KKK Auxiliaries - Background

Background

The Klan of the 1920s existed during the Progressive Era, a period of great optimism in the ability of people to improve society. It was a period during which eugenics was widely believed to hold promise for improving society by increasing desirable characteristics of the population and reducing crime, poverty and other social problems.

The 1920s were also characterized by profound social changes that disturbed many of the largely rural, white, Protestant citizens. They feared the potential power and influence of African-Americans, southern Europeans, Roman Catholics, Jews, Bolsheviks (communists), and labor unions. There was a resulting cultural conflict between the old and established and the new and different. The Klan saw itself as defending American culture against dangerous “foreign” people and ideas. It carried the American flag rather than the “rebel” flag as later Klans would.

The second Klan believed that it was defending traditional American values although in doing so it often violated some of those very values. The Klan saw drinking alcoholic beverages as symbolic of southern Europeans, Catholics and Jews and not only strongly supported national prohibition of alcohol but actively enforced it, sometimes with bloody violence.