Download or read book Steel Valley Klan written by William D. Jenkins and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 1990-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jenkins argues that the Klan drew from all social strata in Youngstown, Ohio, in the 1920s, contrary to previous theories that predominately lower middle-class WASPs joined the Klan because of economic competition with immigrants. Threatened by immigrant movement into their neighborhoods, these members supposedly represented a fringe element with few accomplishments and little hope of advancement. Jenkins suggests instead that members admired the Klan commitment to a conservative protestant moral code. Besieged, they believed, by an influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants who did not accept blue laws and prohibition, members of the piestistic churches flocked to Klan meetings as an indication of their support for reform. This groundswell peaked in 1923 when the Klan gained political control of major cities in the South and Midwest. Newly enfranchised women who supported a politics of moralism played a major role in assisting Klan growth and making Ohio one of the more successful Klan realms in the North. The decline of the Klan was almost as rapid. Revelations regarding sexual escapades of leaders and suspicions regarding irregularities in Klan financing led members to question the Klan commitment to moral reform. Ethnic opposition also contributed to Klan decline. Irish citizens stole and published the Klan membership list, while Italians in Niles, Ohio, violently crushed efforts of the Klan to parade in that city. Jenkins concludes that the Steel Valley Klan represented a posturing between cultures mixed together too rapidly by the process of industrialization.

Download or read book The Ku Klux Klan in Northeast Ohio written by Steve Viglio and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of the Ku Klux Klan in the twentieth century has been documented by many historians and scholars, from a national perspective. Local case studies are not quite as common. This thesis looks at two of the most important and popular chapters of the Ohio Ku Klux Klan, Akron and Youngstown. For Akron, I relied on thorough research of the Akron Beacon Journal newspaper archive. For Youngstown, I began research previously conducted by former Youngstown State University faculty Dr. William Jenkins' Steel Valley Klan and branched from there. I used The Vindicator newspaper as a reliable source for Youngstown Klan history. Specifically, the Akron chapter of the KKK previously has not been researched besides a Master's thesis several decades ago. Newspaper coverage was abundant in Akron and provided a clear, unbiased blueprint in order to perform the case study. Results of the case studies in Akron and Youngstown show mixed results in terms of the Klan's effectiveness. In Akron, the Klan was able to infiltrate the Akron public school system for a period. Their ultimate goal of barring Catholic teachers, however, was not achieved. Their popularity peaked by 1925 which was a bit longer than the Youngstown Klan. In Youngstown, they showed moderate success in enforcing bootlegging laws but the 1924 Niles riots signaled the peak for the Klan. Ultimately, from a national viewpoint, the fates of both chapters were very similar. By the end of the 1920s, national Klan popularity had diminished in a similar fashion in Akron and Youngstown respectively.

Download or read book America s Political Class Under Fire written by David A. Horowitz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the clash between what has been called the modern and undeveloped worlds has led to America's military involvement in the Middle East and other places, few people realize the tension between the modern and the traditional within the United States. Beginning in the 1920's, professional intellectuals and academics began influencing the nation's public policy on matters as diverse as education, economics, and public health. In this thoughtful work, David A. Horowitz analyzes the tension between the so-called New Class of knowledge professionals and their critics, who accused them of being out of touch with the common sense of everyday people, strangers to the American Way, even Communists. America's Political Class Under Fire is organized over nine periods of 20th-century history, providing a window into everything from the Scopes evolution trial and McCarthyism to affirmative action and the Clinton health care fiasco. Along the way, the book explores the New Left, populist conservatism, and the mid-90's reaction to political liberalism, which saw Newt Gingrich rise to the top post in the House of Representatives. In telling these stories, Horowitz seeks to encourage a more balanced and fair-minded assessment of the consequences of expertise and applied intellect to democratic existence in the United States.

Download or read book Closing Chapters written by Thomas G. Welsh and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Closing Chapters attempts to explain the disintegration of urban parochial schools in Youngstown, Ohio, a onetime industrial center that lost all but one of its eighteen Catholic parochial elementary schools between 1960 and 2006. Through this examination of Youngstown, Welsh sheds light on a significant national phenomenon: the fragmentation of American Catholic identity.

