a> how much time, if any, they can afford to be away from their hourly wage job. Interminable waits at polling places may not fit in the schedule with a second or third job. Work supervisors may not excuse a late arrival or an absence. A working person may feel pressure to leave a polling place before casting a ballot, just to get to work on time and keep the <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/486932-sanders-calls-long-lines-at-michigan-polling-stations-an-outrage">money coming in</a>.</p>
<p>Importantly, the Supreme Court’s Shelby County ruling did not invalidate all of the Voting Rights Act. Rather, it threw out the method by which the federal government could determine <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/section-4-voting-rights-act">which areas of the country had policies</a> that resulted in widespread voter disenfranchisement. </p>
<p>Congress could enact new legislation detailing a new method of making that determination, which would then <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/2/14/17619202/voting-rights-fight-explained-key-sections-rights-act">restore federal oversight</a> to states that create barriers to voting. </p>
<p>However because of our federal system where states have direct oversight of elections many of these decisions ultimately take place at the local and state level. As a result, election officials need to work in transparent ways with diverse communities to ensure that changes to voting locations do not disproportionately limit minority access. In addition, states could also ensure equal access to voting by creating, or expanding, early voting periods, and making it possible <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/early-voting-in-state-elections.aspx">to vote by mail</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The modern poll tax isn’t paid in money, but in time – how long it takes a person to get to a polling place, and, once there, how long it takes for them to actually cast their ballot.
Joshua F.J. Inwood, Associate Professor of Geography Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State
Derek H. Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129963
2020-02-10T13:57:20Z
2020-02-10T13:57:20Z
Lynching preachers: How black pastors resisted Jim Crow and white pastors incited racial violence
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313546/original/file-20200204-41476-1tkrfxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3620%2C2406&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A funeral held in July 1945 for two victims of the Ku Klux Klan, George Dorsey and his sister, Dorothy Dorsey Malcolm, of Walton County, Georgia, held at the Mt. Perry Baptist Church Sunday. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-funeral-for-two-of-the-victims-in-the-july-25th-news-photo/514970326?adppopup=true">Bettman via Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>White lynch mobs in America murdered at least 4,467 people between 1883 and 1941, hanging, burning, dismembering, garroting and blowtorching their victims. </p>
<p>Their violence was widespread but not indiscriminate: About 3,300 of the lynched were black, according to the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023119841780">most recent count</a> by sociologists <a href="https://sociology.la.psu.edu/people/czs792">Charles Seguin</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Rigby3">David Rigby</a>. The remaining dead were white, Mexican, of Mexican descent, Native American, Chinese or Japanese. </p>
<p>Such numbers, based on verifiable newspaper reports, represent a minimum. The full human toll of racial lynching may remain ever beyond reach.</p>
<p>Religion was no barrier for these white murderers, as I’ve discovered in my <a href="https://thewitnessbcc.com/on-the-assault-of-james-cone-black-liberation-theology/">research</a> on Christianity and lynch mobs in the Reconstruction-era South. White preachers incited racial violence, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3856205/">joined the Ku Klux Klan</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lynching-Beyond-Dixie-American-Violence/dp/0252078950">lynched black people</a>. </p>
<p>Sometimes, the victim was a pastor. </p>
<h2>Buttressing white supremacy</h2>
<p>When considering American racial terror, the first question to answer is not how a lynch mob could kill a man of the cloth but why white lynch mobs killed at all. </p>
<p>The typical answer from Southern apologists was <a href="https://www.unz.com/print/Forum-1893oct-00167/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=cab61c7ba91a12d8c33b54ec2f574e7d6f6d6d3b-1580782592-0-AW7mBphh9C90hiWp9iXtbrJd2X4vYmDZ3NBpAUJGadAyuvhKERXLIaRrUgD72UCVy4RMEb8FbCUkvRELIFAi3QVpOU4pOgUm6qePhlqqATqAhMukQcKoeCPdDhBY03Qib0YIc9h5PogqRuh0ROtQ-6_cUgQnAA1AakxbYunotcDRUqB9KAJ_-_ANkxEELzy2irMoW3znVMUEssmuQQx8z5Fsc58tOJAHp9fz_dOiHwQa6uEAIw9AzwmsaZJCiomSTd54iZgwivAkNtLjSTLBDUBY8BQIuSrGmxIVupNDAs0u">that only black men who raped white women</a> were targeted. In this view, lynching was “popular justice” – the response of an aggrieved community to a heinous crime.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A white lynch mob in Shelbyville, Tennessee, in 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-determined-men-of-a-shelbyville-tennessee-mob-were-news-photo/515589032?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty</a></span>
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<p>Journalists like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-ida-b-wells.html">Ida B. Wells</a> and early sociologists like <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/work-monroe-nathan-1866-1945/">Monroe Work</a> saw through that smokescreen, finding that only about <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271621304900110">20% to 25%</a> of lynching victims were alleged rapists. About 3% were <a href="https://theconversation.com/lynching-memorial-shows-women-were-victims-too-95029">women</a>. Some were children. </p>
<p>Black people were <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14977/14977-h/14977-h.htm">lynched for murder or assault</a>, or on suspicion that they committed those crimes. They could also be lynched for looking at a white woman or for bumping the shoulder of a white woman. Some were killed for being near or <a href="http://www.waltontribune.com/article_71c8489e-7152-11e7-9190-4f7f8e038947.html">related to someone</a> accused of the aforementioned offenses.</p>
<p>Identifying the dead is supremely difficult work. As sociologists <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/121/4/1310/2581695">Amy Kate Bailey and Stewart Tolnay</a> argue persuasively in their 2015 book “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469620879/lynched/">Lynched</a>,” very little is known about lynching victims beyond their gender and race. </p>
<p>But by cross-referencing news reports with census data, <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469620879/lynched/">scholars</a> and <a href="https://eji.org">civil rights organizations</a> are uncovering more details.</p>
<p>One might expect that mobs seeking to destabilize the black community would focus on the successful and the influential – people like <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-black-church-in-the-african-american-experience">preachers</a> or prominent business owners. </p>
<p>Instead, lynching disproportionately targeted lower-status black people – individuals society would not protect, like the agricultural worker <a href="https://digital.wwnorton.com/america11">Sam Hose</a> of Georgia and men like <a href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore/texas/henry-smith">Henry Smith</a>, a Texas handyman accused of raping and killing a three-year-old girl. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The National Memorial For Peace And Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, commemorates the victims of lynching.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/markers-display-the-names-and-locations-of-individuals-news-photo/951575614?adppopup=true">Bob Miller/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The rope and the pyre snuffed out primarily the socially marginal: the unemployed, the unmarried, the precarious – often not the prominent – who expressed any discontentment with racial caste.</p>
<p>That’s because lynching was a <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814793992/">form of social control</a>. By killing workers with few connections who could be economically replaced – and doing so in <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807871973/lynching-and-spectacle/">brutal, public ways that struck terror</a> into black communities – lynching kept white supremacy on track.</p>
<h2>Fight from the front lines</h2>
<p>So black ministers weren’t often lynching victims, but they could be targeted if they got in the way. </p>
<p>I.T. Burgess, a preacher in Putnam County, Florida, was hanged in 1894 after being accused of planning to instigate a revolt, according to a May 30, 1894, story in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. Later that year, in December, the Constitution also reported, Lucius Turner, a preacher near West Point, Georgia, was shot by two brothers for apparently writing an insulting note to their sister. </p>
<p>Ida B. Wells wrote in her 1895 editorial “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309644/the-light-of-truth-by-ida-b-wells/">A Red Record</a>” about Reverend King, a minister in Paris, Texas, who was beaten with a Winchester Rifle and placed on a train out of town. His offense, he said, was being the only person in Lamar County to speak against the horrific 1893 lynching of the handyman Henry Smith. </p>
<p>In each of these cases, the victim’s profession was ancillary to their lynching. But preaching was not incidental to black pastors’ resistance to lynching. </p>
<p>My dissertation research shows black pastors across the U.S. spoke out against racial violence during its worst period, despite the clear danger that it put them in. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ida B. Wells, the great documentarian of the lynching era, in 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-ida-b-wells-1920-news-photo/529345339?adppopup=true">Chicago History Museum/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many, like the Washington, D.C., Presbyterian pastor Francis Grimke, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_works_of_Francis_J_Grimke_%CC%80.html?id=8--0AAAAMAAJ">preached to their congregations</a> about racial violence. Grimke argued for comprehensive anti-racist education as a way to undermine the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uncovering-the-roots-of-racist-ideas-in-america-71467">narratives</a> that led to lynching.</p>
<p>Other pastors wrote furiously about anti-black violence. </p>
<p>Charles Price Jones, the founder of the Church of God (Holiness) in Mississippi, for example, wrote <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100835320">poetry affirming the African heritage of black Americans</a>. Sutton Griggs, a black Baptist pastor from Texas, wrote <a href="https://wvupressonline.com/node/701">novels</a> that were, in reality, thinly veiled political treatises. Pastors wrote articles against lynching in their own <a href="https://www.thechristianrecorder.com/">denominational newspapers</a>.</p>
<h2>By any means necessary</h2>
<p>Some white pastors <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/02/jim-crow-souths-lynching-of-blacks-and-christianity-the-terror-inflicted-by-whites-was-considered-a-religious-ritual.html">decried racial terror</a>, too. But others used the pulpit to <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/september/legacy-lynching-america-christians-repentance.html">instigate violence</a>. </p>
<p>On June 21, 1903, the white pastor of Olivet Presbyterian church in Delaware used his religious leadership to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lynching-Beyond-Dixie-American-Violence/dp/0252078950">incite a lynching</a>. </p>
<p>Preaching to a crowd of 3,000 gathered in downtown Wilmington, Reverend Robert A. Elwood urged the jury in the trial of George White – a black farm laborer accused of raping and killing a 17-year-old white girl, Helen Bishop – to pronounce White guilty speedily. </p>
<p>Otherwise, Elwood continued, according to a June 23, 1903 New York Times article, White should be lynched. He cited the Biblical text <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+5%3A13&version=NIV">1 Corinthians 5:13</a>, which orders Christians to “expel the wicked person from among you.” </p>
<p>“The responsibility for lynching would be yours for delaying the execution of the law,” Elwood thundered, exhorting the jury.</p>
<p>George White was dragged out of jail the next day, bound and burned alive in front of 2,000 people. </p>
<p>The following Sunday, a black pastor named Montrose W. Thornton discussed the week’s barbarities with his own congregation in Wilmington. He urged self-defense.</p>
<p>“There is but one part left for the persecuted negro when charged with crime and when innocent. Be a law unto yourself,” he told his parishioners. “Die in your tracks, perhaps drinking the blood of your pursuer.” </p>
<p>Newspapers <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7Vc_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=die+in+your+tracksperhaps+drinking+the+blood+of+your+pursuers&source=bl&ots=5Vffra-DdL&sig=ACfU3U2gGE1DXlCVALHFqvr1AEEJy-Dbrw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjf3Pya6bHnAhUDYawKHTENDg8Q6AEwAHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">around the country</a> denounced both sermons. An editorial in the Washington Star said both pastors had “contributed to the worst passions of the mob.”</p>
<p>By inciting lynching and advocating for self defense, the editors judged, Elwood and Thornton had “brought the pulpit into disrepute.” </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129963/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Malcolm Brian Foley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Religion was no barrier for Southern lynch mobs intent on terror. White pastors joined the KKK, incited racial violence and took part in lynchings. Sometimes, the victim was a preacher.
