JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 298
I just very recently made a post about a sub-category of blank and empty
things: blank special-purpose
diaries. I didn’t think that there would
be much that would follow it, but already I’ve found several interesting relational
objects. This very understated and interesting object lacks the name of the organization for the ladies: and that name was the Ku Klux Klan, which changes everything about this innocuous-looking piece of ephemera.
How many of these forms for the Women’s branch of the Ku Klux
Klan (WKKK) were filled out in the 1920’s and 1930’s?
At least 500,000. And more, as this was the number of women members of the Klan, which was about a
quarter of the entire roll of the KKK.
Evidently the WKKK was one of the largest social organizations for women in
the
in those decades. In 1925 more than
35,000 KKK members paraded down Pennsylvania
Avenue;
three years later, another huge parade
took place, this time prominently featuring the WKKK. The KKK after all
supported women, after its fashion, and actively sought them as an auxiliary force,
seeking their right to vote as well. And
by the right to vote it meant literally RIGHT voting—no voting for anyone or
anything that was not “100% American”, which excluded everyone that was not
native-born, white and (sort of) Protestant, voting against anything that was in
any way in favor of Blacks or Jews or Catholics or immigrants and so on from a long
list of “undesirables”.
The emptiness of this application for possible membership has as much hope in its emptiness as its possibility of hate in its completion.
A few interesting works on this subject include:
Blee, Kathleen. Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s.
1991.
McGehee, Margaret T. “Beneath the Sheets: An Intellectual History of the
Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), 1923–31.” MA thesis,
of Mississippi,
2000.
Seaver, Darcy L. “Women in the Hood: Women in 1920s Ku Klux Klan
Publications.” MA thesis,
1992.