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Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction
The first comprehensive examination of the nineteenth-century Ku Klux Klan since the 1970s, "Ku-Klux" pinpoints the group's rise with startling acuity. Historians have traced the origins of the Klan to Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866, but the details behind the group's emergence have long remained shadowy. By parsing the earliest descriptions of the Klan, Elaine Frantz Parsons reveals that it was only as reports of the Tennessee Klan's mysterious and menacing activities began circulating in northern newspapers that whites enthusiastically formed their own Klan groups throughout the South. The spread of the Klan was thus intimately connected with the politics and mass media of the North.
Shedding new light on the ideas that motivated the Klan, Parsons explores Klansmen's appropriation of images and language from northern urban forms such as minstrelsy, burlesque, and business culture. While the Klan sought to retain the prewar racial order, the figure of the Ku-Klux became a joint creation of northern popular cultural entrepreneurs and southern whites seeking, perversely and violently, to modernize the South. Innovative and packed with fresh insight, Parsons' book offers the definitive account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.
Shedding new light on the ideas that motivated the Klan, Parsons explores Klansmen's appropriation of images and language from northern urban forms such as minstrelsy, burlesque, and business culture. While the Klan sought to retain the prewar racial order, the figure of the Ku-Klux became a joint creation of northern popular cultural entrepreneurs and southern whites seeking, perversely and violently, to modernize the South. Innovative and packed with fresh insight, Parsons' book offers the definitive account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.
388 pages, Hardcover
First published January 4, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 21, 2016
Excellent book that throws new light on the origins of the Klan. Using the varied tools of today's best historians, Parsons illuminates the cultural phenomenon marking the Ku-Klux's rise, selection of certain popular tropes, representations in local and national discourse, and decline. This book is a must-read for anyone attempting to understand the Klan and its impact on American society after the Civil War.
March 17, 2020
The Ku Klux Klan, like a turd that won't flush, keeps coming back. But how did it first start? The answer to that can be found in Elaine Frantz Parsons' highly detailed Ku-Klux, which pinpoints where and when the organization started.
"Wedding small-scale organization with an insistent discursive claim to regional coherence, the many small groups that comprised the first Ku-Klux Klan would together become the most widely proliferated and deadly domestic terrorist movement in the history of the United States. From 1866 through 1871, men calling themselves “Ku-Klux” killed hundreds of black southerners and their white supporters, sexually molested hundreds of black women and men, drove thousands of black families from their homes and thousands of black men and women from their employment, and appropriated land, crops, guns, livestock, and food from black southerners on a massive scale," Parsons writes. But it's beginnings were much more innocuous.
The Ku-Klux, as it was stylized back then, began in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866. It was started as a social club by six white men, and the initial design was not for violence. "The idea of the Ku-Klux Klan emerged from a set of discursive conventions more cultural than political. It was influenced by an array of cultural practices and popular figures of the day, including sensationalist fiction, the minstrel stage, phonetic writing, contemporary fashion, Sir Walter Scott, Mardi Gras, and bureaucratese." The name came from the Greek word for "circle," and a penchant for beginning words that started with C with a K. The costumes, which were at that time colorful, were inspired by minstrel shows and circuses, as they were more like clown outfits. Later, they would be disguises.
Parsons goes on to write about how the Ku-Klux became a political organization, devoted to harassing black people and white Republicans. She spends a few chapters on how Northern newspapers devoted several column inches to reports on them, and then spends her last two chapters on the activity of the Klan in Union County, South Carolina. She warns us that we :may find this chapter boring."
This is an academic tome, and is not easy reading, as there is much given over to names and dates. However, there are some nuggets of information here. One is a debunking of the myth that Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest had anything to do with founding the organization. But one of the founders, coincidentally, was named James Crowe.
The first period of Klan history lasted only about five years. There were congressional inquiries and government action, during the Grant administration, to stamp it out. It wouldn't reappear until the late 1910s, when it was glorified in D.W. Griffith's film Birth Of A Nation. It wasn't until then that they adopted their familiar white uniforms and burned crosses.
Though this book is dry, Parsons does not hide her distaste for the organization and what it stands for. "The Klan is solidly entrenched as part of our national narrative, where it has come to represent the most violent aspect of white racial oppression." Anyone with any interest in the origins of this blight in American history would do well to read it, at least the first few chapters.
"Wedding small-scale organization with an insistent discursive claim to regional coherence, the many small groups that comprised the first Ku-Klux Klan would together become the most widely proliferated and deadly domestic terrorist movement in the history of the United States. From 1866 through 1871, men calling themselves “Ku-Klux” killed hundreds of black southerners and their white supporters, sexually molested hundreds of black women and men, drove thousands of black families from their homes and thousands of black men and women from their employment, and appropriated land, crops, guns, livestock, and food from black southerners on a massive scale," Parsons writes. But it's beginnings were much more innocuous.