Malcolm Brian Foley, PhD Candidate in Religion - Historical Studies, Baylor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123316
2019-09-26T11:22:32Z
2019-09-26T11:22:32Z
The history of the cross and its many meanings over the centuries
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293888/original/file-20190924-51405-1mrrxu2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"> A procession of Christian girls, venerating the Cross, in the village of Qanat Bekish, Lebanon.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mideast-Lebanon-Cross/161bf78b0fd54388a1ebb7ce7f3a9e3d/30/0">AP Photo/Hussein Malla</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the fall, Catholics and some other Christian churches celebrate the <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/the-exaltation-of-the-holy-cross-594">Feast of the Holy Cross</a>. With the feast, Christians commemorate Jesus Christ’s life, especially his salvific death on the cross and his later Resurrection, believing this offers them the promise of forgiveness and eternal life.</p>
<p>The feast has its roots in late antiquity, a time when the cross became an important part of Christian art and worship. The cross, once a shameful form of execution for criminals, has became a predominant symbol of Christ and Christianity.</p>
<p>However, the cross at times has also taken on darker meanings as a symbol of persecution, violence and even racism.</p>
<h2>The early cross</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=k85JKr1OXcQC&pg=PA297&dq=Joanne+Pierce+veneration&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiR0tGe9OfkAhWToFwKHb9OCAEQ6AEwAHoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=Joanne%20Pierce%20veneration&f=false">scholar of medieval Christian history and worship</a>, I have studied this complicated history.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294165/original/file-20190925-51452-1ikunv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294165/original/file-20190925-51452-1ikunv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294165/original/file-20190925-51452-1ikunv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294165/original/file-20190925-51452-1ikunv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294165/original/file-20190925-51452-1ikunv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294165/original/file-20190925-51452-1ikunv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294165/original/file-20190925-51452-1ikunv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Second century pagan graffito depicting a man worshipping a crucified donkey-headed figure.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A famous piece of early-third century Roman wall art, the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=GfvWWJx9su0C&pg=PA125&lpg=PA125&dq=alexamenos+fidelis&source=bl&ots=Vy4j75PPbb&sig=ACfU3U0Ong3Ag1fz7tgukE-ZONA7TUF_Fw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjhosKjpsXkAhVSnKwKHSdwCGkQ6AEwEXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=alexamenos%20fidelis&f=false">“Alexamenos graffito,”</a> depicts two human figures, with the head of a donkey, arms stretched out in a T-shaped cross, with the caption “Alexamenos worships his god.” </p>
<p>Christianity was outlawed at the time in the Roman Empire and criticized by some as a religion for fools. The caricature of <a href="https://penelope.uchicago.edu/%7Egrout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/graffito.html">“Alexamenos,”</a> offering prayers to this crucified figure was a way of depicting Christ with a donkey’s head and ridiculing his god. </p>
<p>But for Christians, the cross had deep meaning. They understood Christ’s death on the cross to be “completed” by God’s raising him from the dead three days later. This Resurrection was a sign of Christ’s “victory” over sin and death. </p>
<p>Believers could share in this victory by being baptized, forgiven of past sin and “reborn” into a new life in the Christian community, the church. Christians, then, frequently referred to the Christ’s cross both as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lf9aDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=robin+jensen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUo_P5ldnkAhUEqZ4KHcUxB6gQ6AEwAXoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=wood%20life&f=false">“wood of life”</a> and as a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=RAxmJtxspQEC&pg=PA83&dq=victorious+cross+christ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVsvnjltnkAhWIuZ4KHfuiDKsQ6AEwCHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=victorious%20cross%20christ&f=false">“victorious Cross.”</a> </p>
<h2>The true cross?</h2>
<p>In the early fourth century, Emperor Constantine <a href="https://www.biography.com/political-figure/constantine-i">legalized Christianity</a>. He authorized excavation of some of the holy sites of Christ’s life in what came to be called the “Holy Land.” At the time, it was part of the Roman province of Syria Palestina, bracketed by the Jordan River to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the west and Syria to the north.</p>
<p>By the fifth century, the legend arose that pieces of crosses were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lf9aDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=robin+jensen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUo_P5ldnkAhUEqZ4KHcUxB6gQ6AEwAXoECAAQAg#v=snippet&q=helena&f=false">uncovered by Constantine’s mother</a>, Helena, during these excavations. Believers said a miraculous healing took place when a sick woman was touched with one piece, proof that it was a section of the actual cross of Christ.</p>
<p>Constantine built a large church, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lf9aDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=robin+jensen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUo_P5ldnkAhUEqZ4KHcUxB6gQ6AEwAXoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=martyrium&f=false">the Martyrium</a>, over what was assumed to be the location of Jesus’ tomb. The September date of that church’s dedication came to be celebrated as the feast of the “Exaltation of the Cross.” </p>
<p>Helena’s supposed “finding” of the cross itself was given its own feast day in May: the “Invention of the Cross.” Both feasts were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tVESLvUcwRUC&pg=PA159&dq=two+feasts+of+the+cross&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinqMuyn9nkAhWSHTQIHWpaCsgQ6AEwAXoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=two%20feasts%20of%20the%20cross&f=false">celebrated</a> in Rome by the seventh century.</p>
<p>One section of what was believed to be the true cross was kept and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/byzantine-and-modern-greek-studies/article/lignum-vitae-or-crux-gemmata-the-cross-of-golgotha-in-the-early-byzantine-period/6F9AEC41B1EF37325A9032174B0E6979#">venerated on Good Friday</a> in Jerusalem from the mid-fourth century until its conquest by a Muslim caliph in the seventh century.</p>
<h2>Later representations</h2>
<p>Numerous Christian churches were constructed in the Roman Empire during the fourth and fifth centuries. With imperial financial support, these large buildings were decorated with intricate mosaics depicting figures from the scriptures, especially of Christ and the apostles. </p>
<p>The cross that appears in mosaic is a golden cross adorned with round or square precious gems, a visual representation of the victory over sin and death achieved by Christ’s death. It was called a “crux gemmata,” or “gemmed cross.” </p>
<p>From the sixth century through the early Middle Ages, <a href="https://www.christianiconography.info/crucifixion.html">artistic representations of the Crucifixion</a> became more common. Sometimes Christ was depicted on the cross alone, perhaps <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+23%3A32-55&version=NRSV">between the other two criminals</a> crucified with him. More often, Christ on the cross is surrounded on either side <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+19:24-26&version=NRSV">by the figures of Mary and the apostle, Saint John</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293889/original/file-20190924-51410-np2f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293889/original/file-20190924-51410-np2f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293889/original/file-20190924-51410-np2f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293889/original/file-20190924-51410-np2f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293889/original/file-20190924-51410-np2f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293889/original/file-20190924-51410-np2f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293889/original/file-20190924-51410-np2f8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early medieval representation of Christ on the cross.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinet/44529998112">Thomas Quine</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Public veneration of the cross on Good Friday became increasingly common outside of the Holy Land, and this <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tVESLvUcwRUC&pg=PA120&dq=veneration+cross+rome&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjE1YHFwtnkAhUD-6wKHVOTBWYQ6AEwAXoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=veneration%20cross%20rome&f=false">ritual</a> was observed in Rome in the eighth century.</p>
<p>During the medieval period, the crucified Christ was commonly portrayed as a serene figure. The representation <a href="https://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/object-narratives/christ-crucified-gellone-sacramentary">tended to change</a> over the centuries, to Christ as a <a href="https://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Grunewald.html">tortured, twisted victim</a>. </p>
<h2>Different meanings</h2>
<p>During the Reformation, Protestant churches rejected the use of the crucifix. In their view, it was a human “invention,” not in frequent use in the primitive church. They claimed the crucifix had become the object of idolatrous Catholic veneration, and used other versions of a plain cross instead. </p>
<p>Differing depictions of the cross expressed deeper conflicts within Western Christianity. </p>
<p>But even before that, the cross was used in a divisive way. During the High Middle Ages, the cross became connected with a <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Crusades/">series of religious wars</a> waged from Christian Europe to liberate the Holy Land from the grasp of Muslim rulers.</p>
<p>Those who chose to go and fight <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=t2t4_JG1xfIC&pg=PA159&dq=pope+urban+take+the+cross&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijmIf5zdnkAhUGeKwKHd3qBPwQ6AEwAnoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=pope%20urban%20clothing%20the%20cross&f=false">would wear a special garment</a>, marked with a cross, over their daily clothes. They had “taken the cross” and came to be called “Crusaders.” </p>
<p>Of all the Crusades, only the first one in the late 11th century really accomplished its objective. These Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in a bloody battle that <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/fulcher-cde.asp#capture">did not spare women and children</a> in the effort to rid the city of “infidels.” The Crusades also sparked waves of active hostility toward European Jews, resulting in outbreaks of violence against Jewish communities for centuries.</p>
<p>By the 19th century, the term “crusade” came to refer more generally to any kind of struggle for a “righteous” reason, whether religious or secular. In the United States at that time, the term was used to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=zz0vkgAACAAJ&dq=william+lloyd+garrison+crusader&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-0qzwxefkAhXrmOAKHaGeDHUQ6AEwAHoECAAQAQ">describe a number of religious-social activists</a>. For example, abolitionist newspaper editor William Lloyd Garrison was called a “Crusader” in his political struggle to end the evil of slavery.</p>
<h2>Symbol of pro-white agenda</h2>
<p>Later the cross was also literally taken up by activists demonstrating against social advances. For example, the Ku Klux Klan, as part of their terror campaign, would <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1105/cross-burning">often burn</a> plain wooden crosses at meetings or on the lawns of African Americans, Jews or Catholics.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294213/original/file-20190925-51463-y5h1tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294213/original/file-20190925-51463-y5h1tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294213/original/file-20190925-51463-y5h1tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294213/original/file-20190925-51463-y5h1tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294213/original/file-20190925-51463-y5h1tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294213/original/file-20190925-51463-y5h1tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294213/original/file-20190925-51463-y5h1tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A monolith listing the names, dates and rationale for the lynching of African Americans stands in front of a photograph of a burning Ku Klux Klan cross on display in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mississippi-Bicentennial/c1d0082ab4424f97a6ac51c136f0ca2a/2/0">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A few decades later, Adolf Hitler’s quest for German expansionism and persecution of Jews, based on his belief in the superiority of the “Aryan race,” <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/how-why-sanskrit-symbol-become-nazi-swastika-svastika/">came to be crystallized</a> in the sign of the swastika. Originally a <a href="https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=37894&picture=hindu-swastika">religious symbol from India</a>, it had for centuries <a href="https://www.winchester-cathedral.org.uk/wp-content/themes/winchestercathedral/scripts/php/thumb.php?src=https://www.winchester-cathedral.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/edington_lp.jpg&w=210&h=180&zc=1">been used in Christian iconography</a> as one of many artistic expressions of the cross.</p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<p>Even today, the newspaper of the KKK is entitled The Crusader, and various white supremacy groups use forms of the cross as a symbol of their own pro-white agenda on flags, tattoos and clothing. </p>
<p>The Feast of the Holy Cross focuses on the meaning of the cross as a powerful sign of divine love and salvation for early Christians. It is tragic that the cross has also been twisted into a vivid sign of hatred and intolerance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanne M. Pierce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Sept. 14 is the the Feast of the Holy Cross celebrated by many Catholics and some other Christians. A religion scholar revisits the history of the cross, how it became a symbol of divine love, but also of violence.
