An Empty Interest in Applying for the Women's Branch of the KKK. ca. 1925

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 U.S.
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. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

McGehee, Margaret T. “Beneath the Sheets: An Intellectual History of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), 1923–31.” MA thesis, University
of Mississippi, 2000.

Seaver, Darcy L. “Women in the Hood: Women in 1920s Ku Klux Klan Publications.” MA thesis, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1992.

Comments

[Jeff]

I thought it was on our archive site, but I guess not. I'll find it. There's a photo of a large Klan parade passing in front of our lovely Carnegie library. It just feels icky, something about those sweaty costumes.

[John Ptak]

Well, it *is* icky. Check out their website if you want to put a capital "I" in "icky". It would be interesting to see how many photos of KKK parades in front of state capitals could be found. I'm guessing all.