The Ku-Klux, as it was stylized back then, began in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866. It was started as a social club by six white men, and the initial design was not for violence. "The idea of the Ku-Klux Klan emerged from a set of discursive conventions more cultural than political. It was influenced by an array of cultural practices and popular figures of the day, including sensationalist fiction, the minstrel stage, phonetic writing, contemporary fashion, Sir Walter Scott, Mardi Gras, and bureaucratese." The name came from the Greek word for "circle," and a penchant for beginning words that started with C with a K. The costumes, which were at that time colorful, were inspired by minstrel shows and circuses, as they were more like clown outfits. Later, they would be disguises.
Parsons goes on to write about how the Ku-Klux became a political organization, devoted to harassing black people and white Republicans. She spends a few chapters on how Northern newspapers devoted several column inches to reports on them, and then spends her last two chapters on the activity of the Klan in Union County, South Carolina. She warns us that we :may find this chapter boring."
This is an academic tome, and is not easy reading, as there is much given over to names and dates. However, there are some nuggets of information here. One is a debunking of the myth that Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest had anything to do with founding the organization. But one of the founders, coincidentally, was named James Crowe.
The first period of Klan history lasted only about five years. There were congressional inquiries and government action, during the Grant administration, to stamp it out. It wouldn't reappear until the late 1910s, when it was glorified in D.W. Griffith's film Birth Of A Nation. It wasn't until then that they adopted their familiar white uniforms and burned crosses.
Though this book is dry, Parsons does not hide her distaste for the organization and what it stands for. "The Klan is solidly entrenched as part of our national narrative, where it has come to represent the most violent aspect of white racial oppression." Anyone with any interest in the origins of this blight in American history would do well to read it, at least the first few chapters.
January 7, 2022
Very technical, though also very informative. Includes a lot of complex historical information, so a background reading in Reconstruction beforehand is definitely recommended.
June 12, 2018
This is a very strong, subtle, and frightening work of cultural history. “Ku-Klux” is a history of an organization that has been defined in no small part by the specters and myths it generates. Parsons manages a very intricate task in reading the very real, material violence the Klan afflicted (and it’s material consequences) in relation to the Klan as an idea, a set of narratives and images deployed by a number of different actors to various ends (note- Parsons uses “Ku-Klux” instead of “Klan,” in keeping with practice during the nineteenth century- I’m using “Klan” out of convenience).
It’s important to note that Parsons is writing specifically about the Reconstruction-era Klan, or the “First Klan” as it’s sometimes called. Much of our imagery of the Klan comes from the “Second” (1920s) or “Third” (civil rights era) Klans. The early klan was much more loosely organized, and did not have a standardized appearance- the uniform white sheets and hoods. Instead, local klan groups self-organized, and dressed in a bewildering variety of costumes, from pretty basic hoods to what were basically clown costumes to full-on drag. Basically, Halloween- like those creepy old Halloween pictures.
And that might be the central point Parsons gets across- the early Klan very cleverly manipulated the line between serious and playful and between truth and myth. The bizarre costuming and other ritual aspects of the early Klan served a number of purposes, and weren’t as good at anonymizing their members as you may think. What they did do was create a space where the normal rules, not just of law and morality but of reality in general, didn’t apply. The message was clear- any attempt to challenge white dominance would not only lead to violence, but to a nightmarish overturning of order in general. It wasn’t enough to beat, maim, rape, and kill- the Klan also forced its victims into sadistic fantasy tableaux of white dominance.
Parsons also makes clear the ways in which politicians and publics in the north helped constitute the Klan as a concept- and in a way that helped make the Klan’s efforts successful. From the start, the Klan borrowed from northern commercial culture, most notably taking elements of gothic fiction and minstrel shows to structure their statements and rituals. Northern politicians and newspapers eagerly followed stories of Klan atrocities, especially when they could use them to argue for increased Republican power over the South. But as time wore on, several elements of the Klan’s cultural operations began to warp the story in directions favorable to them. Democrats and rival Republican factions began casting doubt on Klan stories- and one of the ways in which their outlandish ritual character helped the Klan was in sowing that seed of doubt.