Joanne M. Pierce, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/116255
2019-06-03T12:39:42Z
2019-06-03T12:39:42Z
Hate crimes associated with both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have a long history in America’s past
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277253/original/file-20190530-69087-qofntr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">At a 2016 Trump rally, a man holds up a sign, 'Islamophobia is not the answer.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/GOP-2016-Trump/e8f646b49b414c02a12878bf1ee38489/9/0">AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Congresswoman Ilhan Omar <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/27/speaking_of_hate_rep-elect_ilhan_omar_promotes_it_138764.html">tweeted recently</a> that “Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same bigoted coin.” </p>
<p>Her comments came in response to media reports that the suspect behind the shooting at a San Diego synagogue was also <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-shooting/synagogue-shooting-suspect-believed-to-have-acted-alone-san-diego-sheriff-says-idUSKCN1S406S">under investigation for burning a mosque</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277255/original/file-20190530-69095-1qx9ij1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277255/original/file-20190530-69095-1qx9ij1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277255/original/file-20190530-69095-1qx9ij1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277255/original/file-20190530-69095-1qx9ij1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277255/original/file-20190530-69095-1qx9ij1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277255/original/file-20190530-69095-1qx9ij1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277255/original/file-20190530-69095-1qx9ij1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A vigil for victims of the Chabad of Poway synagogue shooting. On, April 28, 2019, a man opened fire Saturday inside the synagogue near San Diego.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Synagogue-Shooting-California/da1c58c0bde1440daea05fa0753bfaa8/53/0">AP Photo/Denis Poroy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hate crimes associated with both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017/topic-pages/tables/table-1.xls">shown an increase in recent years</a>. But is there an association between the two?</p>
<p>As author of <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781137401311">“American Heretics,”</a> I have found that American antagonism toward Islamic and Jewish traditions goes back nearly 500 years, and shares some unfortunate connections. </p>
<p>From time to time, Muslims and Jews have both been viewed as being antithetical to certain ideas of Americanness.</p>
<h2>Nativism and Jewish immigration</h2>
<p>As I explore in my book, nativism – an effort to protect the position of native-born citizens from perceived threats by immigrants – <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781137401311">has periodically erupted in the U.S.</a> since at least the early 19th century. These nativist beliefs have led to bias, exclusion and even violence against <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781137401311">different religious groups</a> who immigrated to America.</p>
<p>Although Jews had faced discrimination since first settling in Europe’s North American colonies in the 17th century, they were not depicted as a racial threat until around 1900. </p>
<p>In the early 20th century, northeastern American cities swelled in size as both factories and immigrant labor increased. Both caused popular anxieties about industrial capitalism and urban decay. </p>
<p>During this period – from 1870 to 1900 – the Jewish American population grew <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8212.html">from perhaps 200,000 to over a million</a>. That was the time when increasing numbers of immigrants were trying to escape anti-Semitism in Europe. </p>
<p>Nativists, however, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20100947?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents">began to portray Jews as non-whites</a> and blamed them for bringing poverty and communism to the U.S.</p>
<p>In addition, American law granted citizenship only to those classified as “white” or “black.” Given anti-black sentiment, many immigrant Jews struggled to <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7941&context=ylj">racially prove their whiteness</a>. They did so by attempting to meet shifting legal definitions of proof, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20100947?seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents">including reference to scientific authorities and skin color.</a></p>
<p>At various times, government officials classified Jews as Caucasian or Hebrew. They even seemed inclined at times to label them as Mongolians, which would exclude them from naturalization. Nativists used ugly stereotypes of Jewish physical and character traits, such as large noses and insatiable greed, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20100947?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents">in order to portray Jews as a race apart from most Americans</a>. </p>
<p>During the later part of the century, such stereotypes would be applied to Muslims as well. </p>
<h2>Anti-Semitism</h2>
<p>By the 1920s, the idea that Jews represented a separate, foreign race that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20100947?seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents">threatened the U.S. had become prevalent</a> among the Protestant majority. The Ku Klux Klan in that decade focused on anti-Semitism just as strongly as anti-Catholic nativism and anti-black racism. </p>
<p>KKK speakers and publications described Jews as unwilling to racially and culturally assimilate to <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781137401311">an essentially white and Protestant America</a>. </p>
<p>Klan membership peaked at perhaps four million throughout the nation, not simply the South. On Aug. 8, 1925, approximately 40,000 uniformed KKK members <a href="https://rowman.com/isbn/1566639220">marched down Pennsylvania Avenue</a> in a show of strength and assertiveness. Men and women wearing white caps and carrying American flags marched past a vast crowd that watched for three hours, publicly demonstrating the Klan’s strength and implicitly advocating their nativist agenda.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277257/original/file-20190530-69087-1s0ozye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277257/original/file-20190530-69087-1s0ozye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277257/original/file-20190530-69087-1s0ozye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277257/original/file-20190530-69087-1s0ozye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277257/original/file-20190530-69087-1s0ozye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277257/original/file-20190530-69087-1s0ozye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277257/original/file-20190530-69087-1s0ozye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Ku Klux Klan, wearing traditional white robes, parade down Pennsylvania Avenue past the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., in 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Domestic-News-Dist-of-Columbia-United-States-K-/2c3f0066b7e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The organization claimed to have helped <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4120894?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">elect 75 congressmen and senators</a> in the mid-1920s. Even future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was a Klan member at this time. </p>
<p>But it wasn’t the Klan alone. Other prominent individuals in the U.S. were also involved in spreading anti-Semitic messages. </p>
<p>Convinced that Jews bore responsibility for the First World War, car-maker <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742543133/A-Concise-History-of-American-Antisemitism">Henry Ford sold ten million copies</a> of his book “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem” beginning in 1920. </p>
<p>Throughout the 1930s, a Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2015.1048972">attracted a wide radio audience with his anti-Jewish</a> rants. Before the Catholic Church eventually shut down his populist career in 1942, <a href="https://theolib.atla.com/theolib/article/download/112/372/">he broadcast messages of anti-Semitism, anti-capitalism and anti-communism</a> to perhaps the largest radio audience in the world at that time as the country wrestled with the Depression. </p>
<p>Both Ford’s and Coughlin’s distrust of Jews rested on claims that they worked against American interests through their alleged international connections. </p>
<h2>Popularization of Islamophobia</h2>
<p>As with Jews, pre-existing antipathies exploded into public view when enough Muslim migrants arrived. While Muslims had been part of the U.S. since its founding, they weren’t as evident in public spaces. </p>
<p>Before the end of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, as many as one African in five enslaved and brought to the U.S. <a href="https://theconversation.com/muslims-arrived-in-america-400-years-ago-as-part-of-the-slave-trade-and-today-are-vastly-diverse-113168">was Muslim</a>. Owners often disallowed Islamic practice and many converted slaves to Christian traditions. Hence, <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479847112/servants-of-allah/">Americans had little awareness</a> of their country’s Muslim heritage for a long time.</p>
<p>The first large-scale immigration of Muslims visible to most Americans only occurred once the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished immigration quotas. Before then, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/797505?origin=JSTOR-pdf">racist limits restricted arrivals from all but certain European countries</a>. </p>
<p>Many Americans presumed Muslims to be Arab or Turkish. Negative stereotypes portraying them as <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538107379/Islamophobia-and-Anti-Muslim-Sentiment-Picturing-the-Enemy-Second-Edition">violent and hedonistic</a> were prevalent since at least the founding of the republic.</p>
<p>These stereotypes, somehow, did not affect black Muslim Americans in the same manner. While law enforcement viewed some black Muslim organizations <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/Nation%20of%20Islam">like the Nation of Islam as anti-American, they did not tend to regard them as foreign</a>. </p>
<p>It was the success of Islamist ideologies challenging U.S. interests in the Middle East that sparked the latest iteration of Islamophobia. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277259/original/file-20190530-69075-j298pz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277259/original/file-20190530-69075-j298pz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277259/original/file-20190530-69075-j298pz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277259/original/file-20190530-69075-j298pz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277259/original/file-20190530-69075-j298pz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277259/original/file-20190530-69075-j298pz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277259/original/file-20190530-69075-j298pz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters burn an effigy of the shah of Iran in 1979 during a demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Iran-Revolution-Anniversary-Timeline/45f226140092447f91372e3dc0584b70/32/0">AP Photo, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This began in 1979, when a popular revolution involving Islamists, Marxists and others overthrew the shah of Iran, an important ally of the United States and a group of students held American embassy staff hostage for more than a year. </p>
<p>The success of the Islamist leader Ayatollah Khomeini in establishing an Iranian Islamic state resuscitated centuries-old fears of politics influenced by Islamic ideologies. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1748048513504048?journalCode=gazb">Harassment cases against Arab and Iranian Americans</a> went up around this time. </p>
<p>In the following decades, popular television shows and film depicted <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538107379/Islamophobia-and-Anti-Muslim-Sentiment-Picturing-the-Enemy-Second-Edition">Arabs and Iranians as murderous and duplicitous</a>. </p>
<p>These depictions merged with <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814707326/arabs-and-muslims-in-the-media/">news coverage of “Islamic terrorists”</a> that contributed to distrust of Muslim Americans.</p>
<h2>Nativism, racism and Muslims</h2>
<p>The response of many officials and other Americans to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 helped further popularize images of Muslims based on racist and Islamophobic ideas. </p>
<p>With frightening frequency since 2001, gunmen have targeted individuals and communities because they “looked Muslim.” <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538107379/Islamophobia-and-Anti-Muslim-Sentiment-Picturing-the-Enemy-Second-Edition">Sikhs, Hindus and others were injured or killed, as were Muslims</a>. </p>
<p>In the 2008 presidential election, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42980515?seq=19#metadata_info_tab_contents">conservative efforts to misidentify candidate Barack Obama as a Muslim</a> complimented efforts by various Republican congressional candidates to advance baseless allegations. <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538107379/Islamophobia-and-Anti-Muslim-Sentiment-Picturing-the-Enemy-Second-Edition">False claims proliferated</a> that Muslims sought to establish Islamic law, and build a “victory mosque” near Manhattan’s Ground Zero. The larger message was that they were anti-American. </p>
<p>In the years immediately following 2001 polls suggested that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4124213?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents">Islamophobic sentiment had declined</a>. However, <a href="https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/15/sharp-rise-in-the-share-of-americans-saying-jews-face-discrimination/">discrimination against Muslims remains significant, and increasing numbers of Americans have come to recognize its prevalence</a>. </p>
<h2>Confluence of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism</h2>
<p>As a candidate and now as president, Donald Trump capitalized on Islamophobic sentiments. He fulfilled his campaign promise for a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/07/donald-trump-calls-for-total-and-complete-shutdown-of-muslims-entering-the-united-states/?utm_term=.76e8bb5089e3">“total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”</a> by issuing an executive order banning entry of people <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/politics/timeline-travel-ban/index.html">from seven Muslim-majority nations</a>. The Supreme Court later upheld the ban.</p>
<p>But this represents only a part of a broad nativist agenda that targets various non-white Americans, and threatens Jews as well. </p>
<p>Trump’s lack of condemnation of the alt-right <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/12/charlottesville-anniversary-supremacists-protests-dc-virginia-219353">Charlottesville protesters</a> implicitly condoned their nativist chants “The Jews will not replace us.” Some Jewish groups have worried that his own rhetoric might embolden anti-Semites, as when <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/10/18/498441990/jewish-leaders-concerned-trump-fuels-anti-semitic-rhetoric">former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke praised President Trump</a>. </p>
<p>Finding mutual concern regarding this nativist, racist language that targets their religions, a number of <a href="https://religionnews.com/2016/11/14/jewish-muslim-alliance-formed-against-anti-semitism-islamophobia/">Muslim and Jewish leaders</a> and communities over the past decade have found common cause and supported one another. The challenges they all face are not just political – but historical.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Gottschalk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Crime related to Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have shown an increase in recent years. An expert explains that American antagonism toward Islamic and Jewish traditions goes back nearly 500 years
Peter Gottschalk, Professor of Religion, Wesleyan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111146
2019-02-05T11:41:17Z
2019-02-05T11:41:17Z
Should we judge people for their past moral failings?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257094/original/file-20190204-193209-rmp33d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, accompanied by his wife, speaks during a news conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Governor-Klan-Blackface/7fce50c15b3d418fb0f784a46ee4596c/8/0">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is facing a controversy after a photograph surfaced from his medical school yearbook showing one person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-tip-from-a-concerned-citizen-helps-a-reporter-land-the-scoop-of-a-lifetime/2019/02/03/e30762ea-2765-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html?utm_term=.357a66cd8ac4">media alleged</a> the governor was the one in blackface. </p>
