Analysis Of Backfire: How The Ku Klux Klan Helped The Civil Rights Movement

Backfire: a Critical Analysis Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement is a book written by David Chalmers. It was published in 2003 by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc. Chalmers is widely regarded as the leading and most reliable historian of the Ku Klux Klan. Backfire plunges into the civil rights era of the Ku Klux Klan. Chalmers shows through his evidence how the Klan’s measures effectively helped strengthen the U.S government’s role in the protection of civil rights. He mainly focuses on the twentieth century Ku Klux Klan, but he also briefly delves into white supremacy groups today, which is essentially the evolution of the Klan to modern times. David Chalmers does an exceptional job in providing support to

“It was the Supreme Court decision against public school segregation on May 17, 1954, that gave the ‘Invisible Empire’ a new impetus and environment for action.” (Chalmers, 5). The Ku Klux Klan burst back into society after this decision that let a young black schoolgirl attend class at a previously all-white school. They shed off prior goals and ambitions from the past KKK generations to just leave one major belief, their white supremacy. As the civil rights movement gained power and hit the streets, it was evident this could be the only time where the Klan effectively combated and put a stop to the black

Chalmers’ main purpose for writing the text was to inform the reader of the events that took place during the civil rights era by the Ku Klux Klan, and how it actually furthered the civil rights movement. He does a phenomenal job of this by giving evidence of the Klan’s violence, and the government’s actions that came from the growing pressure that they were facing regarding the Klan. All of this is true, yet Chalmers could have done that while leaving out a good amount of the other text. The way the book is written, the title should be called “Backfire: the Rise and Fall of the 1960’s Ku Klux Klan, how they Helped the Civil Rights Movement, and Where they Stand Today” Now for the majority of it, the author stuck to his thesis and explained just how many pieces of legislation were passed with help from the Klan. Also, a brief history was definitely necessary, and Chalmers did a good job of providing that too. Backfire would have been even more loyal to its purpose if it ended right after chapter 11: Decline or possibly in one of the next couple chapters. He could have summed up in a few pages most of the rest of the chapters because they were mainly dealing with post-civil rights era KKK and the modern version of it. The last chapters are interesting, but they take away some of the reason for why the book was written. This is why they could have been left out; only the 50’s-70’s held his best evidence to supports