Worst of all, Republican politicians waving the bloody shirt insisted on the image of pitiful black victims, and often literally shushed black survivors who attempted to tell their stories of resistance, even just to the point of refusing to play along with the Klan’s ritual grotesquerie. Along with amplifying the Klan’s cultural power by making resistance seem impossible, it eventually created a picture of the South where blacks were, always and inevitably, simple victims of the violence that’s just generated, like maggots from old meat, by white revanchism- and that there’s nothing anyone, certainly not northern politicians, could do to help. This dovetailed nicely with the declining Republican interest in the Reconstruction project, and helped make itself a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Historical analogy is a tricky game in any event. It’s made worse by the blindness to the many-fold axes of comparison that our language (and, one suspects, popular culture) encourages. So, the very first thing anyone goes to to dismiss an analogy that makes them uncomfortable are differences in size and scale- thing A can’t be like thing B because B effected more people, lasted longer, etc. And there’s often good reason to do this- think about the reductio ad hitlerum arguments that fly all over the place… though now that it’s the right that cries genocide much of the time, I guess we might rename it reductio ad stalinum (or maoum).
But… especially for a book published and 2015, and presumably conceived and written years before, there’s a lot here that illuminates dynamics in the contemporary far right. I know that will be enough of a stretch for some people, but if I really wanted to stretch, I’d say something like: the Klan is a notch in the belt of a specifically Anglo-Protestant modality of irregular war, attuned to the lifeways of the people pursuing it in the same way the Mongols’ way of war was essentially their way of surviving on the steppe, militarized.
But we’ll stick with the shorter stretch for now. The most obvious is the Klan’s use of performance, irony, and the prevailing pop culture narratives of the day, and the way that finds echoes in the contemporary altright. This practice creates multiple faces for different audiences, making it hard to get a grip on the phenomenon as a whole, and more than that works to confuse people and lead them to believe the rules aren’t working anymore- witness the altright belief in “meme magic.” And in a sense, it does work- not for their maximalist goals, which are absurd, but for making the society that much more violent and paranoid and making it harder to make any real social progress.
A related unfortunate parallel is the way portions of the commentariat who really should know better can’t seem to get their heads around the fact that people can be silly and ironic and also deadly earnest and violent. I wonder where that comes from. Did they not go to high school? Hell, I didn’t go to real high school and even I know that!
On a somewhat more positive note, there were people with power at the time who took the Klan seriously. Parsons tells the story of a Major Lewis Merrill, a Union army intelligence man who did the obvious things in his area of operations in South Carolina. He formed relationships with and gained the trust of the part of the community that he could work with (i.e., the black people), created a network of informants, arrested the Klan leaders they accurately fingered (it’s a myth that people didn’t know who was leading these things- these are small communities), and supported efforts to build a political base for a non-white-supremacist system. Remarkable how these things work with a clear head, some solid working partnerships, and a little elbow grease. *****
It’s important to note that Parsons is writing specifically about the Reconstruction-era Klan, or the “First Klan” as it’s sometimes called. Much of our imagery of the Klan comes from the “Second” (1920s) or “Third” (civil rights era) Klans. The early klan was much more loosely organized, and did not have a standardized appearance- the uniform white sheets and hoods. Instead, local klan groups self-organized, and dressed in a bewildering variety of costumes, from pretty basic hoods to what were basically clown costumes to full-on drag. Basically, Halloween- like those creepy old Halloween pictures.
And that might be the central point Parsons gets across- the early Klan very cleverly manipulated the line between serious and playful and between truth and myth. The bizarre costuming and other ritual aspects of the early Klan served a number of purposes, and weren’t as good at anonymizing their members as you may think. What they did do was create a space where the normal rules, not just of law and morality but of reality in general, didn’t apply. The message was clear- any attempt to challenge white dominance would not only lead to violence, but to a nightmarish overturning of order in general. It wasn’t enough to beat, maim, rape, and kill- the Klan also forced its victims into sadistic fantasy tableaux of white dominance.
Parsons also makes clear the ways in which politicians and publics in the north helped constitute the Klan as a concept- and in a way that helped make the Klan’s efforts successful. From the start, the Klan borrowed from northern commercial culture, most notably taking elements of gothic fiction and minstrel shows to structure their statements and rituals. Northern politicians and newspapers eagerly followed stories of Klan atrocities, especially when they could use them to argue for increased Republican power over the South. But as time wore on, several elements of the Klan’s cultural operations began to warp the story in directions favorable to them. Democrats and rival Republican factions began casting doubt on Klan stories- and one of the ways in which their outlandish ritual character helped the Klan was in sowing that seed of doubt.
