Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Antisemitic Organizations

Chester L. Quarles is a professor of criminal justice and serves in the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Mississippi. While serving as a state criminal investigator, director of the State Crime Laboratory and as the state ballistics examiner, he participated in the investigations of almost all KKK activity in Mississippi in the mid to late 1960s, testifying in court during the trial of the first KKK member convicted since Reconstruction. Quarles has studied the Klan for over 40 years and, in conducting extensive hands-on research, has attended Klan meetings in Mississippi and Tennessee and has interviewed many of the more notable Klan figures in Mississippi. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments     Preface      Introduction      1. Before the Beginning      2. An Empire Is Born      3. 1915—A New Image      4. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s      5. The Modern Klan      6. The Klan in the 1970s and the 1980s      7. Klan Surrogates      8. The Religion of the Ku Klux Klan and Its Offspring      9. Right-Wing American Terrorism      Appendix I The Original 1866 Ku Klux Klan Prescript      Appendix II The Revised and Amended Prescripts of the KKK (1869)      Appendix III Constitution and Laws of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (Incorporated), 1915      Appendix IV The Constitution of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of the Sovereign Realm of Mississippi      Appendix V The Klan Oath Top Secret      Appendix VI Imperial Wizards      Appendix VII Brochure : Twenty Reasons to Join the Klan      Appendix VIII Brochure : Ideals of a Klansman      Appendix IX Brochure : A Message from the Invisible Empire      Appendix X Klan Terms Used After World War II      Notes      Bibliography      Index

“a straightforward presentation...recommended”—Public Library Quarterly; “chronicles the directions the Klan has taken during its long and diverse history”—C&RL News.