Women of the KKK
Kathleen Blee reveals in her book Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s the complexity and intertwining of motive, planning, and recruitment of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan in America in the early 20th century. Blee defines the typical Klanswoman and explains her motives for joining the order. In the Klan of the 1920s, Blee argues that gender politics are related to the politics of race, religion, and class. This is accomplished through the Klan’s intertwining of gender into the causes of suffrage, temperance, morality, patriotism, and religion so that by supporting one of these elements you supported the Klan. The Women’s Ku Klux Klan served the agenda of its male counterpart and was not a feminist organization for the reason that it did not advocate equal rights for women and economic equality of the sexes but rather used the rights of white protestant women to counteract the rights given to non-white, non-protestant men. The WKKK used individual issues to draw members and unite women to further their cause of white supremacy.The WKKK recruited member most commonly through infiltrating other movements and organizations, aligning themselves through a common cause and then proclaiming the benefits of allying
The reasons for joining were not always noble as education, family, or patriotism. One Quaker minister, Nancy Taylor, openly admitted her seduction into the Klan was for the financial benefits provided for lectures. Some women also looked to the Klan as a social opportunity, such as Ellen Curtis. Curtis was living her married life in the isolated rural farmlands of southern Indiana. Her daughter recounts her mother’s feelings about the Klan by saying “this Klan thing really meant something to her in kind of a social way” referring to the WKKK. One strong belief is that women may have joined because their husbands were members, this may be true to some extent but this was not always the case as shown by the aforementioned motives. The WKKK offered political and social benefits for women that they could take ownership of. Religion and the Klan meshed as well as any of the Klan’s drawing elements did. The Klan’s rituals for birth, marriage, and mourning the dead intertwined so deeply with religion that it was almost indistinguishable. With the support of Protestant preachers, recruiting new member was ripe for the picking in churches. It seemed to be a win-win situation with the church supporting and recruiting for the Klan and in turn the Klan recruited and supported the church. The church stood for all that was good and moral, thus if the church leader supported the Klan, t
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Approximate Word count = 947
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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