This book is a new history of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, the only mass-movement version of the Klan, with millions of members throughout the US, not just in the former Confederacy. Much of the focus is on this Klan’s animus towards Jews, Catholics and immigrants, as well as blacks. The book discusses Klan propaganda against Jews: Jews were said to be too “clannish” to be assimilated into American life, and were blamed for the new “scandalous” music, dances and movies of the Jazz Age. The Klan caused some Jewish members of local government to be fired and led campaigns to boycott Jewish stores. The book also celebrates Jewish resistance, from heroic Texas Rabbis Rosinger, Cohen and Lefkowitz, to a courageous Jewish legislator in Louisiana, to a tiny immigrant woman in Goose Creek, Texas, who brained a klansman with a frying pan and knocked him out. The klansman filed charges. When she was acquitted, the judge said he wished he could not only find her “not guilty” but could give her a medal.
Nonfiction
Ten Dollars to Hate
- From the Publisher
May 16, 2017
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