Download or read book The Ku Klux Klan in Western Pennsylvania 1921 1928 written by John Craig and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-10-27 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relying primarily on a narrative, chronological approach, this study examines Ku Klux Klan activities in Pennsylvania’s twenty-five western-most counties, where the state organization enjoyed greatest numerical strength. The work covers the period between the Klan’s initial appearance in the state in 1921 and its virtual disappearance by 1928, particularly the heyday of the Invisible Empire, 1923–1925. This book examines a wide variety of KKK activities, but devotes special attention to the two large and deadly Klan riots in Carnegie and Lilly, as well as vigilantism associated with the intolerant order. Klansmen were drawn from a pool of ordinary Pennsylvanians who were driven, in part, by the search for fraternity, excitement, and civic betterment. However, their actions were also motivated by sinister, darker emotions and purposes. Disdainful of the rule of law, the Klan sought disorder and mayhem in pursuit of a racist, nativist, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish agenda.

Download or read book Rioting in America written by Paul A. Gilje and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-22 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " . . . a sweeping, analytical synethsis of collective violence from the colonial experience to the present." —American Studies "Gilje has written 'the book' on rioting throughout American history." —The Historian ". . . a thorough, illuminating, and at times harrowing account of man's inhumanity to man." —William and Mary Quarterly " . . . fulfills its title's promise as an encyclopedic study . . . an impressive accomplishment and required reading for anyone interested in America's contentious past." —Journal of the Early Republic "Gilje has written a thought-provoking survey of the social context of American riots and popular disorders from the Colonial period to the late 20th century. . . . a must read for anyone interested in riots." —Choice In this wide-ranging survey of rioting in America, Paul A. Gilje argues that we cannot fully comprehend the history of the United States without an understanding of the impact of rioting. Exploring the rationale of the American mob brings to light the grievances that motivate its behavior and the historical circumstances that drive the choices it makes. Gilje's unusual lens makes for an eye-opening view of the American people and their history.

Download or read book Divided We Stand written by Bruce Nelson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divided We Stand is a study of how class and race have intersected in American society--above all, in the "making" and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing mainly on longshoremen in the ports of New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and on steelworkers in many of the nation's steel towns, it examines how European immigrants became American and "white" in the crucible of the industrial workplace and the ethnic and working-class neighborhood. As workers organized on the job, especially during the overlapping CIO and civil rights eras in the middle third of the twentieth century, trade unions became a vital arena in which "old" and "new" immigrants and black migrants forged new alliances and identities and tested the limits not only of class solidarity but of American democracy. The most volatile force in this regard was the civil rights movement. As it crested in the 1950s and '60s, "the Movement" confronted unions anew with the question, "Which side are you on?" This book demonstrates the complex ways in which labor organizations answered that question and the complex relationships between union leaders and diverse rank-and-file constituencies in addressing it. Divided We Stand includes vivid examples of white working-class "agency" in the construction of racially discriminatory employment structures. But Nelson is less concerned with racism as such than with the concrete historical circumstances in which racialized class identities emerged and developed. This leads him to a detailed and often fascinating consideration of white, working-class ethnicity but also to a careful analysis of black workers--their conditions of work, their aspirations and identities, their struggles for equality. Making its case with passion and clarity, Divided We Stand will be a compelling and controversial book.

Download or read book The Ku Klux Klan s Campaign Against Hispanics 1921 1925 written by Juan O. Sánchez and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-07-26 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:  The Ku Klux Klan’s persecution of Hispanics during the early 1920s was just as brutal as their terrorizing of the black community—a fact sparsely documented in historical texts. The KKK viewed Mexicans as subhuman foreigners supporting a Catholic conspiracy to subvert U.S. institutions and install the pope as leader of the nation, and mounted a campaign of intimidation and violence against them. Drawing on numerous Spanish-language newspapers and Klan publications of the day, the author describes the KKK’s extensive anti–Hispanic activity in the southwest.