Worst of all, Republican politicians waving the bloody shirt insisted on the image of pitiful black victims, and often literally shushed black survivors who attempted to tell their stories of resistance, even just to the point of refusing to play along with the Klan’s ritual grotesquerie. Along with amplifying the Klan’s cultural power by making resistance seem impossible, it eventually created a picture of the South where blacks were, always and inevitably, simple victims of the violence that’s just generated, like maggots from old meat, by white revanchism- and that there’s nothing anyone, certainly not northern politicians, could do to help. This dovetailed nicely with the declining Republican interest in the Reconstruction project, and helped make itself a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Historical analogy is a tricky game in any event. It’s made worse by the blindness to the many-fold axes of comparison that our language (and, one suspects, popular culture) encourages. So, the very first thing anyone goes to to dismiss an analogy that makes them uncomfortable are differences in size and scale- thing A can’t be like thing B because B effected more people, lasted longer, etc. And there’s often good reason to do this- think about the reductio ad hitlerum arguments that fly all over the place… though now that it’s the right that cries genocide much of the time, I guess we might rename it reductio ad stalinum (or maoum).
But… especially for a book published and 2015, and presumably conceived and written years before, there’s a lot here that illuminates dynamics in the contemporary far right. I know that will be enough of a stretch for some people, but if I really wanted to stretch, I’d say something like: the Klan is a notch in the belt of a specifically Anglo-Protestant modality of irregular war, attuned to the lifeways of the people pursuing it in the same way the Mongols’ way of war was essentially their way of surviving on the steppe, militarized.
But we’ll stick with the shorter stretch for now. The most obvious is the Klan’s use of performance, irony, and the prevailing pop culture narratives of the day, and the way that finds echoes in the contemporary altright. This practice creates multiple faces for different audiences, making it hard to get a grip on the phenomenon as a whole, and more than that works to confuse people and lead them to believe the rules aren’t working anymore- witness the altright belief in “meme magic.” And in a sense, it does work- not for their maximalist goals, which are absurd, but for making the society that much more violent and paranoid and making it harder to make any real social progress.
A related unfortunate parallel is the way portions of the commentariat who really should know better can’t seem to get their heads around the fact that people can be silly and ironic and also deadly earnest and violent. I wonder where that comes from. Did they not go to high school? Hell, I didn’t go to real high school and even I know that!
On a somewhat more positive note, there were people with power at the time who took the Klan seriously. Parsons tells the story of a Major Lewis Merrill, a Union army intelligence man who did the obvious things in his area of operations in South Carolina. He formed relationships with and gained the trust of the part of the community that he could work with (i.e., the black people), created a network of informants, arrested the Klan leaders they accurately fingered (it’s a myth that people didn’t know who was leading these things- these are small communities), and supported efforts to build a political base for a non-white-supremacist system. Remarkable how these things work with a clear head, some solid working partnerships, and a little elbow grease. *****
June 4, 2017
Thoroughly researched. The cruelty of our past makes you cry and cringe, and the insightful mind will draw several parallels to the present. One of which is white supremacy is people who feel they need to bound together to feel justified in their sickening belief that others are less-than when they keep seeing those they feel superior to prove them wrong.
July 9, 2020
It is a very interesting book since it explains the origin of the movement, the ideology and actions that have led a country or most people to have a mentality in this way, for me it was interesting to know stories as well as the transgression of ideology human.
November 16, 2019
This is an impressive scholarly work but it's also incredibly difficult to read at times.
February 13, 2020
Vague. If you are looking for details about specific people or places check the massive amount of footnotes and source material.
March 23, 2021
An academic look at the nefarious group’s origins during the post-civil war reconstruction era’s rigged economic structure that still resonates today.
January 8, 2023
This book is a necessary account of the Reconstruction Era Klan. It highlights how they masterfully used culture and deception to their advantage, becoming a massive threat to American democracy.
October 2, 2025
Its fine. I little too itemized with the reports of various kinds of events. Yes, democrats were beating and harrasing Republicans in the south during rconstruction.
February 25, 2017
I couldn't finish. The book is too full of details about whether a meeting was held on one day or maybe it was the next day and there is no way to be sure who was in attendance and that sort of thing. It's extremely well researched but much too finely focused for the casual reader.
April 20, 2017
I read this to become better informed about the origins of the Klan. I learned an amazing amount, not the least is the degree to which fake news, Klan denial, and usage of the Klan as a political tool was rampant from 1868 to 1872. Many parallels to today's political world.
This is a scholarly endeavor, not a "thriller" type of book. The author went to great pains to document the reality (though not the specific details) of the intimidation inflicted upon freedpeople after the Civil War and how both Northerners and Southerners dealt with this.
This is a scholarly endeavor, not a "thriller" type of book. The author went to great pains to document the reality (though not the specific details) of the intimidation inflicted upon freedpeople after the Civil War and how both Northerners and Southerners dealt with this.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews