Ku Klux Klan Photograph Analysis

The primary source that I have chosen for my essay is a photograph of a women’s Ku Klux Klan parade float in Akron, Ohio at the Akron Centennial Parade of 1925. This picture is currently a part of John L. Maples’s online book called The Akron, Ohio Ku Klux Klan 1921-1928. This photograph successfully demonstrates Americans “super-patriotic” push and campaign post-World War I and before the stock market crash in 1929. There was not a specific audience intended for this picture because it is simply a photograph documenting an unfortunate period and violent time in American history. The anti-Communist and anti-immigrant ideas that the KKK unjustly preached in the United States emphasized the affluence and anxiety much of America was consumed

671-672)”. The United States was first introduced to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1860s during the Reconstruction Era as the organization played a major role opposed to African Americans in the South. The second emergence of the Klan was developed by William J. Simmons in 1915 in the city of Atlanta, Georgia and had almost an identical role, if not an even more violent focus, then the first wave of the group. As you can see in the photograph, the Klan distinctly dressed themselves in long, solid white robes usually accompanied with a red and white cross logo attached, and a white, sharp-pointy hat covering their entire face except for two eyeholes, protecting their identity and striking fear in the victims. The Ku Klux Klan was now one-hundred percent Protestant and was anti-foreign, anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish, anti-Black, and anti-Catholic. The Klan often opposed evolution and old-time religion, supported immigration restriction, freedom of speech and worship, free public schooling, the refinement of politics and purity of women, and also upheld American patriotism. The Klan briefly attempted to be peaceful at times but if that failed they would become extremely violent by kidnapping, lynching, and murdering others opposed to their ideology. Klan members mainly thrived in the agricultural South and also small-towns before spreading throughout the country to big cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Atlanta, and Akron where many black minorities were settling. The Ku Klux Klan had around 3-5 million members at the peak of their power, many being women as you can see in the photograph attached who went by the name WKKK (the national Women of the Ku Klux Klan), who often campaigned for more white rights in America. Around this same time period, famous women were notably searching