Download or read book The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas written by Kenneth C. Barnes and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2022 J.G. Ragsdale Book Award, Arkansas Historical Association The Ku Klux Klan established a significant foothold in Arkansas in the 1920s, boasting more than 150 state chapters and tens of thousands of members at its zenith. Propelled by the prominence of state leaders such as Grand Dragon James Comer and head of Women of the KKK Robbie Gill Comer, the Klan established Little Rock as a seat of power second only to Atlanta. In The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas, Kenneth C. Barnes traces this explosion of white nationalism and its impact on the state’s development. Barnes shows that the Klan seemed to wield power everywhere in 1920s Arkansas. Klansmen led businesses and held elected offices and prominent roles in legal, medical, and religious institutions, while the women of the Klan supported rallies and charitable activities and planned social gatherings where cross burnings were regular occurrences. Inside their organization, Klan members bonded during picnic barbeques and parades and over shared religious traditions. Outside of it, they united to direct armed threats, merciless physical brutality, and torrents of hateful rhetoric against individuals who did not conform to their exclusionary vision. By the mid-1920s, internal divisions, scandals, and an overzealous attempt to dominate local and state elections caused Arkansas’s Klan to fall apart nearly as quickly as it had risen. Yet as the organization dissolved and the formal trappings of its flamboyant presence receded, the attitudes the Klan embraced never fully disappeared. In documenting this history, Barnes shows how the Klan’s early success still casts a long shadow on the state to this day.

Download or read book One Hundred Percent American written by Thomas R. Pegram and published by Ivan R. Dee. This book was released on 2011-10-16 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1920s, a revived Ku Klux Klan burst into prominence as a self-styled defender of American values, a magnet for white Protestant community formation, and a would-be force in state and national politics. But the hooded bubble burst at mid-decade, and the social movement that had attracted several million members and additional millions of sympathizers collapsed into insignificance. Since the 1990s, intensive community-based historical studies have reinterpreted the 1920s Klan. Rather than the violent, racist extremists of popular lore and current observation, 1920s Klansmen appear in these works as more mainstream figures. Sharing a restrictive American identity with most native-born white Protestants after World War I, hooded knights pursued fraternal fellowship, community activism, local reforms, and paid close attention to public education, law enforcement (especially Prohibition), and moral/sexual orthodoxy. No recent general history of the 1920s Klan movement reflects these new perspectives on the Klan. One Hundred Percent American incorporates them while also highlighting the racial and religious intolerance, violent outbursts, and political ambition that aroused widespread opposition to the Invisible Empire. Balanced and comprehensive, One Hundred Percent American explains the Klan's appeal, its limitations, and the reasons for its rapid decline in a society confronting the reality of cultural and religious pluralism.

Download or read book Politics Society and the Klan in Alabama 1915 1949 written by Glenn Feldman and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 1999-09-24 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first book-length examination of the Klan in Alabama represents exhaustive research that challenges traditional interpretations. The Ku Klux Klan has wielded considerable power both as a terrorist group and as a political force. Usually viewed as appearing in distinct incarnations, the Klans of the 20th century are now shown by Glenn Feldman to have a greater degree of continuity than has been previously suspected. Victims of Klan terrorism continued to be aliens, foreigners, or outsiders in Alabama: the freed slave during Reconstruction, the 1920s Catholic or Jew, the 1930s labor organizer or Communist, and the returning black veteran of World War II were all considered a threat to the dominant white culture. Feldman offers new insights into this "qualified continuity" among Klans of different eras, showing that the group remained active during the 1930s and 1940s when it was presumed dormant, with elements of the "Reconstruction syndrome" carrying over to the smaller Klan of the civil rights era. In addition, Feldman takes a critical look at opposition to Klan activities by southern elites. He particularly shows how opponents during the Great Depression and war years saw the Klan as an impediment to attracting outside capital and federal relief or as a magnet for federal action that would jeopardize traditional forms of racial and social control. Other critics voiced concerns about negative national publicity, and others deplored the violence and terrorism. This in-depth examination of the Klan in a single state, which features rare photographs, provides a means of understanding the order's development throughout the South. Feldman's book represents definitive research into the history of the Klan and makes a major contribution to our understanding of both that organization and the history of Alabama.

Download or read book The Ku Klux Klan in Canada written by Allan Bartley and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ku Klux Klan came to Canada thanks to some energetic American promoters who saw it as a vehicle for getting rich by selling memberships to white, mostly Protestant Canadians. In Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, the Klan found fertile ground for its message of racism and discrimination targeting African Canadians, Jews and Catholics. While its organizers fought with each other to capture the funds received from enthusiastic members, the Klan was a venue for expressions of race hatred and a cover for targeted acts of harassment and violence against minorities. Historian Allan Bartley traces the role of the Klan in Canadian political life in the turbulent years of the 1920s and 1930s, after which its membership waned. But in the 1970s, as he relates, small extremist right- wing groups emerged in urban Canada, and sought to revive the Klan as a readily identifiable identity for hatred and racism. The Ku Klux Klan in Canada tells the little-known story of how Canadians adopted the image and ideology of the Klan to express the racism that has played so large a role in Canadian society for the past hundred years — right up to the present.