<p>Northam, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/va-gov-northams-medical-school-yearbook-page-shows-men-in-blackface-kkk-robe/2019/02/01/517a43ee-265f-11e9-90cd-dedb0c92dc17_story.html?utm_term=.f6c29c01e070">initially apologized</a>, but later said that he did not believe that the photo was of him and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/04/ralph-northam-scandal-virginia-governor-uncertain-future/2763459002/">called it</a> “disgusting, offensive, racist.”</p>
<p>The controversy came just months after Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, faced <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/kavanaugh-sexual-assault-allegation-dle/index.html">allegations</a> of sexual assault going back to his high school years.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lp2AS3oAAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=1">As a philosopher</a>, I believe these cases raise <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-012-9976-6">two ethical questions</a>. One is the question of moral responsibility for an action at the time it occurred. The second is moral responsibility in the present time for actions of the past. </p>
<p><a href="http://earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1690book2_4.pdf">Most</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Doing_Deserving.html?id=EEl4KgAACAAJ">philosophers</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/An_Essay_on_Moral_Responsibility.html?id=-zvXAAAAMAAJ">seem</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20009933?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">to</a> <a href="http://mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014090.001.0001/upso-9780262014090-chapter-7">think</a> that the two cannot be separated. In other words, moral responsibility for an action, once committed, is set in stone.</p>
<p>I argue that there are reasons to think that moral responsibility can actually change over time – but only under certain conditions.</p>
<h2>Locke on personal identity</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of John Locke.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/63794459@N07/6282628216">Skara kommun/Flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Philosophers implicitly agree that moral responsibility can’t change over time because they think it is a matter of one’s “personal identity.” The 17th-century British philosopher <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/">John Locke</a> was the first to explicitly raise this question. He asked: What makes an individual at one time the very same person as an individual at another time? Is this because both share the same soul, or the same body, or is it something else? </p>
<p>Not only is this, as philosopher <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/KORPI">Carsten Korfmacher</a> notes, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/person-i/">“literally a question of life and death</a>,” but Locke also thought that personal identity was the key to moral responsibility over time. </p>
<p>“Personal identity is the basis for all the right and justice of reward and punishment,” <a href="http://earlymoderntexts.com/authors/locke">he wrote</a>. </p>
<p>Locke believed that individuals deserve blame for a crime committed in the past simply because they are the same person that committed the past crime. From this perspective, a person would still be responsible for any of the alleged actions of a younger self.</p>
<h2>Problems with Locke’s view</h2>
<p>Locke argued that being the same person over time was not a matter of having the same soul or having the same body. It was instead a matter of having the same consciousness over time, which he analyzed in terms of memory. </p>
<p>Thus, in Locke’s view, individuals are responsible for a past wrong act <a href="https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/should-people-be-punished-for-crimes-they-cant-remember-committing-what-john-locke-would-say-about-vernon-madison-auid-1050?access=ALL">so long as they can remember committing it</a>. </p>
<p>While there is clearly something appealing about the idea that memory ties us to the past, it is hard to believe that a person should get off the hook just by forgetting a criminal act. Indeed, <a href="http://jaapl.org/content/7/3/219">some research suggests that violent crime actually induces memory loss</a>.</p>
<p>But, I believe, the problems with Locke’s view run deeper than this. The chief one is that it doesn’t take into consideration other changes in one’s psychological makeup. For example, many of us are inclined to think that the remorseful don’t deserve as much blame for their past wrongs as those who express no regret. But in Locke’s view, the remorseful would still deserve just as much blame for their past crimes because they remain identical with their former selves. </p>
<h2>Responsibility and change</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/harvardreview/content/harvardreview_2012_0018_0001_0109_0132">Some philosophers</a> are beginning to question the assumption that responsibility for actions in the past is just a question of personal identity. Philosopher <a href="https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/departments/philosophy/people/david-shoemaker">David Shoemaker</a>, for example, argues that responsibility doesn’t require identity. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/KHOIBF-2">a recent paper</a> in the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-association">Journal of the American Philosophical Association</a>, my co-author <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oHU097gAAAAJ&hl=en">Benjamin Matheson</a> and I argue that the fact that one has committed a wrong action in the past isn’t enough to guarantee responsibility in the present. Instead, that responsibility depends on whether the person has changed in morally important ways. </p>
<p>Philosophers generally agree that people deserve blame for an action <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/blame/#WheBlaApp">only if the action was performed with a certain state of mind</a>: say, an intention to knowingly commit a crime.</p>
<p>My co-author and I argue that deserving blame in the present for an action in the past depends on whether those same states of mind persist in that person. For example, does the person still have the beliefs, intentions and personality traits that led to the past act in the first place? </p>
<p>If so, then the person hasn’t changed in relevant ways and will continue to deserve blame for the past action. But a person who has changed may not be deserving of blame over time. The reformed murderer Red, played by Morgan Freeman, in the 1994 film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/">“The Shawshank Redemption,”</a> is one of my favorite examples. After decades in the Shawshank Penitentiary, Red the old man hardly resembles the teenager that committed murder. </p>
<h2>How do we judge past misconduct?</h2>
<p>If this is right, then figuring out whether a person deserves blame for a past action is more complex than simply determining if that individual did, in fact, commit the past action. </p>
<p>In the case of Northam, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/02/691018180/democrats-republicans-call-for-virginia-gov-northam-s-resignation">some see his denial</a>, as well as his admission of donning blackface during a dance competition as more evidence of his persisting responsibility. Others, however, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/us/northam-virginia-liberals-race.html">would like</a> the public to look at <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/03/us/racist-photo-northam-blake-analysis/index.html">Northam’s overall track record</a> in fighting against racism and prejudice. In particular, one commentator noted that Northam was forceful in his <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/03/us/racist-photo-northam-blake-analysis/index.html">denunciation of the 2017 Charlottesville white supremacist rally</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One way to think about past moral failure is – how much has a person changed?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/past-present-future-time-progress-concept-644195590?src=xPW0DROBiHDOay3uL1c93Q-1-26">Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What I would argue is that when confronted with the issue of moral responsibility for actions long since passed, we need to not only consider the nature of the past transgression but also how far and how deeply the individual has changed.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-we-judge-people-for-their-past-moral-failings-103982">first published</a> on Oct. 3, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Khoury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A philosopher argues that moral responsibility for past transgressions can actually change over time. The test lies in how deeply an individual has changed.
Andrew Khoury, Instructor of Philosophy, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/108028
2018-12-11T22:19:25Z
2018-12-11T22:19:25Z
‘Divided we stand’: looking back to the 1920s to understand the United States today
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249733/original/file-20181210-76977-w5ge3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C1197%2C734&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 1903 drawing by Louis Dalrymple depicts European immigrants as "rats" (in the magazine _Judge_).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York Public Library</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The day after the US midterm elections in 2018, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/opinion/midterms-senate-rural-urban.html">Paul Krugman wrote in the <em>New York Times</em></a> about the opposition between a “real America”, representing urban, diverse and educated in the House and a “Senate America,” mostly white, rural and uneducated. With this blunt remark, Krugman challenged the democratic nature of the the American legislative branch of government established by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_3:_Senate">article 1 of the US Constitution</a> 200 years ago. As the United States moves toward the 2020 presidential elections, to be held in November, the divide has only deepened.</p>
<p>This <a href="http://harvardlpr.com/online-articles/the-democratic-deficit-in-america/">democratic deficit</a> is nothing new but the deepening of the geographical racial, gender educational divisions has made it more acute, especially since the 2016 elections (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/the-two-americas-of-2016.html">here</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/after-trumps-election-there-are-two-americas-now/2016/11/21/12fa26c8-acec-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?utm_term=.ec9f6f948f92">here</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/how-2016-election-exposed-america-s-racial-cultural-divides-n682306">here</a> or <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/la/book/9783319580937">here</a>). Regarding these divisions, today’s America is a lot like the <a href="http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-418">America of 1920s</a>. After all, the “roaring ‘20s” were also the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSV5_nzxo0s">“tribal '20s</a>.”</p>
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<h2>The fear of a foreign and threatening “Other”</h2>
<p>Back then, just like today, rapid change in society was a prime reason for the tension – the most critical change having to do with demography and ethnicity. These changes bring back to the surface <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2017-12-12/americas-original-sin">America’s original sin</a>: a nation defined exclusively in terms of <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24714378/ns/us_news-gut_check/t/s-s-immigration-defining-whiteness/#.W-xBGZNKjUJ">whiteness</a>, which explains why immigration is such a hot divisive issue. Today, the fear of immigration focuses <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/politics/trump-immigration.html">on hispanics</a>. In the 1920s, it was centered on <a href="http://www.understandingrace.net/history/gov/eastern_southern_immigration.html">Southern and Eastern Europeans</a>.</p>
<p>In both cases, it is fed by a rhetoric of fear of invasion of an external “other” who might threaten the very existence of the national community – the bolsheviks and the anarchists in the 1920s (let’s not forget the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare">first Red Scare</a> or the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids">Palmer Reds</a>); the gang member (<a href="https://theconversation.com/republican-ads-feature-ms-13-hoping-fear-will-motivate-voters-105474">MS13</a>) and <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/23/pence-caravan-middle-easterners-933657">the terrorist</a> today. Either way, immigrants are always depicted as criminals. In the 1920s, the Italians were <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831353/">“blamed for driving up the crime rate”</a>. Today, it is the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/37230916/drug-dealers-criminals-rapists-what-trump-thinks-of-mexicans">Mexicans</a> or <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/18/17994508/migrant-caravan-honduras-trump-tweet">Central Americans</a>. This type of rhetoric hits a raw nerve in homogeneous <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-rural-america-fewer-immigrants-and-less-tolerance/2017/06/16/7b448454-4d1d-11e7-bc1b-fddbd8359dee_story.html?utm_term=.b72c3390955d">communities who are less exposed to diversity and more easily fantasise about it</a>.</p>
<p>It is not without political consequences. In 1924, the most restrictive immigration law (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924">Johnson–Reed Act</a>) was signed by President Hoover. In 2018, the birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the US Constitution is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/us/politics/trump-birthright-citizenship.html">being challenged by the president</a> with the threat of an executive order. More than economics, immigration is the reason why <a href="https://www.collingwoodresearch.com/uploads/8/3/6/0/8360930/flipping-trump-immigration.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0HjpjNvzok1t5x1WDnpmm1tnjPgQMcuLMR-mslhI4e91ancwp8_PFfSB4">the white working class vote shifted</a> toward Trump.</p>
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<h2>The rise of racist rhetoric</h2>
<p>Similar to the 1920s, but thankfully to a lesser degree, this fear of immigration has fueled <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/us/hate-crimes-fbi-2017.html">the rise</a> of xenophobic, racist and anti-semite forms of expression.</p>
<p>The hundreds of White Supremacists who protested in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/white-nationalists-rally-charlottesville-virginia.html">Charlottesville in August, 2017</a> and again in Washington D.C. a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/washington-readies-for-todays-planned-white-supremacist-rally-near-white-house/2018/08/12/551720c4-9c28-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html?utm_term=.63a32ca72dbc">year later</a> have been the most visible ones, even if they pale in comparison to the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/second-klan/509468/">50,000 Ku Klux Klan demonstrator who paraded through the streets of Washington</a> in 1925. <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/146616/kkks-attempt-define-america">Yesterday’s KKK</a> and today’s <a href="http://time.com/5431089/trump-white-nationalism-bible/">white nationalists</a> have something in common: they both try to redefine what it means to be an American by using a rhetoric of exclusion while claiming ownership through patriotic symbols.</p>
<p>The 1920s were also characterised by the divide between <a href="https://takenol.weebly.com/traditionalism-vs-modernism.html">modernists and traditionalists</a> that presaged today’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702847.html">culture war</a>.</p>
<p>The hot button issues like the prohibition, evolution and sexual freedom are echoed in today’s debates over gun rights, climate change and the role of religion in society. Then, as now, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/the-return-of-the-1920s/422163/">these issues demonstrate a similar tension</a> between a more conservative, whiter and more patriarchal society on the one hand, and the construction of a more open, diverse and progressive society on the other. So it is not surprising that in both eras, the tension also centers on the role of women, religion, minorities and the role of science. Those divisions seem to be neatly divided along the traditional geographic fault lines separating the rural from the urban areas, <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/04/21/how-cities-split-nation/Tuambz5XWFKPkriMqguXmK/story.html">today</a> as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24446743?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">in the past</a>. Certainly from an economic standpoint, rapid change spurred by technological advances has had dire consequences on the more traditional sectors: <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-u-s-economy-in-the-1920s/">the farming and mining industries</a> in the 1920s, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/05/five-us-industry-sectors-decline-voters-trump">steel, textile, coal and manufacturing</a> today.</p>
<h2>A political decline</h2>
