History 370: Reconstruction and Violence in America

This is a study of a disturbing phenomenon in American society -- the Ku Klux Klan -- and that eruption of nativism, racism and moral authoritarianism during the 1920s in the four states of the Southwest -- Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas -- in which the Klan became especially powerful.

Mark Paul Richard examines the KKK's largely ignored growth in the six states of New England -- Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont -- and details the reactions of the region's Catholic population, the Klan's primary targets.

Tom Rice explores the little-known relationship between the Klan's success and its use of film and media in the interwar years when the image, function, and moral rectitude of the Klan was contested on the national stage.