Download or read book The War on Alcohol Prohibition and the Rise of the American State written by Lisa McGirr and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[This] fine history of Prohibition . . . could have a major impact on how we read American political history.”—James A. Morone, New York Times Book Review Prohibition has long been portrayed as a “noble experiment” that failed, a newsreel story of glamorous gangsters, flappers, and speakeasies. Now at last Lisa McGirr dismantles this cherished myth to reveal a much more significant history. Prohibition was the seedbed for a pivotal expansion of the federal government, the genesis of our contemporary penal state. Her deeply researched, eye-opening account uncovers patterns of enforcement still familiar today: the war on alcohol was waged disproportionately in African American, immigrant, and poor white communities. Alongside Jim Crow and other discriminatory laws, Prohibition brought coercion into everyday life and even into private homes. Its targets coalesced into an electoral base of urban, working-class voters that propelled FDR to the White House. This outstanding history also reveals a new genome for the activist American state, one that shows the DNA of the right as well as the left. It was Herbert Hoover who built the extensive penal apparatus used by the federal government to combat the crime spawned by Prohibition. The subsequent federal wars on crime, on drugs, and on terror all display the inheritances of the war on alcohol. McGirr shows the powerful American state to be a bipartisan creation, a legacy not only of the New Deal and the Great Society but also of Prohibition and its progeny. The War on Alcohol is history at its best—original, authoritative, and illuminating of our past and its continuing presence today.

Download or read book The debate on black civil rights in America written by Kevern Verney and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-16 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the historiography of the African American freedom struggle from the 1890s to the present. It considers how, and why, the study of African American history developed from being a marginalized subject in American universities and colleges at the start of the twentieth century to become one of the most extensively researched fields in American history today. There is analysis of the changing scholarly interpretations of African American leaders from Booker T. Washington through to Barack Obama. The impact and significance of the leading civil rights organizations are assessed, as well as the white segregationists who opposed them and the civil rights policies of presidential administrations from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump. The civil rights struggle is also discussed in the context of wider, political, social and economic changes in the United States and developments in popular culture.

Download or read book The Radical Middle Class written by Robert D. Johnston and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America has a long tradition of middle-class radicalism, albeit one that intellectual orthodoxy has tended to obscure. The Radical Middle Class seeks to uncover the democratic, populist, and even anticapitalist legacy of the middle class. By examining in particular the independent small business sector or petite bourgeoisie, using Progressive Era Portland, Oregon, as a case study, Robert Johnston shows that class still matters in America. But it matters only if the politics and culture of the leading player in affairs of class, the middle class, is dramatically reconceived. This book is a powerful combination of intellectual, business, labor, medical, and, above all, political history. Its author also humanizes the middle class by describing the lives of four small business owners: Harry Lane, Will Daly, William U'Ren, and Lora Little. Lane was Portland's reform mayor before becoming one of only six senators to vote against U.S. entry into World War I. Daly was Oregon's most prominent labor leader and a onetime Socialist. U'Ren was the national architect of the direct democracy movement. Little was a leading antivaccinationist. The Radical Middle Class further explores the Portland Ku Klux Klan and concludes with a national overview of the American middle class from the Progressive Era to the present. With its engaging narrative, conceptual richness, and daring argumentation, it will be welcomed by all who understand that reexamining the middle class can yield not only better scholarship but firmer grounds for democratic hope.

Download or read book Spaces of Hate written by Colin Flint and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While much has been written about hate groups and extreme right political movements, this book will be the first that addresses the crucial role that place and context play in generating and shaping them. Ranging across geographical scales the essays start with the home, and then move from the local to the regional, to the national to-finally-the global. In this collection, much of the focus is on the U.S., as the contributors consider a variety of hate activity and hate groups across the country, including; rural white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements; anti-black sentiment directed towards cities; anti-gay activity in cities and rural areas and the resurgent Southern nationalist movement. Closing with pieces from those who combat hate activity, the intention of Spaces of Hate is to recognize specific geographic settings likely to foster hate activity.

Download or read book Behind the Mask of Chivalry written by Nancy MacLean and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elegantly written and meticulously researched, this book offers a major new interpretation of the Ku Klux Klan in America, placing the organization in its context of class and gender as well as race and religion.