<p>The analogy with the 1920s also extends to politics. For instance, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1928">1928 elections</a>, just like the <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/the-urban-rural-divide-matters-more-than-red-vs-blue-state.html">2016</a> and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/415441-americas-urban-rural-divide-deepens">2018</a> elections, were notable for the electoral divide between urban and rural areas. Also, there are a number of similarities between President Herbert Hoover and President Donald Trump:</p>
<p>Both have supported protectionist measures: Hoover raised tariffs on agricultural products (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act">Hawley-Smoot Act</a>) despite the overall condemnation of <a href="https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11143&context=annals-of-iowa">economists and members of his own party</a>, while Trump took similar measures on metal tariffs, causing <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43290969">great consternation in his own party</a>. In the 1930s, the trade war with Europe that followed <a href="https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/HooversEconomicPolicies.html">worsened the economic depression</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246489/original/file-20181120-161644-v1kmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246489/original/file-20181120-161644-v1kmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246489/original/file-20181120-161644-v1kmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246489/original/file-20181120-161644-v1kmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246489/original/file-20181120-161644-v1kmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246489/original/file-20181120-161644-v1kmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246489/original/file-20181120-161644-v1kmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Hoover.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#/media/File:President_Hoover_portrait.jpg">Library of Congress/Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Trump’s immigration rhetoric carries echoes of Hoover, as well. Hoover promised <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/08/13/the-time-a-president-deported-1-million-mexican-americans-for-stealing-u-s-jobs/?utm_term=.8b1a8d25b591">“American jobs for real Americans”</a> As a result, he implemented a program of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/08/13/the-time-a-president-deported-1-million-mexican-americans-for-stealing-u-s-jobs/?utm_term=.8b1a8d25b591">“Repatriation of Persons of Mexican Ancestry”</a> that resulted in the deportation of almost 2 million people, many of whom were American-born.</p>
<p>Lastly, Trump and Hoover were both outsiders who have been the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/08/13/the-time-a-president-deported-1-million-mexican-americans-for-stealing-u-s-jobs/?utm_term=.8b1a8d25b591">“only career businessmen ever elected to the presidency”</a> They governed alone by sweeping away past doctrines, and shattering the ideological consensus. For political scientists <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674689374">Stephen Skowronek</a>, Hoover belongs to the category of presidents who signal the end of a political cycle. It is the failure of their presidency that makes room for the coming of a new kind of presidents who can reconstruct a new cycle by establishing new ideological foundations. Hoover did fail to manage the aftermath of the economic crash in 1929 and he was followed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and 35 years of more or less consensus around New Deal policies. Similarly, President Jimmy Carter is remembered for his failed presidency. He was succeeded by Reagan and his conservative “revolution” that impacted his successors for the next 30 years. According to <a href="https://www.thenation.com/ARTICLE/WHAT-TIME-IS-IT-HERES-WHAT-THE-2016-ELECTION-TELLS-US-ABOUT-OBAMA-TRUMP-AND-WHAT-COMES-NEXT/">Stephen Skowronek</a>, Donald Trump is one of these failed presidents.</p>
<h2>A crisis to come?</h2>
<p>Some might object, maybe rightfully, that, from an economic perspective, Trump’s presidency is a success: the United States has strong growth and low unemployment. Yet some believe <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/10/22/despite-strong-economy-lets-prepare-disruption-column/1668945002/">“we should prepare for economic disruption”</a> partly because of the prospects of a trade war. Others, at <a href="http://fortune.com/2018/09/13/jpmorgan-next-financial-crisis/">J.P. Morgan</a> or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/10/10/financial-crisis/?utm_term=.cee641f934a6">in the business world</a>, see the looming of an economic crisis, maybe even before the end of Donald Trump’s term. Thomas Piketty has shown that <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequality-story-in-six-charts?fbclid=IwAR0zg3V_khBDBVI1zXj6IccCOomQ8Jv0bksfgVVhC1j7sasKpAyMtZTlaAg">inequality has reached levels not seen since the late 1920s</a>.</p>
<p>Recently, <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/11/the-next-recession">The Economist</a> warned that “toxic politics and constrained central banks could make the next downturn hard to escape.” And the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/upshot/next-recession-three-most-likely-causes.html">New York Times</a> sees a recession as a “likely possibility.”</p>
<p>Some economists even believe the crisis <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/next-financial-crisis-has-begun-and-will-be-worse-than-2008-crash-economists-warn-11497433">has already begun and could be worse than 2008</a>. If that is the case, Trump’s inability to heed the advice of experts, especially in a context of trade wars, low interest rates and massive debt, will likely leave him <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/opinion/trump-financial-crisis.html">unable to properly respond</a>.</p>
<p>Trump may also willingly or unwillingly create another crisis of his own – constitutional, military, diplomatique or otherwise. His subversion of democratic norms may have serious enough consequences to bring forth a new political regime.</p>
<p>This doom-like scenario may not happen. Historical comparisons have their limits and history never repeats itself the same way. Today’s American society is more diversified and open than in the 1920s. The world is also more connected.</p>
<p>The only thing we can conclude for certain is that Donald Trump is more the symptom than the cause of the current political and societal tension (<a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/nafeez-mosaddeq-ahmed/donald-trump-is-not-problem-he-s-symptom">here</a>, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/nafeez-mosaddeq-ahmed/donald-trump-is-not-problem-he-s-symptom">here</a>, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/trump-is-not-the-cause-he-s-a-symptom-of-what-troubles-americans-20181030-p50ctm.html">here</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/07/american-democracy-crisis-trump-supreme-court">here</a>). As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kky0XDnBfFk">Barack Obama observed</a>, figures like Trump emerge in a context of deep change and swift transition toward a world whose shape remains obscure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108028/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>
The deepening geographic, racial, gender and educational divisions in America shows some striking parallels between the nation today and in the 1920s.
Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Assistant lecturer, CY Cergy Paris Université
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102311
2018-08-30T11:23:05Z
2018-08-30T11:23:05Z
BlacKkKlansman: what Spike Lee’s new film misses out
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233932/original/file-20180828-86123-1dkvm13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2018 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The much-hyped new film release <a href="https://theconversation.com/blackkklansman-a-deadly-serious-comedy-101432">BlacKkKlansman</a> has once again brought the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to public notice. Never one to shy away from a racially sensitive issue, director Spike Lee’s most recent film, set in 1979, follows Colorado Springs Police Department’s (CSPD) first black officer Ron Stallworth as he supervises an undercover operation infiltrating the Klan. </p>
<p>Sticking relatively closely to the real Stallworth’s 2006 memoir of these events, the film lays open the institutionalised bigotry of the era. Appointed as a nod to the prevailing trends of integration, the heroic Stallworth fights racism within the all white Colorado Springs Police Department. </p>
<p>The film has the look of a true 1970s <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-blaxploitation-movies">blaxploitation movie</a>, in which black ethnic stereotypes take centre stage. But there is more to it than that. Alongside the questionable clothes, afros and chrome-covered gas guzzlers, this is a film about a race war. “Black Power” was taking on white supremacy and Lee personalises the struggle.</p>
<p>On the one side, is David Duke – the glad-handing, ambitious, preppy “Imperial Wizard” reviving a moribund KKK. Ranged against him is the charismatic and articulate Stokely Carmichael: a frontline civil rights activist, Student Non-Violent Coordination Committee founder and Black Panther leader. Both are demagogues, both want revolution, and both are willing to use violence. Stallworth investigates the two and Spike Lee shows both those investigations. </p>
<p>But what is interesting about the true story is what Lee doesn’t have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to show.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233933/original/file-20180828-86135-mnx492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233933/original/file-20180828-86135-mnx492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233933/original/file-20180828-86135-mnx492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233933/original/file-20180828-86135-mnx492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233933/original/file-20180828-86135-mnx492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233933/original/file-20180828-86135-mnx492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233933/original/file-20180828-86135-mnx492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lee doesn’t shy away from difficult images.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2018 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Investigating the Klan</h2>
<p>In many ways, the CSPD’s investigation of the Klan was a surprising move. In 1979, undercover operations in general had a bad name, and those investigating the Klan were seen as particularly dubious by both the public and the police. </p>
<p>This stemmed back to the deep cover <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro">Cointel Program</a> in which J Edgar Hoover’s FBI used undercover agents to investigate what was termed “white hate”. This effort, which began in 1964, ceased in 1971 having suffered from persistent accusations of Bureau agents themselves being involved in a range illegal activities. These included high profile racist crimes like the notorious 1963 <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/birmingham-church-bombing">16th Street Baptist Church bombing</a> and the 1965 murder of the Civil Rights activist <a href="https://www.roosevelt.nl/murder-viola-liuzzo-turning-point-ku-klux-klan-history">Viola Liuzzo</a>. In addition, undercover work in general became difficult to sanction at a federal, state or municipal level following the scandal of the 1972 Watergate break-in which tainted all clandestine investigations in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Even given a successful investigation, it is worth asking what could then be done with the information gained. America has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/19/supreme-court-unanimously-reaffirms-there-is-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.de9c9f65204e">no “hate law” today</a>, let alone in the 1970s. This essentially means membership of the Klan was not, and is not, illegal – as such. Then, as now, extremist groups were adept at sheltering under America’s First Amendment protections of free speech. They also seemed to have influential members at all levels of the establishment. As Stallworth shows in his memoir, they were powerful in law enforcement. BlacKkKlansman features Stallworth’s run in with at least one deeply racist cop.</p>
<p>But it is true that Duke resigned his imperial position in 1980. So, did Stallworth’s work destroy Duke’s Klan? In Stallworth’s own account, he is proud to have gathered some useful intel on the racists of the region and prevented a series of cross burnings (the bombing in Lee’s film and the comic exposure of racism in the CSPD are fictional). But while the operation probably didn’t help Duke’s leadership, the Wizard’s growing ambitions for national political office and getting photographed selling the lists of Klan members were probably the more important elements behind his departure.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233934/original/file-20180828-86132-1ro6m4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233934/original/file-20180828-86132-1ro6m4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233934/original/file-20180828-86132-1ro6m4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233934/original/file-20180828-86132-1ro6m4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233934/original/file-20180828-86132-1ro6m4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233934/original/file-20180828-86132-1ro6m4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233934/original/file-20180828-86132-1ro6m4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Colorado College Black Student Union.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2018 FOCUS FEATURES LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Black Klansmen</h2>
<p>Speaking of membership, Lee’s film pivots around an understanding of the Klan as being so dumb, so responsive to Stallworth’s dog-whistle racist phrases, that it allows him – a black man – to become a member. </p>
<p>In fact, this is not the first time the Klan were duped in this way. Apparently, the powerful 1920s Klan was tricked into a giving membership to an African American, because in its drive for massive membership it allowed unverified mail order subscriptions. Nor is Lee the first to see the issue’s comic potential. The black comedian David Chappelle has already made fun of the idea. His character, a blind black man, Clayton Bigsby, is unaware of his ethnicity and rants white supremacist propaganda to a baffled Klan audience. <a href="http://www.comedycentral.co.uk/chappelles-show/videos/frontline-clayton-bigsby-pt-1-uncensored">This video</a> has over three million hits.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JBC-9k3y1ew?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>And in some cases, black Klan membership was not accidental. David Duke himself attempted to create a more inclusive Klan in the 1970s by playing down the hate speech – at least in public – doing away with robes, except for ceremony, and allowing Catholics and women to have full membership. </p>
<p>John Abarr of Montana has taken this idea of inclusion even further. In 2014, Abarr’s Klan-based Rocky Mountain Knights abandoned the principle of white supremacy <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/11/17/montana-klansman%E2%80%99s-idea-%E2%80%98inclusive%E2%80%99-kkk-elicits-derision">altogether</a>. Abarr even met with the foremost black civil rights group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he called a “really good organisation”, adding: “I don’t feel we need to be separate.” Consequently, the Knights have no bar on membership based on race, religion or sexual orientation. His stated aim is simply to cut the power of the federal state, and anyone who shares that view is welcome to join his order.</p>
<p>Most of the far right condemned Abarr’s suggestions and Lee makes sure to highlight their ongoing commitment to exclusion and violence. The final scenes of the film use original footage showing horrific scenes of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/10/unite-the-right-rally-alt-right-demise">Unite the Right rally</a> in August 2017. This is not the first time Lee has married shocking documentary footage with his cinematic work. His 1992 biopic Malcolm X opens with bystander video of the LAPD officers’ 1991 beating of the black taxi driver Rodney King. What is more, while promoting Blackkklansman, the director has been outspoken – missing few <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8gKi-r6Dak">opportunities</a> to associate the Trump administration with the racist right. </p>
<p>But perhaps all this dialogue between film and reality is missing the point. I would argue that Lee’s use of mockery is a more effective tool than blunt polemic when used against the Klan and its allies. Humour not only takes the sting out of the hate message: in doing so, it should also depress <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map/by-state">Klan recruitment</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristofer Allerfeldt works for the University of Exeter and receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.</span></em></p>
What is interesting about the true story is what Lee doesn’t have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to show.
