Dark Images of the Invisible Empire: A Study of the Ku Klux Klan as View into the Heart of American Racism
Reading Memorial High School
Reading, MA 01867
Autumn 2009
Unit on Race Relations on the Eve of the Great War
Honors History 11
Grade 11
Jeffrey R. Ryan, Ph.D., Instructor
Enduring Understanding:
Students should use the information they acquire in this lesson to develop a deeper understanding how fundamental racism is in modern America and how much it was an accepted part of the social structure. They will be encouraged to devise ways to recognize modern forms of racism as well as to develop strategies to challenge and to undermine it.
Connections to Massachusetts History Frameworks, Historical Thinking Benchmarks:
U.S.I.41: Framework on Policies and Consequences of Reconstruction.
U.S.II.9: Framework on the Post-Civil War Struggles of African Americans to Gain Civil Rights
Historical Thinking Benchmarks:
A. Analysis of primary and secondary sources
B. Understanding of historical debate and controversy
C. Understanding of bias and points of view
Essential Questions:
I. To what degree was the Ku Klux Klan an established institution in early twentieth century America and how did its powerful position affect ordinary citizens?
II. How perceptions of race as are depicted in D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation perpetuated in contemporary popular culture and what can be done to discourage this trend?
Learning Objectives:
I. Students will develop a deeper understanding of key themes in American history from Reconstruction to the Great Depression.
II. The concept of racism as it influenced black-white relations from the end of Reconstruction to the early 1920s will be emphasized and explored.
III. The Great Migration of African Americans from the rural Deep South to the urban North was a massive demographic development in our country. Students will consider how migration affected the expansion of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups in areas above the Mason-Dixon Line.
IV. Since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, many pundits have suggested that we are now living in a “post-racial” society. Our students will discuss the question of why it is that African Americans of our own time still have a shorter life expectancy, a higher unemployment rate and a greater percentage of its population in prison. The controversy of the affirmative action will be analyzed and discussed.
Learning Activities:
Students will view selected scenes from D. W. Griffith’s classic film The Birth of a Nation. Premiering in 1915, this work was a major achievement that offered a variety of film “firsts.” It was the first full length picture; at two hours and forty minutes, it far exceeded the standard ten minute fare that was popular in nickelodeons of the age. It was the first film to shoot “on location,” with Griffith lugging his camera equipment outside of the studio to record reenactments of Civil War battles. It was also the first film to create a fire storm of protest.
Griffith’s movie was based on Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. While Dixon’s book was not a great commercial success, the film was a cinematic sensation, endorsed by then president Woodrow Wilson as “history as lightning.” It was an odd coincidence that Wilson and Dixon had been college roommates; they also shared a starkly white supremacist world view. While The Birth of a Nation purports to be an epic tale of the Civil War and Reconstruction, its most memorable sequences contain demeaning images of black people along with a scene involving the attempted rape of a white girl by an African American character. This myth of the threat of sexual violence from black men toward white women had inspired thousands of lynchings in America from the end of the Civil War until well into the middle of the twentieth century. When the film opened, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) protested and asked that the studio withhold the movie’s release, fearing that it might spawn racial violence. The NAACP’s request was ignored; Birth of a Nation was released; and attacks on blacks by racist gangs did increase.
Day One of the Lesson:
The day before the students see parts of Griffith’s film, they will see a brief PowerPoint presentation on Klan violence. The previous evening, they shall have been assigned chapter 2, “Ain’t Slavery No More” from Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice. The instructor can give them a brief overview of the origins of the KKK in the Reconstruction era, and then they will view the archival images and consider the following questions:
v The first image is a photograph of a Klan march through the nation’s capital in the 1920s with the dome of the United States capitol in the background. What might this picture say about the place of the KKK in American society at the time the picture was taken?
v The second picture is a photograph of a Klan march in Springfield, Ohio in 1923. How does that contrast with stereotypes that persist about the regional influence of the Ku Klux Klan?
v Slide three depicts Klansmen showing a sign that tries to stresses their patriotism. Can such a racist group be truly patriotic? Is there an inherent contradiction between racism and patriotism?
v The fourth image is of a cross burning, a reminder that the KKK has tried to portray itself as a defender of the Christian faith. How does historical record of the Klan contradict its claims of Christian virtue and purity?
v Slides five through eight are frightful and horrifying images of lynchings, most of which were reproduced as postcards and sent around the country as family greetings? What does such an unapologetic publication of these pictures say about the nature of racism in America in the early twentieth century?
v In Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice, the main character, the author tells of his main character, Ossian Sweet’s earliest childhood memories. In 1925, Sweet was a successful, middle class African American who purchased a comfortable home in a predominantly white neighborhood in Detroit. Sweet had, at least outwardly, escaped the pall of southern racism, yet his most nagging childhood recollection is that if seeing his neighbor burned alive when Ossian was nine years old. Students should exchange ideas of what such an experience would have on the life of a child.
v In the four pictures of lynchings, there are people assembled, posing for the photographer. Who might these people be and why would they be getting their picture taken?
v What does it say about the criminal justice system in America that such atrocities could take place in the open?
v Why did no one try to stop such mob violence from happening?
v What is our responsibility if we see violence being perpetrated in our own time?
v Some people have suggested paying reparations to the descendants of slaves in a similar way to the compensation afforded to the survivors of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II. Do you think that reparations should be granted to the descendants of lynching victims?
