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08/06/2008: "Klan myth - and reality"

The second wave of scholarship has been ongoing since the mid-'70s, as social historians poured through census data and, where possible, newly uncovered records of individual klaverns. The result was a series of detailed studies of the Klan's activities, ideologies, and social class in cities ranging from Buffalo to Anaheim. Many of these writers, notably Leonard Moore and Shawn Lay, espouse what's come to be called the "civic activist" interpretation of the second Klan, arguing, in Moore's words, "that the Klan served different purposes in different communities, but that in general, it represented mainstream social and political concerns, not those of a disaffected fringe group....To varying degrees, each [study] found that the Klan focused a good deal of energy on community business elites who stood in the way of popular social and political reforms." Lay's study of the Klan's activities in El Paso was a counterpoint not just to the organization's original image but to Alexander's portrait of its efforts elsewhere in Texas. "If, in fact, the Klan was composed largely of unrestrained racists, bigots, and moral authoritarians," Lay later wrote, "then El Paso would have been one of the most likely places for the order to engage in roughshod tactics. But such was not the case. The El Paso klavern largely ignored the Hispanic majority, never employed violence, and spent most of its time challenging the policies of fellow Anglos who dominated city government, focusing on such issues as better public education, honest elections, and road construction." The El Paso Klan, he concluded, was "quite similar to earlier reform efforts in El Paso's history."

[ So there we see "racists" being reformers! ]

http://www.reason.com/news/show/34134.html