Kristofer Allerfeldt, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Exeter
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101432
2018-08-16T21:54:22Z
2018-08-16T21:54:22Z
‘BlacKkKlansman’ – a deadly serious comedy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233412/original/file-20180824-149490-7flvbf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Actors Laura Harrier and John David Washington humorously and believably drive home the film’s strong racial irony.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Spike Lee’s <em>BlacKkKlansman</em> delivers more than a brilliantly entertaining story. Officially, <em>BlacKkKlansman</em> is about Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, son of actor Denzel Washington), the first African-American police detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with the help of a white proxy. </p>
<p>The film is based on actual events discussed in Stallworth’s 2014 memoir, <em>Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime</em>. The actors humorously and yet believably drive home the film’s strong racial irony. </p>
<p>Stallworth’s operation upsets a string of Klan meetings and attacks, including a comically rendered attempt to bomb the female head of the Black student union. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232385/original/file-20180816-2894-1i8qnpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232385/original/file-20180816-2894-1i8qnpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232385/original/file-20180816-2894-1i8qnpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232385/original/file-20180816-2894-1i8qnpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232385/original/file-20180816-2894-1i8qnpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232385/original/file-20180816-2894-1i8qnpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232385/original/file-20180816-2894-1i8qnpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stallworth dupes the “Grand Wizard” of the KKK, David Duke (Topher Grace). Stallworth and Duke have a series of phone conversations about Stallworth’s feigned white nationalist beliefs and the upcoming ceremony marking his initiation into the “Organization.” </p>
<p>Drama and hilarity abound when Stallworth is assigned to personally guard Duke at the event and Duke is unable to make any connection between his new initiate and the police officer.</p>
<p>What makes this film good is not that it successfully delivers the story it promises, but that it also exposes how our racial past has only changed its bell-bottoms for straight-legs. Or put another way, <em>BlacKkKlansman</em> showcases how past racism still operates in the present. </p>
<h2>Using the past to illuminate the present</h2>
<p>Spike Lee offers a parody of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s enthusiastic endorsement of the 1915 box office hit, <em>Birth of a Nation</em>. <em>Birth of a Nation</em>, based on a novel by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1367770.The_Clansman">Thomas Dixon, Jr., and unabashedly titled <em>The Clansman, an Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan</em>.</a>, is set just after the American Civil War. Both book and movie were used as propaganda to depict the Klan as saving the white race from the newly emancipated Blacks, rendered in the film as crazed rapists and criminals.</p>
<p>Lee successfully uses the past, as he has done in movies like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097216/"><em>Do the Right Thing</em> (1989)</a>, to artistically quash the anticipated criticism that a film by a Black director that portrays white racism is guilty of being anti-white.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6xXnQwLZzB0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Do the Right Thing’ is seen by many as one of the most important Hollywood films of the 1980s.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In contrast, by integrating the facts about <em>Birth of a Nation</em>, Lee explodes this phoney critique and points to the real racial irony: That films depicting white supremacy are likely to be wildly popular, even praised by presidents of their time, while a film that depicts the personal and professional impacts of racism, particularly on Black people, is subject to petty but popular criticism that the film is inherently anti-white. </p>
<p>Lee does not tread lightly, but marches into this racial terrain at the end of the movie by explicitly invoking images of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-defends-white-nationalist-protesters-some-very-fine-people-on-both-sides/537012/">U.S. President Donald Trump’s equivocation that some white nationalists are very fine people</a>.</p>
<h2>Comic relief; deadly serious</h2>
<p>To artistically execute this heavy history in a film that runs two hours and 15 minutes is no easy feat. But Lee does not disappoint. </p>
<p>Lee deftly offers comedy as a necessary relief. For example, Connie Kendrickson, (Ashlie Atkinson), the wife of a Klan member, Felix Kendrickson (Jasper Paakkonen), is an eager-Jane, reminiscent of a classically uncool, geekish, eager-to-please teenager. She dresses up — rather badly — in a two-piece, too loose, bright red pantsuit to pursue her first terrorist act of planting a bomb. She foils the plan and the result is pure humour.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q2eL3YithTc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Comedy is a great relief to the serious issues of American racism exposed in BlacKkKlansman.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the other hand, Lee interestingly and expertly weaves together the serious mini-dramas in Stallworth’s life. Stallworth must face personal conflicts in his love life when his (completely fictionalized) romantic interest (Laura Harrier) holds anti-cop views. And he must deal with persistent racism when he is formally admonished and told to accept routine anti-Black sentiments expressed at work or face consequences for complaining.</p>
<h2>Confronting American racism</h2>
<p><em>BlacKkKlansman</em> is, of course, not the first time cinema has been used to confront similar themes of Blacks infiltrating the KKK or using covert police tactics. These themes have been variously treated in popular culture since at least the 1960s. </p>
<p>The 1966 film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060173/"><em>The Black Klansman</em></a> was directed by Ted V. Mikels and depicts a light-skinned Black man, Jerry Ellsworth (Richard Gilden), whose daughter is murdered by the Klan. Ellsworth passes as white to become a member of the KKK to take revenge on the organization and avenge his daughter’s death. </p>
<p>Another iteration was developed in the 1973 cult classic <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070726/"><em>The Spook Who Sat by the Door</em></a>, directed by Ivan Dixon and based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Sam Greenlee. In this film, Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) is an African-American who becomes a top CIA agent after being trained in advanced warfare, spy work and subversion. </p>
<p>Freeman soon resigns from the CIA and lives by day as a social worker but by night as the leader of a Black nationalist group called the Freedom Fighters. Freeman leads the group in pro-Black both non-violent and aggressive military acts against corrupt police and anti-civil rights efforts. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231744/original/file-20180813-2906-1w3fp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231744/original/file-20180813-2906-1w3fp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231744/original/file-20180813-2906-1w3fp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231744/original/file-20180813-2906-1w3fp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231744/original/file-20180813-2906-1w3fp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231744/original/file-20180813-2906-1w3fp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231744/original/file-20180813-2906-1w3fp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘BlacKkKlansman’ does more than chase laughs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then there’s David Chappelle’s famous <a href="http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/chappelles-show-clayton-bigsby-the-black-white-supremist/82404406/">skit of Clayton Bigsby</a> on <a href="http://www.cc.com/shows/chappelle-s-show"><em>Chappelle’s Show</em></a>. Because Bigsby is blind, raised in an all-white group home, and no one ever tells him that he’s African-American, he develops deeply racist views and joins the town’s chapter of the KKK. He learns he is Black while lecturing at a white supremacist rally when the crowd requests that he take off his hood. Even then, his views don’t change. When asked why he divorced his wife of almost two decades, he responds that it is because she is a n***** lover. </p>
<p>So <em>BlacKkKlansman</em> has to be more than just another cinematic episode depicting how a Black subversive is finally sticking it to “The Man.” This story is about much more than one Black police officer who successfully and brilliantly subverted and breached the Klan to assist efforts of Black liberation. </p>
<p>And the film certainly does more than chase laughs by exposing the inanity of racist views. <em>BlacKkKlansman</em> is an insightful foray into the neo-passing genre. The neo-passing genre addresses contemporary injustices and asks audiences to consider and distinguish between <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/65zws7hy9780252041587.html">“classic and popular narratives of passing” where contemporary versions of passing can be about performing resistance and contesting unjust social circumstances.</a> </p>
<p>As a neo-passing story, <em>BlacKkKlansman</em> is ultimately about the current reality that African-Americans specifically, and other racial minorities in general, must continue to endure racism; that they must still argue that saying “Black lives matter” always means all lives matter. That Lee is able to highlight this through an entertaining adaptation of the past makes his latest film one to see and discuss.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vershawn Ashanti Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
BlacKkKlansman is more than a good story: it expertly weaves together comedy with serious drama to bring the story of past racism to illuminate our present day issues.
Vershawn Ashanti Young, Professor, Department of Drama and Speech Communication, University of Waterloo
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101415
2018-08-15T10:21:08Z
2018-08-15T10:21:08Z
As a young reporter, I went undercover to expose the Ku Klux Klan
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231930/original/file-20180814-2906-bj2za7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Connecticut members of the Ku Klux Klan, escorted by Meriden, Conn. police, run for shelter as protesters pelt them in March 1981.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-CT-USA-APHS344694-Ku-Klux-Klan/086398517b5f44e2970a4a0f629b68d5/6/0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Spike Lee’s powerful new film, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7349662/fullcredits">BlacKkKlansman</a>,” tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer who infiltrates a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan in 1979. </p>
<p>That same year, I also signed up to join the Klan. And at a secret meeting I even met the Grand Wizard himself, David Duke, the same Klan leader featured in Lee’s film.</p>
<p>I was a rookie Klansman at the time, and I’d been recruited to join the cause. </p>
<p>Sort of. </p>
<p>Like Stallworth, I wasn’t a true believer and had a very different agenda from the Klan’s.</p>
<h2>The Klan descends on Connecticut</h2>
<p>It was the fall of 1979, and I was a first-year reporter at The Hartford Courant when David Duke launched a recruiting effort in, of all places, Connecticut. His “<a href="https://drcraigconsidine.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/2a_kkk-card_front1.jpg">Klan calling cards</a>” and his newspaper, The Crusader, started appearing in factory parking lots, restaurants, high schools and college campuses. </p>
<p>To cover the story for the state’s largest newspaper, I was teamed with a veteran reporter named Bill Cockerham. We called Duke’s headquarters in Metairie, Louisiana.</p>
<p>David Duke was 29 at the time – an educated, clean-cut Klansman <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/david-duke">campaigning for a seat in the Louisiana State Senate</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231763/original/file-20180813-2912-mxopls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231763/original/file-20180813-2912-mxopls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231763/original/file-20180813-2912-mxopls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231763/original/file-20180813-2912-mxopls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231763/original/file-20180813-2912-mxopls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231763/original/file-20180813-2912-mxopls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231763/original/file-20180813-2912-mxopls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231763/original/file-20180813-2912-mxopls.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Duke holds up a copy of the Klan newspaper, The Crusader, in this 1977 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-CO-USA-APHS306901-David-Duke-1977/b06791cb8921402ab5996dbdffc6372c/7/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Duke was happy to talk. He made plain his aim to recruit young people and to remake the Klan into a gentler, kinder brand of bigotry. He wasn’t anti-black or anti-Jewish, he said. “We are simply pro-white and pro-Christian.”</p>
<p>“It’s the white majority that are losing their rights, not the blacks or the Jews,” he insisted. “We’re the ones being attacked on the streets and they call us haters when we fight back for our rights and heritage.” </p>
<p>It was vintage Duke. He was trying, as one expert told us, to be “everybody’s Klansman,” using his considerable marketing skills to sugarcoat racism. </p>
<p>He told us his recruiting efforts had struck a chord in the Nutmeg State, claiming more than 200 new members and several hundred more associate members. While no statewide organization was in place, there were, he claimed, a number of robust, local dens. He did mention a statewide organizer, but when we requested repeatedly to speak to him, Duke balked. </p>
<p>The KKK was a secret organization, he explained. He couldn’t do that. But because he was the face of the organization, we could call the Metairie office any time – he’d be happy to talk Klan.</p>
<h2>Getting access</h2>
<p>The front-page article in The Courant appeared a few days later – “Klan Unit Attracting New Members: New Recruits Join Klan Through Mail” – and local radio and television stations pounced on the story.</p>
<p>Duke was suddenly a newsmaker, and the press and public struggled with the idea he could be successfully establishing a footprint in Connecticut, given that the Klan was mostly associated with the South.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231923/original/file-20180814-2903-3dfbv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231923/original/file-20180814-2903-3dfbv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231923/original/file-20180814-2903-3dfbv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231923/original/file-20180814-2903-3dfbv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231923/original/file-20180814-2903-3dfbv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231923/original/file-20180814-2903-3dfbv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231923/original/file-20180814-2903-3dfbv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231923/original/file-20180814-2903-3dfbv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After The Hartford Courant published a story about Duke’s recruitment drive, other media outlets started to explore the Klan’s inroads into Connecticut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hartford Courant</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, no one knew whether Duke’s numbers were accurate; the story reported his claims of a groundswell of support.</p>
