Steel Valley Klan: The Ku Klux Klan in Ohio's Mahoning Valley
- ISBN-10
- 0873386949
- ISBN-13
- 9780873386944
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 236
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1990-06
- Publisher
- Kent State University Press
- Author
- William D. Jenkins
Description
Jenkins argues that the Klan drew from all social strata in Youngstown, Ohio, in the 1920s, contrary to previous theories that predominately lower middle-class WASPs joined the Klan because of economic competition with immigrants. Threatened by immigrant movement into their neighborhoods, these members supposedly represented a fringe element with few accomplishments and little hope of advancement. Jenkins suggests instead that members admired the Klan commitment to a conservative protestant moral code. Besieged, they believed, by an influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants who did not accept blue laws and prohibition, members of the piestistic churches flocked to Klan meetings as an indication of their support for reform. This groundswell peaked in 1923 when the Klan gained political control of major cities in the South and Midwest. Newly enfranchised women who supported a politics of moralism played a major role in assisting Klan growth and making Ohio one of the more successful Klan realms in the North. The decline of the Klan was almost as rapid. Revelations regarding sexual escapades of leaders and suspicions regarding irregularities in Klan financing led members to question the Klan commitment to moral reform. Ethnic opposition also contributed to Klan decline. Irish citizens stole and published the Klan membership list, while Italians in Niles, Ohio, violently crushed efforts of the Klan to parade in that city. Jenkins concludes that the Steel Valley Klan represented a posturing between cultures mixed together too rapidly by the process of industrialization.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Youngstown Postcards From the Steel City
By Donna M. DeBlasio1 Class, racial and ethnic conflict is thoughtfully examined in Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo, Steel Town, USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown, (Topeka: University Press of Kansas, 2002). 2 “Mahoning National Bank Buys Andrews ...
-
Abramo's Gift
By Donald GrecoJames Parsons came to the door, annoyed at the intrusion into his quiet library smoking time. “Yes, what is it?” he said to Ross. “Sir, I'm Ross Harty, the brother of the girl, Molly, who has been working here. She...Is she still here?
-
Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925-1950
By Philip JenkinsCommittee in 1942, Allen asked, “Can anyone in this committee doubt that Communism is as much a racial move as Fascism or Nazism?”134 He asserted the truth of the Protocols, or at least “would not say” that the Jewish religion did not ...
-
Closing Chapters: Urban Change, Religious Reform, and the Decline of Youngstown's Catholic Elementary Schools, 1960-2006
By Thomas G. WelshMichael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley, eds., The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), 969. 73. Appleby et al., Creative Fidelity, 247–48. 74. Glazier and Shelley, The Encyclopedia of ...
-
America's Political Class Under Fire: The Twentieth Century's Great Culture War
By David A. HorowitzSocial scientists and professionals also served as policy consultants and as members of investigatory commisions for Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.2 As the Wilson administration recruited ...
-
The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
By Lisa McGirr50 To some steelworkers, the selective police tactics were part and parcel of Jones & Laughlin's authoritarian policies. Ormond Montini, an Italianborn steelworker, said, “[P]eople who were close to the company ...
-
Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality
By Bruce NelsonFor similar examples of left - wing organizations serving as leadership - training schools for working - class activists , see Friedlander , The Emergence of a UAW Local ; Nelson Lichtenstein , “ Life at the Rouge : A Cycle of Workers ...
-
Rioting in America
By Paul A. GiljeThe most important account is Avrich , The Haymarket Tragedy . See also Henry David , The History of the Haymarket Affair : A Study in the American Social - Revolutionary and Labor Movements ( New York , 1936 ) ; Bruce C. Nelson ...
-
The Ku Klux Klan in Western Pennsylvania, 1921–1928
By John CraigThe conspirators included the Imperial Night Hawk (chief investigator) Fred Savage of New York, Indiana Grand Dragon David Curtis Stephenson, Arkansas Grand Dragon James Comer, Texas Grand Dragon H. C. McCall, and most important, ...
-
The Ku Klux Klan's Campaign Against Hispanics, 1921-1925: Rhetoric, Violence and Response in the American Southwest
By Juan O. SánchezJackson, Kenneth T. The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. James, Jason W. Memories and Viewpoints. Richmond, VA: Williams Printing, 1928. Jenkins, William D. Steel Valley Klan: The Ku Klux ...