Backfire: a Critical Analysis Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement is a book written by David Chalmers. It was published in 2003 by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc. Chalmers is widely regarded as the leading and most reliable historian of the Ku Klux Klan. Backfire plunges into the civil rights era of the Ku Klux Klan. Chalmers shows through his evidence how the Klan’s measures effectively helped strengthen the U.S government’s role in the protection of civil rights. He mainly focuses on the twentieth century Ku Klux Klan, but he also briefly delves into white supremacy groups today, which is essentially the evolution of the Klan to modern times. David Chalmers does an exceptional job in providing support to …show more content…
“It was the Supreme Court decision against public school segregation on May 17, 1954, that gave the ‘Invisible Empire’ a new impetus and environment for action.” (Chalmers, 5). The Ku Klux Klan burst back into society after this decision that let a young black schoolgirl attend class at a previously all-white school. They shed off prior goals and ambitions from the past KKK generations to just leave one major belief, their white supremacy. As the civil rights movement gained power and hit the streets, it was evident this could be the only time where the Klan effectively combated and put a stop to the black …show more content…
Chalmers’ main purpose for writing the text was to inform the reader of the events that took place during the civil rights era by the Ku Klux Klan, and how it actually furthered the civil rights movement. He does a phenomenal job of this by giving evidence of the Klan’s violence, and the government’s actions that came from the growing pressure that they were facing regarding the Klan. All of this is true, yet Chalmers could have done that while leaving out a good amount of the other text. The way the book is written, the title should be called “Backfire: the Rise and Fall of the 1960’s Ku Klux Klan, how they Helped the Civil Rights Movement, and Where they Stand Today” Now for the majority of it, the author stuck to his thesis and explained just how many pieces of legislation were passed with help from the Klan. Also, a brief history was definitely necessary, and Chalmers did a good job of providing that too. Backfire would have been even more loyal to its purpose if it ended right after chapter 11: Decline or possibly in one of the next couple chapters. He could have summed up in a few pages most of the rest of the chapters because they were mainly dealing with post-civil rights era KKK and the modern version of it. The last chapters are interesting, but they take away some of the reason for why the book was written. This is why they could have been left out; only the 50’s-70’s held his best evidence to supports
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance- a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire, does not sound at first like a book that would provide ample information about the role of the Ku Klux Klan in the Civil Rights Era, but through the various cases and demonstrations presented by McGuire, the reader is given insight into the Ku Klux Klan that has yet to presented by another author read for this study. In her book, McGuire analyzes various court cases and movements from the early 20th century into the 1970s to show the growth of the civil rights movement through black women's resistance. She focuses on the particular women involved and the role that respectability
Uniquely, they ask questions, and then provide strong evidence to support their opinions on the matter or the claim. The tone of this book is mainly critical, the author introduces possible arguments to answer the questions at hand, and continues by refuting them and explaining why they are incorrect. In chapter 3, “How Is the Ku Klux Klan like a Giant Group Of Real-Estate Agents?” Levitt and Dubner mainly use the rhetorical strategy, pathos, when talking about the Ku Klux Klan because what person can disagree with someone proving how terrible a multi-state terrorist organization who’s purpose was to frighten and kill black people in the United States was? The answer is simple, no one, because most people have morals and are disgusted by what the Ku Klux Klan did.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a terrorist group that would terrorize, kidnap, kill, and torture African Americans. Reconstruction was an act of getting the United State's back to normal after the Civil War, and the Ku Klux Klan made this difficult. The Klu Klux Klan harassed African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan contributed to the failure of reconstruction by harassing African Americans in order to make the African Americans fear the Klansmen, they would try to increase their public appeal to gain more followers, increase their racism towards African Americans, leading towards the republican party failing, and harass and kill off the African americans to scare them into not voting or participating, bringing back white supremacy.
Since then much has changed, now right and wrong are matters for debate. How do you exactly determine what is right and wrong? Members of the Ku Klux Klan truly believe that whites are superior. Are they wrong for that? Think of a football team that you adore, is it wrong for you to think of that team as the best? No doubt, they are racist.
What we can see in today’s society is an apparent tolerance shown towards the KKK whereas the new BPP is met with blatant intolerance. The underlying reason behind this is that there continues to be a significant lack of understanding in society regarding both these groups (Alexander 45). This lack of understanding stems from socially inherited biases which prevent us from viewing society beyond our own cultural identities and myopic perceptions. Despite the new BPP being a blatantly more hateful and racist group than the original BPP, the legacy that it has inherited is much more different than the one inherited by the Third Ku Klux Klan. The KKK continues, and will continue, to be perceived as a hateful group with a well-documented history of murder, lynching and domestic terrorism (Weinberg 34).