<p>Which is why I clipped out an application from a copy of his Crusader in our newsroom, filled it out using a false identity and mailed it to Metairie along with the $25 entry fee. (<a href="http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-silverstein30jun30-story.html">The use of deception in reporting</a> is another story altogether, a matter <a href="https://www.coursera.org/lecture/international-journalism/undercover-reporting-and-deception-jcXEr">regularly discussed</a> in journalism ethics courses.)</p>
<p>My goal was to get inside Duke’s local outfit, identify his local leader and either verify or debunk his headcount of followers. In the mail, I soon received my Klan membership card, a certificate of Klan citizenship and a Klan rule book with a picture of Duke in his fancy Grand Wizard robe telling me to buy a robe for $28. Just like that I had joined the Klan. </p>
<p>Then I waited. I figured it wouldn’t take long for my compatriots to reach out and bring me into the fold, where I’d get the inside story. That was the game plan, and when I occasionally called down to Duke’s office in Metairie, using my new identity, I was assured I’d be hooked up with like-minded Connecticut racists in short order.</p>
<p>But nothing happened. Weeks went by. Meanwhile, David Duke continued to reap regular coverage in Connecticut media, with the imperial wizard claiming huge success in his statewide recruitment.</p>
<p>My break came in early December 1979. Duke announced he’d decided to travel to Connecticut and to two other New England states. The trip would be a kind of climax to his fall membership drive. He would visit several Connecticut cities and speak with the press at each stop, before holding a private rally at night with his Connecticut Klansmen.</p>
<p>And that’s when I got the call – all hands were summoned for the secret mass meeting on Friday, Dec. 7. I was told that for security reasons the location would not be disclosed until the actual day but to be on call.</p>
<h2>The moment of truth</h2>
<p>Teamed again with the veteran reporter, I spent most of that Friday afternoon on the move. I was instructed to call Metairie and was directed to head west from Hartford. While Duke staged a press conference at a Waterbury motel, I waited in a local bar, where Duke’s local point person finally contacted me. He directed me to <a href="https://www.nationalgrange.org/">Grange hall</a> in Danbury, which they’d rented posing as a historical group.</p>
<p>I left my colleague behind and was met in a rear parking lot by three “enforcers.” They asked for my Klan ID card, and then waved me through. I walked into the dimly lit room on the second floor and looked around. The hall was nearly empty, except for around two dozen men quietly mingling.</p>
<p>That’s when it dawned on me why I’d never heard a peep from any other Connecticut Klansmen: There was no real organization, or presence, to speak of.</p>
<p>While most were dressed in leather and jeans, the sandy-haired Duke wore a three-piece suit with a Klan pin on his lapel. He introduced himself to each attendee, showing off a three-ring binder with Connecticut newspaper clippings about him and the Klan.</p>
<p>Duke’s idea for a meeting was a simple one – a screening of D. W. Griffith’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004972/">The Birth of a Nation</a>,” the 1915 blockbuster about the Civil War and Reconstruction. (In Spike Lee’s movie, a Klan meeting also involves a showing of the film.) </p>
<p>To Griffith, a Southerner, <a href="https://theconversation.com/100-years-ago-the-first-white-house-film-screening-sparked-nationwide-protests-37103">the robed Klansmen were heroes</a>, riding to the rescue and saving the South from the lawlessness and chaos of Reconstruction. </p>
<p>That night in Danbury, Duke used the film as a teaching tool, turning the darkened Grange hall into a classroom for a course on white power. Standing next to an American flag, he read aloud the film’s subtitles and then added his own bigoted commentary. When a group of Klansmen on horses dump the corpse of a black man on a front porch, Duke began to clap his hands – a firm clap that grew louder as others in the room joined in to applaud the death of a black man on screen.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231924/original/file-20180814-2903-dwfjhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231924/original/file-20180814-2903-dwfjhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231924/original/file-20180814-2903-dwfjhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231924/original/file-20180814-2903-dwfjhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231924/original/file-20180814-2903-dwfjhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231924/original/file-20180814-2903-dwfjhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231924/original/file-20180814-2903-dwfjhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231924/original/file-20180814-2903-dwfjhr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Once the true size of the Klan’s imprint in the state had been exposed, coverage dried up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hartford Courant</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I left that meeting with the story we’d been after for months – the identity of the Connecticut leader and, more importantly, the actual numbers in Duke’s much-ballyhooed statewide Klan. It wasn’t several hundred but closer to two dozen. Duke’s run of media coverage in Connecticut dried up immediately. </p>
<p>We exposed Duke as the con man who’d bluffed his way into a run of free publicity to spew his pro-white nonsense – a transparently perverse message that somehow has regained currency today. The imperial wizard’s rhetoric of 1979 <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/10/us/neo-nazi-next-door-pennsylvania/index.html">is parroted almost verbatim</a> by a new generation of haters who are attracting plenty of media coverage. </p>
<p>I never spoke to Duke again, but I did receive a Christmas card from him that holiday season – addressed to my Klan alias, apparently mailed before the article was published. </p>
<p>The red card featured two Klansmen in robes holding a fiery cross. The caption read: “May you have a meaningful and merry Christmas and may they forever be White.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dick Lehr is related to an employee of The Conversation US.</span></em></p>
In 1979, David Duke told the media he had launched a wildly successful recruiting drive in Connecticut. A local reporter wanted to test Duke’s claims – so he filled out an application to join the KKK.
Dick Lehr, Professor of Journalism, Boston University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/92795
2018-03-30T16:30:18Z
2018-03-30T16:30:18Z
Martin Luther King Jr. had a much more radical message than a dream of racial brotherhood
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212711/original/file-20180329-189827-l3ylbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses marchers during his 'I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martin Luther King Jr. has come to be revered as a hero who led a nonviolent struggle to reform and redeem the United States. His birthday is celebrated as a national holiday. Tributes are paid to him on his death anniversary each April, and his legacy is honored in multiple ways. </p>
<p>But from my perspective as a <a href="http://paulharvey.org/about">historian of religion and civil rights</a>, the true radicalism of his thought remains underappreciated. The “civil saint” portrayed nowadays was, by the end of his life, a social and economic radical, who argued forcefully for the necessity of economic justice in the pursuit of racial equality. </p>
<p>Three particular works from 1957 to 1967 illustrate how King’s political thought evolved from a hopeful reformer to a radical critic. </p>
<h2>King’s support for white moderates</h2>
<p>For much of the 1950s, King believed that white southern ministers could provide moral leadership. He thought the white racists of the South could be countered by the ministers who took a stand for equality. At the time, his concern with economic justice was a secondary theme in his addresses and political advocacy. </p>
<p><a href="http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/Vol04Scans/184_1957_The%20Role%20of%20the%20Church.pdf">Speaking at Vanderbilt University in 1957</a>, he professed his belief that “there is in the white South more open-minded moderates than appears on the surface.” He urged them to lead the region through its necessary transition to equal treatment for black citizens. He reassured all that the aim of the movement was not to “defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.”</p>
<p>King had hope for this vision. He had worked with white liberals such as <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/myles-horton-1">Myles Horton</a>, the leader of a center in Tennessee for training labor and civil rights organizers. King had developed friendships and crucial alliances with white supporters in other parts of the country as well. His vision was for the fulfillment of basic American ideals of liberty and equality. </p>
<h2>Letter from Birmingham Jail</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212712/original/file-20180329-189830-1cycrcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212712/original/file-20180329-189830-1cycrcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212712/original/file-20180329-189830-1cycrcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212712/original/file-20180329-189830-1cycrcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212712/original/file-20180329-189830-1cycrcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212712/original/file-20180329-189830-1cycrcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212712/original/file-20180329-189830-1cycrcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A handwritten copy of ‘Letter From a Birmingham Jail.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Richard Drew, file</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the early 1960s, at the peak of the civil rights movement, King’s views had evolved significantly. In early 1963, King came to Birmingham to lead a campaign for civil rights in a city known for its history of racial violence. </p>
<p>During the Birmingham campaign, in April 1963, he issued a masterful public letter explaining the motivations behind his crusade. It stands in striking contrast with his hopeful 1957 sermon. </p>
<p>His “<a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">Letter From a Birmingham Jail</a>” responded to a newspaper advertisement from eight local clergymen urging King to allow the city government to enact gradual changes. </p>
<p>In a stark change from his earlier views, King devastatingly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/15/martin-luther-king-jr-s-scathing-critique-of-white-moderates-from-the-birmingham-jail/?utm_term=.21b80fcd96ad">targeted white moderates</a> willing to settle for “order” over justice. In an oppressive environment, the avoidance of conflict might appear to be “order,” but in fact supported the denial of basic citizenship rights, he noted.</p>
<p>“We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive,” King wrote. He argued how oppressors never voluntarily gave up freedom to the oppressed – it always had to be demanded by “extremists for justice.” </p>
<p>He wrote how he was “gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.” They were, he said, a greater enemy to racial justice than were members of the white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and other white racist radicals. </p>
<h2>Call for economic justice</h2>
<p>By 1967, King’s philosophy emphasized economic justice as essential to equality. And he made clear connections between American violence abroad in Vietnam and American social inequality at home. </p>
<p>Exactly one year before his assassination in Memphis, King stood at one of the best-known pulpits in the nation, at <a href="https://www.trcnyc.org/history/">Riverside Church in New York</a>. There, he explained how he had come to connect the struggle for civil rights with the fight for economic justice and the early protests against the Vietnam War. </p>
<p><a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/">He proclaimed:</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read ‘Vietnam.’ It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212710/original/file-20180329-189821-fwse6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212710/original/file-20180329-189821-fwse6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212710/original/file-20180329-189821-fwse6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212710/original/file-20180329-189821-fwse6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212710/original/file-20180329-189821-fwse6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212710/original/file-20180329-189821-fwse6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212710/original/file-20180329-189821-fwse6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, right, talks with civil rights leaders at the White House in Washington, Jan. 18, 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He angered crucial allies. King and President Lyndon Johnson, for example, had been allies in achieving significant legislative victories in 1964 and 1965. Johnson’s “Great Society” launched a series of initiatives to address issues of poverty at home. But beginning in 1965, after the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/johngardner/chapters/4c.html">Johnson administration</a> increased the number of U.S. troops deployed in Vietnam, King’s vision grew radical. </p>
<p>King continued with a searching analysis of what linked poverty and violence both at home and abroad. While he had spoken out before about the effects of colonialism, he now made the connection unmistakably clear. He said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>King concluded with the famous words on <a href="https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/the-fierce-urgency-of-now/">“the fierce urgency of now,”</a> by which he emphasized the immediacy of the connection between economic injustice and racial inequality. </p>
<h2>The radical King</h2>
<p>King’s <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf">“I Have a Dream,”</a> speech at the March on Washington in August 1963 serves as the touchstone for the annual King holiday. But King’s dream ultimately evolved into a call for a fundamental redistribution of economic power and resources. It’s why he was in Memphis, <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_memphis_sanitation_workers_strike_1968/">supporting a strike by garbage workers</a>, when he was assassinated in April 1968. </p>
<p>He remained, to the end, the <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_nonviolent_resistance/">prophet of nonviolent resistance</a>. But these three key moments in King’s life show his evolution over a decade. </p>
<p>This remembering matters more than ever today. Many states are either passing or considering measures that would make it <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2016/12/religion-second-redemption">harder for many Americans</a> to exercise their fundamental right to vote. It would roll back the huge gains in rates of political participation by racial minorities made possible by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the same time, there is a <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/">persistent wealth gap</a> between blacks and whites.</p>
<p>Only sustained government attention can address these issues – the point King was stressing later in his life.</p>
<p>King’s philosophy stood not just for “opportunity,” but for positive measures toward economic equality and political power. Ignoring this understanding betrays the “dream” that is ritually invoked each year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92795/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Harvey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
King Jr., remembered today mainly for his non violent resistance, was a radical reformer who called for a fundamental redistribution of economic power and resources .
