The Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Antisemitic Organizations
The Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Antisemitic Organizations

Author: Chester L. Quarles

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9780786406470

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Despite the fact that the Ku Klux Klan can be traced from the 1700s through the Civil War and is going strong in the present day, many people fail to realize the reach and influence of the group. Many scholars, for instance, perceive the KKK as a radical racist group composed primarily of ignorant, uneducated members, when it is actually much more. Some Klan groups are political, while others are simply social. Some meet and eat just as any other mainstream civic or church group, but others are focused toward the use of well-planned violence. Not all Klan groups advocate an overthrow of the U.S. government, though some do. The author traces the historical development of the Klan, addressing its organization, membership, ideologies and philosophies. Avoiding the bias of previous works--written by either Klan apologists or detractors--the author chronicles the directions the group has taken during its long and diverse history. The study also details the secret oaths of allegiance, the Imperial Wizards, and the concept of Knighthood. The result is an accurate account of the Ku Klux Klan, a group that has continued to grow and evolve in response to changing times.

Hooded Knights on the Niagara
Hooded Knights on the Niagara

Author: Shawn Lay

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1995-07

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0814751024

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"A notable case study of the second Ku Klux Klan in a northern industrial city. The author illuminates the origins and activities of the Buffalo Klan, the social and political context in which it operated, and the character of its membership. The book contributes to the current reevaluation of the KKK and to the scholarly literature on the 1920's." D.W. Grantham, Vanderbilt University.

Gods of the Blood
Gods of the Blood

Author: Mattias Gardell

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2003-06-27

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0822384507

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Racist paganism is a thriving but understudied element of the American religious and cultural landscape. Gods of the Blood is the first in-depth survey of the people, ideologies, and practices that make up this fragmented yet increasingly radical and militant milieu. Over a five-year period during the 1990s Mattias Gardell observed and participated in pagan ceremonies and interviewed pagan activists across the United States. His unprecedented entree into this previously obscure realm is the basis for this firsthand account of the proliferating web of organizations and belief systems combining pre-Christian pagan mythologies with Aryan separatism. Gardell outlines the historical development of the different strands of racist paganism—including Wotanism, Odinism and Darkside Asatrú—and situates them on the spectrum of pagan belief ranging from Wicca and goddess worship to Satanism. Gods of the Blood details the trends that have converged to fuel militant paganism in the United States: anti-government sentiments inflamed by such events as Ruby Ridge and Waco, the rise of the white power music industry (including whitenoise, dark ambient, and hatecore), the extraordinary reach of modern communications technologies, and feelings of economic and cultural marginalization in the face of globalization and increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the American population. Gardell elucidates how racist pagan beliefs are formed out of various combinations of conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, warrior ideology, populism, beliefs in racial separatism, Klandom, skinhead culture, and tenets of national socialism. He shows how these convictions are further animated by an array of thought selectively derived from thinkers including Nietzche, historian Oswald Spengler, Carl Jung, and racist mystics. Scrupulously attentive to the complexities of racist paganism as it is lived and practiced, Gods of the Blood is a fascinating, disturbing, and important portrait of the virulent undercurrents of certain kinds of violence in America today.

When Evil Lived in Laurel: The "White Knights" and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer
When Evil Lived in Laurel: The

Author: Curtis Wilkie

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-06-15

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 1324005769

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year Finalist for the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights–era killing. By early 1966, the work of Vernon Dahmer was well known in south Mississippi. A light-skinned Black man, he was a farmer, grocery store owner, and two-time president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP. He and Medgar Evers founded a youth NAACP chapter in Hattiesburg, and for years after Evers’s assassination Dahmer was the chief advocate for voting rights in a county where Black registration was shamelessly suppressed. This put Dahmer in the crosshairs of the White Knights, with headquarters in nearby Laurel. Already known as one of the most violent sects of the KKK in the South, the group carried out his murder in a raid that burned down his home and store. A year before, Tom Landrum, a young, unassuming member of a family with deep Mississippi roots, joined the Klan to become an FBI informant. He penetrated the White Knights’ secret circles, recording almost daily journal entries. He risked his life, and the safety of his young family, to chronicle extensively the clandestine activities of the Klan. Veteran journalist Curtis Wilkie draws on his exclusive access to Landrum’s journals to re-create these events—the conversations, the incendiary nighttime meetings, the plans leading up to Dahmer’s murder and its erratic execution—culminating in the conviction and imprisonment of many of those responsible for Dahmer’s death. In riveting detail, When Evil Lived in Laurel plumbs the nature and harrowing consequences of institutional racism, and brings fresh light to this chapter in the history of civil rights in the South—one with urgent implications for today.