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[Saya]

Interesting and short read.

Link

Women have long been overlooked and under credited, and their contribution to horror is no exception. The 1920s marked the heyday of the Women of the Klu Klux Klan — the autonomous arm of the notorious white supremacist group — springing, in a strange twist, out of a climate of hopefulness after suffrage when women felt emboldened to take part in civic life. Headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, with delegates in every state, the organization’s numbers reached half a million during this decade.

While the Greene County woman may have been naive, her fellow WKKK members were savvier. “Women were major actors in the klan, responsible for some of its most vicious, destructive results,” writes Kathleen Blee in Women of the Klan. According to Blee, the organization was chillingly effective — perhaps even more so than their male counterparts — in large part because they were better at public relations. (One of the women involved in the founding of the WKKK had originally been enlisted by the KKK to help clean up its image).

 

[jwk94]

I had no clue the KKK didn't automatically include white women. Gonna give this a read. Thanks, OP.

 

[Fat4all]

Oooooooh...

So there's where all the white womens at!

 

[Shaanyboi]

Oooooooh...

So there's where all the white womens at!

I laughed

 

[-Plasma Reus-]

Like Smurfettes.

 

[nekkid]

I had no clue the KKK didn't automatically include white women. Gonna give this a read. Thanks, OP.

Those horrible sexists!

 

[Ratrat]

How do racists 'clean up' their image exactly?

 

[Effigenius]

How do racists 'clean up' their image exactly?

Well it was easier in the 1920's. The problems (as they were perceived) weren't so much the racism as the violence.

 

[djplaeskool]

Oooooooh...

So there's where all the white womens at!

 

[cameron]

If the WKKK was more successful in advancing their xenophobic agenda, it was because they were better than the men’s group at hiding their white supremacist mission behind a facade of social welfare. “Are you interested in the Welfare of our Nation? As an Enfranchised woman are you interested in better government? Should we not interest ourselves in better education for our children?” their pamphlets read. They organized parades and food drives, with the benefits often funneled directly to Klan families. Drawing from the church-supper tradition, their gatherings could, on first glance, be mistaken for sorority events. One Indiana woman Blee interviewed described them as “a way to get together and enjoy.” But simultaneously they lobbied for national quotas for immigration, racial segregation, and anti-miscegenation laws — and proselytized the “eternal supremacy” of the white race as an opposition to the “rising tide of color.”

Effective.

Blinded by smoke from burning crosses, 1956. After the 1920s, women in the KKK continued to emphasize their klan’s flamboyance and ritual. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Nineteen Fifty Six.

 

[Verelios]

Oooooooh...

So there's where all the white womens at!

Super Effective!

Effective.



Nineteen Fifty Six.

Kind of makes me sick

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

How do racists 'clean up' their image exactly?

Wash the blood off before attending the church fundraiser

 

[Strike]

Not really surprised by any of this.