Paul Harvey, Professor of American History, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86431
2017-10-30T01:52:47Z
2017-10-30T01:52:47Z
The misguided campaign to remove a Thomas Hart Benton mural
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192263/original/file-20171027-13331-5xm60h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thomas Hart Benton's murals at the Indiana University Auditorium depict the social history of the state.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/josepha/4947796013/in/photostream/">Joseph</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent years, people have protested the racism of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-confederate-statue-debate-3-essential-reads-82729">Confederate statues</a>, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-oscars-so-white-reaction-htmlstory.html">Hollywood</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-how-native-american-mascots-reinforce-stereotypes-63861">sports mascots</a>.</p>
<p>But a curious campaign has taken place on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus. Students have circulated petitions and organized protests seeking the removal or destruction of painter Thomas Hart Benton’s <a href="http://www.iuauditorium.com/about-us/thomas-hart-benton-murals">1933 mural</a> “A Social History of Indiana,” which contains an image of the Ku Klux Klan. </p>
<p>“It is past time that Indiana University take a stand and denounce hate and intolerance in Indiana and on IU’s campus,” <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/30/petition-calls-removal-iu-bloomington-mural-depicting-kkk-rally/610455001/">a petition from August read</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192257/original/file-20171027-13327-1n7wv1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192257/original/file-20171027-13327-1n7wv1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192257/original/file-20171027-13327-1n7wv1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192257/original/file-20171027-13327-1n7wv1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192257/original/file-20171027-13327-1n7wv1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192257/original/file-20171027-13327-1n7wv1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192257/original/file-20171027-13327-1n7wv1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192257/original/file-20171027-13327-1n7wv1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A detail from the controversial panel of Benton’s mural.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://c1.staticflickr.com/8/7542/15667217698_fd4fc33e3f_b.jpg">Bart Everson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In September, <a href="http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/iu-longer-hold-classes-room-controversial-kkk-mural-128521/">the university announced</a> that it would stop holding classes in the room where Benton’s painting is placed, and it would keep the room sealed off from the general public.</p>
<p>As the author of four books on Benton, I propose that the protesters take a closer look at Benton’s life and Indiana’s political history before they reflexively denounce the mural’s imagery.</p>
<h2>A painter of the people</h2>
<p>Along with Grant Wood (of “<a href="http://www.americangothichouse.net/about/the-painting/">American Gothic</a>” fame), Thomas Hart Benton was the leader of the <a href="http://benton.truman.edu/murals_regionalism.html">Regionalist movement in American art</a>, which proposed that sections of the country hitherto thought of as artistic wastelands, such as the South and the Midwest, could be suitable subjects for art. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192251/original/file-20171027-13355-uyjkpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192251/original/file-20171027-13355-uyjkpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192251/original/file-20171027-13355-uyjkpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192251/original/file-20171027-13355-uyjkpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192251/original/file-20171027-13355-uyjkpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192251/original/file-20171027-13355-uyjkpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192251/original/file-20171027-13355-uyjkpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192251/original/file-20171027-13355-uyjkpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas Hart Benton painted large murals that depicted the country’s social, labor and political history.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-United-States-TH-/9dd0c66a61e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Benton’s “<a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bent/hd_bent.htm">America Today</a>” (which can now be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) was the first major American mural painting to focus on contemporary working-class Americans, rather than heroes in colonial garb or allegorical figures. </p>
<p>Throughout his life and career, the painter adamantly denounced racism. One of the very first articles he published, a 1924 essay in the journal “Arts,” contains a snide dismissal of the Klan. In 1935, he took part in a widely publicized exhibition, “An Art Commentary on Lynching,” organized by the NAACP and staged at the Arthur Newton Gallery in New York; and in 1940 he explicitly denounced racism of any sort, declaring: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We in this country put no stock in racial genius. We do not believe that because a man comes from one strain rather than another, he starts with superior equipment.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What’s more, to a degree very unusual at the time, Benton actively sought out and befriended African-Americans. He taught African-Americans in his art classes, used African-Americans as models for his paintings and invited African-Americans to dinner in his Kansas City home (a gesture that was still raising eyebrows in the city in the 1980s, when I worked as a curator there). He even learned to speak <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah_language">Gullah</a>, the African-American dialect of the Sea Islands. </p>
<h2>The Klan in Indiana</h2>
<p>Benton’s murals take on added significance when we consider their historical context. (Art historians Kathleen Foster and Nanette Brewer tell the full story in their <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=60945">excellent catalogue on the murals</a>.) </p>
<p>In the 1920s, the Klan <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xa0pAAAACAAJ&dq=klan+in+indiana&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigsseuiJHXAhVGSSYKHQ4zB54Q6AEILDAB">dominated Indiana politics</a>. Counting among its members the governor of Indiana and more than half of the state legislature, it had over 250,000 members – about one-third of all white men in the state. While devoted to denying equal rights to African-Americans, the group also denounced Jews, Catholics and immigrants. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192254/original/file-20171027-13319-o39gqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192254/original/file-20171027-13319-o39gqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192254/original/file-20171027-13319-o39gqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192254/original/file-20171027-13319-o39gqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192254/original/file-20171027-13319-o39gqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192254/original/file-20171027-13319-o39gqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192254/original/file-20171027-13319-o39gqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of Indiana’s Ku Klux Klan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/D._C._Stephenson_Grand_Dragon_of_the_Klu_Klux_Klan_in_Indiana%2C_c_1922.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Only the relentless coverage of the Indianapolis Times turned the tide of popular opinion. Because of the paper’s reporting, the state’s KKK leader, D.C. Stephenson, was convicted of rape and murder of a young schoolteacher.</p>
<p>Stephenson’s subsequent testimony from prison would bring down the mayor of Indianapolis, L. Ert Slack, and Governor Edward L. Jackson, both of whom had forged close political and personal relationships with the Klan. In 1928, the Indianapolis Times <a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/indianapolis-times">won a Pulitzer Prize</a> for its investigative work. </p>
<p>Five years later, a handful of state leaders approached Benton to see if he would be able to paint a mural for the Indiana pavilion at the Chicago World’s Fair. The group included progressive architect Thomas Hibben and Richard Lieber, the head of the state’s park system. (Lieber appears on the right side of the controversial panel, planting a tree.)</p>
<p>They seem to have chosen Benton because of his progressive political views. But they were also drawn to Benton because no other American artist seemed capable of completing such a massive undertaking on such a short deadline.</p>
<p>The fair was less than six months away. </p>
<h2>A refusal to whitewash history</h2>
<p>Working at a frantic pace, Benton spent the ensuing months traveling around the state and making studies. Then, in a mere 62 days, he executed the entire project, which was over 12 feet high, 250 feet long and contained several hundred figures. It was the equivalent of producing a new, six-by-eight-foot painting every day for 62 straight days.</p>
<p>In 1941, the murals were installed in the auditorium at Indiana University Bloomington, where they remain today.</p>
<p><a href="https://mwcapacity.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/benton_mural.jpg">In the controversial panel</a>, Benton painted a reporter, a photographer and a printer into the foreground – an homage to the press of Indiana for breaking the power of the Klan. In the center, a white nurse tends both black and white children in City Hospital (now Wishard Hospital).</p>
<p>The sinister figures of the Klan are visible in the background, behind the hospital beds – a reminder, perhaps, that racial progress can always slide backwards.</p>
<p>As Lauren Robel, the provost at the University of Indiana, <a href="https://provost.indiana.edu/statements/archive/benton-murals.html">recently wrote</a> in a statement to the university community:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Every society that has gone through divisive trauma of any kind has learned the bitter lesson of suppressing memories and discussion of its past; Benton’s murals are intended to provoke thought.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Benton clearly felt that the state government’s support of the Klan was something that should not be whitewashed.</p>
<p>He applied the same approach a few years later in his murals in the Missouri State Capitol: <a href="http://benton.truman.edu/highslide/images/large/mural05.jpg">They open with a scene</a> of a fur trader selling whiskey to the Indians, and <a href="http://benton.truman.edu/highslide/images/large/mural01.jpg">close with a scene</a> of Kansas City’s notorious political boss, <a href="https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/people/pendergast-machine/">Tom Pendergast</a>, sitting in a nightclub with two trustees of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Not everyone in Missouri was pleased.</p>
<p>Interestingly, representations of the Klan by other artists of the 1930s, such as <a href="http://collection.whitney.org/object/533">Philip Guston</a> and <a href="http://artandsocialissues.cmaohio.org/web-content/pages/race_jones_amj.html">Joe Jones</a>, continue to hang in museums. No one has proposed that they be taken off view. Something about the fact that Benton brought his paintings out of museums – and into public spaces not consecrated to “art” – seems to have given his work an in-your-face immediacy that still stirs up controversy. </p>
<p>I find it rather sad that the paintings have been taken off view; if it’s the only way to ensure the safety of the paintings, it’s the right decision. But hopefully it’s a temporary one.</p>
<p>At the heart of the matter is the question of whether we should seek to try to forget the dark episodes of the past, or whether we should continue to confront them, discuss them and learn from them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86431/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Adams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A controversial panel on Indiana University’s campus depicts Ku Klux Klan members, but Benton had a reason for including them. Is avoidance really the best way to deal with dark episodes of the past?
Henry Adams, Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History, Case Western Reserve University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83004
2017-08-30T08:06:55Z
2017-08-30T08:06:55Z
White supremacists are on the march, but the Ku Klux Klan is history
<p>When Donald Trump repeatedly equated the far-right activists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia with the anti-fascist counter-protesters, the media’s reaction was swift and clear. The next covers of both the New Yorker and The Economist featured cartoons of Trump and a Ku Klux Klan hood. In one, the president guides a ship of state with a sail shaped like a hood; in the other, he shouts into a megaphone designed to look like the infamous white headpiece. </p>
<p>To many commentators, the Klan costume is now the perfect visual sleight with which to decry Trump’s cack-handed false equivalence. After all, hoods and burning crosses are the most potent icons of American white supremacy, an easy shorthand for racism and bigotry. But despite the scenes of extrovert white supremacists on the march with burning torches in Charlottesville, something important has changed: today, there is essentially no such thing as “the Klan”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"898270023537508353"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"898129991799631872"}"></div></p>
<p>Its brand began to evaporate as long ago as 1944, when the Internal Revenue Service <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/us/29kennedy.html">turned up an unpayable debt</a> stemming from the organisation’s lucrative glory days in the 1920s. The debt was never repaid, meaning that those who would use the name today must settle it, which – thanks to compound interest – now stretches into the tens of millions.</p>
<p>The upshot is that today there are many different, equally horrible organisations designed to spread hate, all using the word “Klan”, but unable to call themselves simply the Ku Klux Klan. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which tracks hate groups across the US, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan">currently counts 130 such groups</a>. They total some 5,000 to 8,000 members. Few have more than regional appeal; very few have statewide reach, and none are national. </p>
<p>Some groups share their anti-Semitic vitriol with neo-Nazi organisations, drawing on modern paganism, usually based around the <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/the-new-religion-of-choice-for-white-supremacists-8af2a69a3440/">neo-Norse</a> mythologies. Some are <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QCuaQSZkGkQC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=%22race+war%22+survivalists&source=bl&ots=kdLtaiecah&sig=2LHpJKzkSOEDz3URgPq-PZuWGnc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT2qfN3fzVAhWLC8AKHdajCyUQ6AEIRzAH#v=onepage&q=%22race%20war%22%20survivalists&f=false">militia-survivalists</a> preparing for the Wagnerian denouement of US civilisation in a “race war”. Still others focus on what they call the “White Holocaust” of abortion, which they claim disproportionately targets Caucasian babies, or adhere to “traditional” white supremacy grounded in extreme white Anglo-Saxon protestant ideals.</p>
<h2>The bad old days</h2>
<p>Frightening though this may sound, this is far from a return to the KKK’s 1920s heyday. Back then, it was a true mass movement, <a href="https://priceonomics.com/when-the-kkk-was-a-pyramid-scheme/">pyramid-selling membership</a> to millions of people in every state in the US and some of Canada; it even harboured ambitions of establishing “Klaverns” worldwide. Nor are we seeing a return to the Klans’ ultra-violent backlashes against civil rights in the 1870s or 1950s, when they commanded considerable, if localised, support.</p>
<p>The media should be careful about labelling far right groups or activists as “the Klan” just because they have associated views. This gives the oxygen of publicity to the ideological remnants of a group that hasn’t really existed for 70 years. </p>
<p>This was a different matter when the Klan was in full force. In 1921, the New York World famously ran 21 anti-Klan front-page articles, exposing the group’s awful activities day after day with large-point headlines – “Ku Klux Made Jews and Negroes Target for Racial Hatreds”, “Bitter Anti-Catholic Propaganda Peddled by Officials of Klan”. </p>
<p>These headlines spurred a full investigation by a House of Representatives committee, where the founder of the Klan, “Imperial Wizard” <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40578787">William Joseph Simmons</a>, successfully defended the order against claims of corruption, violence and bigotry. In a widely reported and memorable phrase, he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7JrlCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT152&lpg=PT152&dq=%E2%80%9Cinnocent+as+the+breath+of+an+angel%E2%80%9D+klan&source=bl&ots=peEMdyXcSo&sig=W2Sncv-_Zey03ipXZ3cBeZymT3Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj0qbaryvzVAhXKLMAKHU4SDP8Q6AEIODAE#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cinnocent%20as%20the%20breath%20of%20an%20angel%E2%80%9D%20klan&f=false">argued</a> his Klan was as “innocent as the breath of an angel”.</p>
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<p>Thankfully, few if any believe such claptrap today. But that’s no reason for complacency. It should shock us that the Klans and their allies feel confident enough to take part in a public rally on the scale of Charlottesville, and that they feel others in the US might support them. Nevertheless, they almost certainly don’t have popular backing and there will not be a return to the dark days when the KKK enjoyed mass national membership, or regional sympathy. </p>
<p>Today, as always in the past, the Klans’ grab-bag ideology of hatreds and grievances contains the seeds of its own destruction. Publicity has the power to show “Klansmen” for what they really are: a collection of sad, dysfunctional, bigots who both celebrate their social exclusion and plot the downfall of those who exclude them. </p>
<p>History shows us they will never be able to unite under one banner, at least not for very long. But it would be a tragedy if a lack of historical context in the coverage of current events gives the wrong impression, helping Klansmen to achieve any form of unity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristofer Allerfeldt receives funding from ESRC </span></em></p>
Far from the millions-strong mass movement of years gone by, today’s ‘Klan’ is really just a smattering of assorted local hate groups.
Kristofer Allerfeldt, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Exeter
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.