"And These Are the Children of God": Fears of Homegrown Terrorism in Cold War America

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Author:

Center for History and New Media/American Social History Project

Subject:

Humanities

Institution Name:

American Social History Project/Center for History and New Media

Collection:

Many Pasts (CHNM/ASHP)

Grade Level:

Secondary, Post-secondary

Abstract:

Although Cold War-era fears often focused on Communism and atomic warfare, the following 1949 editorial in the popular magazine Collier's showed concern about a broader threat to core American values posed by extremism, terrorism, and indoctrination of the country's youth. The editorial appeared beneath a photograph of a group of hooded Ku Klux Klan members, including at least three women. One of the women carried a young girl shrouded in a hood. Formally known as the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the group, founded in Atlanta in October 1915, took its name and inspiration from the vigilante organization in the Reconstruction South that terrorized blacks and Republican political leaders in order to restore white supremacist governments and black economic and social subordination. While the Klan of the 19th century died out as white supremacists regained power, the virulently anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-foreigner, and anti-black 20th-century "Empire" flourished in the nativist atmosphere of the early and mid-1920s. Although the Klan declined drastically following scandals and internal battles, it revived intermittently in the following decades. As the Collier's editorialist feared, the Klan again became "a serious threat to our democracy" following successes of the modern civil rights movement, as they perpetrated acts of terrorism against African Americans and their white supporters, most notoriously in 1961 attacks on Freedom Riders in Alabama, the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, that killed four young girls, and the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, during "Freedom Summer" in 1964. The editorial does not address cultural reasons for the Klans' persistence--historians have explored antielitism, fear of community domination by outside powers, and repugnance to modern, secularist morality as motivating factors in addition to white supremacy and nativism.

Languages:

English

Material Type:

Primary Source

Media Format:

Text/HTML

Conditions of Use:

Custom License
Fair Use for educational purposes

Copyright Holder:

Copyright 1998-2005 American Social History Productions, Inc. All rights reserved.