White Protestants:
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Klansmen march down Broadway in Long Branch, N.J. to celebrate its newly-established headquarters in the city.
George Rinhart/Corbis— Getty Images
By
Olivia B. Waxman
Updated: October 24, 2017 11:10 AM ET
In the months since violence at a
white-nationalist gathering in Charlottesville, Va.,
the national conversation has often focused on the history of white supremacy in the United States, and how much broader that history is in its impacts and geography than is often assumed. That aspect is highlighted in a new book about the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s,
The Second Coming of the KKK by two-time Bancroft Prize winner Linda Gordon, which puts modern anti-immigration and antisemitic rhetoric in context. In fact, though the KKK is best known for its racist attacks, other forms of hate have long been part of its history.
It was in the 1920s that the Klan was revived, its popularity spread through the infamous 1915 film
Birth of a Nation, and soon became a truly massive social movement in the North, with some five million members. The Klan as it exists today is a more direct offshoot of the iteration that emerged during that time period in North, often in locations with very small African-American populations. What those places did have was a surge of immigrants coming to the U.S. in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Soon, the racist rhetoric of the original KKK was joined by anti-immigrant rhetoric directed at Catholics (accused of worshiping a Pope who sought to impose authoritarian rule), non-white immigrants like the Chinese and Japanese, and European immigrants not considered
white enough, i.e. Italians and Eastern European Jews.
How the KKK's Influence Spread in Northern States