In Progressive Athens, the Klan Once Flourished

  Historian, author and Duke University professor Nancy MacLean spoke Sunday afternoon at the Athens Historical Society annual meeting, held at the .  Her topic focused on the Ku Klux Klan in Athens in the 1920s and “What it can tell us about the Era and America?” James Reap presided and Blair Dorminey introduced the speaker. 

MacLean began by explaining how she discovered a cache of Klan documents that led to her acclaimed 1994 book about the Athens KKK, “Behind the Mask of Chivalry.”  She said she was doing research in the Special Collections section of the twenty years ago when she discovered in the card catalog a listing for a box containing letters and local Klan material.  The librarian said the Klan documents had been found in the basement of a vacated house and donated to the library.  She was the first researcher to look at the documents.

  “The Klan was the most powerful right-wing movement in American history,” MacLean told the AHS crowd.  “In 1920 they had nearly two million members nationwide and most were a cross-section of mid-America…including solid, middle-class local citizens who belonged to the Athens Chamber of Commerce, the Lion’s Club and major protestant churches. The Klan also controlled the police and local government in many places.”

  But she quickly added a disclaimer for her talk:  “You can get local specifics from my book, if you want, but I’m not trying to be sensational today by naming names.” 

 MacLean acknowledged that the KKK was at its peak in 1920 because of a confluence of social movements involving race, gender and class.  “The Klan at that time was both populist and racist, mainstream and extremist.  Race was at the core of Klan thought, which was anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic.”  She also said the Klan  opposed labor unions, birth control and  feminism and were for the suppression of democracy and the rule of law.  

  “They shrewdly packaged their agenda for grassroots appeal,” she continued.  To show their devotion to moral regulation, they supported prohibition and opposed prostitution.  They called the popular culture of the 1920s a combination of “sensuality and sewage.”  

  “Most Athens KKK members were very public about their membership at the time,” she said.  She also showed copies of letters Athens women had written seeking Klan help in dealing with spouse abuse and other issues.

  The KKK used vigilantism and terrorism, such as cross-burnings and floggings, to “terrify and intimidate enemies,” she explained.  “They were a violent terrorist organization.” Their prejudice and hostility to those not like themselves helps explain the rise of Nazism and similar movements in Europe, she extrapolated.   

  MacLean theorized that the forces that brought the Klan into power in the early 1920s had dissipated by the end of that decade, and the KKK began to fade away.  

  During her hour-long talk, MacLean passed around old photos of the era, including one of Costa’s Ice Cream Parlor downtown, a popular hangout in those days, and a Flapper-era picture of college men and women socializing on campus, just after women were admitted to UGA.

  The take-away from this history, she went on, was the silence of good people who knew something was wrong, but remained silent.  “Good people have to speak out and raise voices for injustices of their neighbors.” 

 In the modern context, MacLean reported that hate groups in America have surged after the election of President Obama—some 4000 have been reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  “It takes everyday moral courage to speak out in the face of wrong,” she said, “but that’s the only way to make change.”