The Second Coming of the KKK

FEATURING LINDA GORDON – The resurgence of white supremacist groups in Donald Trump’s America has left many Americans scared and worried, particularly among communities that the racist organizations target. We hear pronouncements that such extreme racism is “un-American.”

Sadly of course racism has been built into the fabric of the US from its inception. And no organization better captures that sentiment than the Ku Klux Klan, a group that has surged and waned repeatedly over the past 100 years, first emerging in the 1860s and 70s, then again in the 1920s and 30s, and for the third time in the 1950s and 60s.

A new book explores in great detail the second wave of the KKK in the 1920s with historical lessons that can inform our present. It’s called The Second Coming of the KKK.

Linda Gordon, Winner of two Bancroft Prizes and the Los Angeles Times Book prize. She is the author of Dorothea Lange and Impounded and the co-author of Feminism Unfinished. She teaches at New York University. Her new book is entitled ‘The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition.’