Day Two of the Lesson:
Students will see selection excerpts from The Birth of a Nation and will consider the following study questions:
v In DVD Chapter 24, “Riot in the Master’s Hall,” how many racial stereotypes of African Americans are shown, and what is the overall impression someone might form of them if he or she were not well read in American history?
v In Chapters 25 and 26 of the DVD, how does the director portray the “Little Colonel” and his reaction to the rise to power of persons of color in his town?
v Griffith stages what he labels the “Inspiration” for the formation of the Klan? How accurate is that historically?
v In Chapters 28 and 29, we see the sequence in which “Little Sister” is approached by Gus, the “mulatto” who tells her of his romantic intentions. The sweet young thing commits suicide by jumping of a cliff rather than allow herself to be touched by a black man. Her brother, the “Little Colonel,” finds her body and calls up the Klan to avenge her death. This scene was a white supremacist’s nightmare and reinforced every stereotype of African American men as sexual predators. The students should take this opportunity to discuss how such misconceptions as these can lead to hatred and violence.
v In the film’s final scenes, the Klan rides to the rescue and white power is restored; we see a “special effects” kind of denouement with the film’s heroes in Heaven, where all the saints are white and then an ominous image of Hell where the residents are of an undetermined ethnic stripe. The film closes with the “Little Colonel” and his lily white bride on their honeymoon, gazing beatifically into the future as the soundtrack plays a triumphant “Star Spangled Banner.” Such images initially appear laughable to a modern audience. Yet we need to have the students consider the impact they would have had almost a century ago.
v This film was the introduction to American history for millions of half educated Americans who were born here and millions of immigrants who had come here as part of the Second Great Wave of Immigration that was happening at the time. Since the president of the United States had endorsed The Birth of Nation as legitimate history, what influence might the film have had on racial attitudes?
v What are some ways in which racism and Nativism persist in our current culture and what are some actions we can take to challenge them and to encourage to growth of a more just and harmonious society?
Day Three of the Lesson:
Students will be divided into five groups and will prepare a twenty minute classroom presentation on a major racial confrotation in America in the early twentieth century. The students can select topics on this day and begin to plan their symposia while the teacher consults with each group. They will have one week to prepare their projects on one of the following riots or court cases:
Atlanta, Georgia 1906 Springfield, Illinois 1908 East St. Louis, Illinois 1917
Tulsa, Oklahoma 1921 Rosewood, Florida 1923 The Scottsboro Case, 1931
Their presentations should be based on at least ten scholarly sources of research and should focus on the following themes:
v Racial climate in the area in question prior to the incident
v Economic conditions in the area on the event of the event
v Actions or occurrences that precipitated the event
v Description of the incident itself. What happened? How many were effected? What kind of settlement was reached, if any?
v Long term consequences of the episode
v What the story says about America at the time that it occurred
Projects will be evaluated on the basic of creativity, thoroughness of research and the historicity of the information presented.
Annotated Bibliography:
Allen, Frederick Lewis, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s. New York: Harper & Row, 1931. Allen was journalist during the time in question and his book is a colorful and lively collection of anecdotes of social life and culture in Jazz Age America. He offers a chapter on the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan that provides intriguing contemporary insight.
Boyle, Kevin, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004. Kevin Boyle gives us a chronicle of the life of Ossian Sweet, an African American doctor, who was attacked by a racist mob when trying to move into his newly purchased home in a white neighborhood of Detroit. When some of his friends tried to defend him and themselves, they fired guns into a crowd of their assailants, and a bystander was killed. Dr. Sweet and his companions were charged with murder at a time when the Ku Klux Klan was extending its pernicious reach into America’s northern states.
Carter, Dan, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. Carter’s book is one of the finest studies of the rape trial of nine young African American men tried for the rape of two white women in Alabama in 1931. All nine were convicted on flimsy evidence and condemned to death, and it took over fifteen years for the “Scottsboro Boys” to clear their names. As the film The Birth of a Nation concerns the attempted rape of a white girl by a black man, Scottsboro’s focus on an actual legal case is a worthwhile read in preparation for this lesson.
Dixon, Thomas, The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970. Originally published in 1905, Dixon’s novel is an execrable piece of writing. If, on the other hand, one is analyzing American race relations, it contains 374 pages of post-Confederate apologetics and white supremacist rants. One might call it a classic in its field.
Dunning, William Archibald, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865 – 1877. New York: Harper, 1935. A professor of history at Columbia from 1886 – 1903, Dunning was the mentor to a generation historians of Reconstruction. His argument was that the Radical Republicans fomented a disaster in the Old South by trying to enforce a system of racial equality as the expense of the formerly elite white planters. His implicitly racist conclusions were accepted by historians for a long time.