I finally watched O Brother, Where Art Thou? all the way through last night for the first time. Needless to say, there is much in the movie that isn’t exactly strict realism. So when the Klan rally came up, I started thinking, “Is this what it was like at a Klan rally in the 1930s”? What happened at one? How many people were there, and what was on the agenda? How much has the content of a Klan rally varied over time?
A surprising amount of wife-swapping, I’m told…
From what I understand the Klan in the 20s and 30s was very different from the Klan in the 60s and different still from the Klan of today.
In the 20s and 30s, the Klan didn’t have anywhere NEAR the negative image that they do today. Civil rights wasn’t on the radar, so the violence against blacks was very little compared to later on. A man who joined the Klan back then was almost like joining the Rotary Club or the Jaycees.
Now, please don’t think I am defending them, but when talking about the Klan, we have to be careful about the era we are talking about…
Hmm.
So you’re claiming that in the '20’s, Klan violence against blacks was minimal?
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/blj/vol20/brophy.pdf
I don’t think he (?) was denying that violence took place, but that violence wasn’t as core to the overall group as it would be later on. That if you have a fifty-member Klan rally in 1920, most of them would be there for the same reason they’d be there for a Rotarian function. Later on, as the Klan took on more and more leanings toward racial hatred and nastiness (not that they were free of it in the first place, just that it intensified over time), the percentage of those attending Klan functions with nefarious or more outwardly nasty attitudes grew.
Not that the Klan was the equivalent to the JayCees, just that until its reputation became more established, people who wouldn’t have joined it in its later incarnations would have been members in its earlier days.
This is not a defense of the Klan, its tactics, or of those members who joined in its infancy. But he does seem to have a valid point – and despite the despicable nature of membership, considering Ma and Pa Jones’ membership in the 20s as the same as Ma and Pa Smith’s membership in the 60s is not quite right.
Compared to Klan violence against blacks in the '60s, yes.
Or what rhythm said 
There was a public rally here about 20 years ago? The police had to cordon off the public so the Klan didn’t get lynched. Basically it was a guy with a bullhorn who sounded a lot like Louis Farrakhan only with the word “white” substituted for “black”. Not sure but I think the city said they weren’t paying for police protection anymore so I don’t expect any encores.
OK, so what happened at a typical Klan rally on the days when they didn’t decide to lynch, burn crosses, or even beat the crap out of anyone? Did they pass around business cards? Give speeches? Bitch about the sullying of white womanhood?
In the second incarnation of the Klan (1915 onward), anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant rhetoric entered the mix. This was the era of the Red Scare, so the Communist threat was also on their minds.
So at a rally in the 20s, you’d have seen a lot of American flags (not Confederate flags as shown in O Brother), and there would have been a lot of railing against the reds, and the bolsheviks, and the labor unions and the Catholics and the Jews along with the usual preaching about the perils of miscegenation.
And yes, violence toward black men, up to and including lynching, was on the agenda. (Congress attempted to pass anti-lynching laws beginning in 1918.) This was an era during which some communities were being “ethnically cleansed” of black people by means of violent intimidation.
It wasn’t all race-baiting though. Wife-beaters, suspected thieves and other community troublemakers were also visited by the Klan.
Just last weekend my great aunt who’s 90 years old told a story about her father, who apparently participated in a tar-and-feathering of a man living out of wedlock with his girlfriend. This was in Southwest Virginia in probably the 1930’s.