Former slaves who “tried to vote or participate in politics [were] likely to be singled out for “punishment”” by a terrorist organization named as the Ku Klux Klan, until the Congress passed the Force Bill in 1871 that gave the federal authorities the right to arrest and pursue active members of the KKK. But, the bill appeared to be only figurative as not really much of the Klan’s members were prosecuted (Hazen
The Reconstruction Era occurred in 1865, it was was a period after the Civil War in which America was focused on rebuilding the broken South. In 1867, the Radical reconstruction gave former slaves a voice in government. During this era, formers slaves gained a platform in the government, with some blacks as Congressmen. However, not everyone supported the idea of Reconstruction. Less than a decade after the Reconstruction period, a small group composed of democratic ex-confederate veterans, white farmers and white southerners sympathetic to white supremacy joined forces together to form the Ku Klux Klan.
The early 1900s were a time of widespread social and political change in America. During this time, many Americans adopted new, more modern ideas about labor, cultural diversity and city life. Some of these Progressive ideas were brought about by the need for reform in the workplace due to the grown of large companies and rapid industrialization. Not everyone supported the ideas of the Progressive Movement, however. Anti-Progressives, especially in the South, preferred traditional, rural lifestyles, and a slower, simpler way of living.
However, by 1925, it was discovered that the KKK was a fraud and very corrupted. This caused the Klan’s influence and membership to decline expeditiously. Notwithstanding, the events that occurred in the 1920’s still had a positive effect on the lives of Americans because social reform during this time was the only reason why the KKK shrunk in size in the first place. Many people were able to become
Julia Modine Ms. Hoag U.S. History I 12 December 2017 Hiram Wesley Evans effect on America Much of mainstream white, protestant America was ripe for the emergence of a persuasive and unifying cultural ideology in the 1920s that catered to its fears, prejudices and misguided beliefs. The Ku Klux Klan had been around for decades and had always held up the ideal of the original American pioneer stock and their descendents as the true recipients of the American promise. In the mid-20s, the Ku Klux Klan underwent a resurgence in popularity amid growing alarm within a large percentage of middle and working class white men due to increased volume of immigrants competing in the workplace, growing religious sects and racial integration.
In 1926 American society was changing rapidly through immigration and many races of people were bringing their cultures with them. A man named Hiram W. Evans was the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Evans made the argument that these new immigrants were destroying the racial definition of what an American should be. He felt that true Americans were part of the Nordic race because the early pioneers fit into this category. The Klan’s point of view was that America should stay American and maintain this Nordic race of Caucasian people.
Frederickson argues African Americans simply did not have the time or preparation to oppose racist forces. Using paramilitary forces, southern redeemers easily made threats to reconstruction forces as seen through the emergence of the violent Ku Klux Klan during the election of 1866. The opportunity for African Americans to gain a stance in society was short lived by the racist efforts of democrats in the south and impartial ideals from
The Ku Klux Klan first emerged in Pulaski, Tennessee following the Civil War. As we know today, the mere mention of the Klan triggers fear as the KKK is known for its various tactics of violence that came in the form if lynchings, murders, and mutilations. Following their emergence, the KKK were quickly symbolized and portrayed as the protectors of the South, following the defeat of the Southern states in the Civil War and the beginning of the period of Reconstruction by the federal government (Gurr, 1989, p. 132). During the 1920s, the KKK achieved its greatest political success and growth outside of the South. During this period, the membership of the Klan heavily expanded to the states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Oregon, to which the KKK obtained two to two and one-half million members at its apex.
In the reading from We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century, Dorothy Sterling explores the many experiences of mainly African American women during the period of the Reconstruction era. Sterling states “whites put aside random acts of violence in favor of organized terror.” She focuses a lot on those experiences that involves the Ku Klux Klan (who were the organization responsible for these organized terror) and in a way, it seems fair because they were the main perpetrators of hate crimes against the African American community. The first few examples provided in the reading offer accounts of African American women whose husbands are often targets of the Ku Klux Klan because they were politicians or high-profile radicals in the South.
The Ku Klux Klan or KKK has created centuries of fear. They originated in Pulaski, Tennessee. The famous hate group was out to re establish white supremacy. The KKK has influenced local governments and people in power. It has also had an impact on American people and specifically black minorities.