KLAN: Killing America: The original stories of the Ku Klux Klan (Twentieth Century History) Kindle Edition

July 7, 2013A Review by Anthony T. Riggio of KLAN: Killing America by Ken Rossignol.Unless one stops to study even a small amount about the Civil War, the understanding of rebuilding the South is difficult to comprehend. Lincoln's overall plan was to treat the Southerner with respect and forgiveness once they swore allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. John Wilkes Booth actions put a huge bump in the road and created a lasting bitterness on both the white Southerners and the former slaves.While Lincoln wanted a "loving" reconciliation with the nation, there elements among northern politicians who sabotaged Andrew Johnson's plans to follow through with Lincoln's design for reconstruction. Many of these politician's wanted to extract more than a pound of flesh from the Southerners, especially the former slave owners. Being from the North their views of slavery were based on the overall sacrilege of slavery itself. Because of the loss of life and the tremendous costs, these politicians wanted reparations and compensation for the rebellion by the South.The Northerner's implemented a form of military control of the South including a dismantling of the great plantations to allow each slave head of the house to receive 40 acres of land and a mule. The Northerner's wanted to further punish the white Southerner's by disenfranchising them in the year following the cessation of the rebellion. They also, gave the vote to every former male slave to insure that future elected officials to higher political office, were from the Black Ranks irrespective of their abilities to read or write or experiences running a government. Many of the Lincoln contemporaries who opposed his reconstruction plans were enjoying the total humiliation of the White Southerners who fought in the War and supported Slavery.The abuses that followed were horrendous to say the last and the former slaves began to engage in actions for which no restraints were legally available. Crimes committed by former slaves were adjudicated by mob rule and the whites responsible were held accountable by both the occupying White soldiers and the Black soldiers who often were part of the problems.Out of this soup of dysfunction, the Klu Klux Klan was born out of an outgrowth of college students who formed a secret society. The Klan was highly organized by former Confederate high ranking officers. In many respect it brought some order to the chaos and was eventually disbanded several years after the evils of Reconstruction were resolved.The Klan of the very late 19th century and the twentieth century were a more of a political and repressive force hindering the assimilation of the Blacks into the American societal fabric.I began to realize, in reading this book, you cannot fully understand the fall out of the Civil War until you study reconstruction. This difficult process impacted on the hoped progress and eventually led to the Jim Crow laws and the repression of the Black vote until the 1960's.This book is a collection of news articles pointing out the issues of both mob rule and the rise of the Klan. It is not a long read but truly interesting and from these separate stories you glean a clear view of the Klan and its purpose.

How do you rate a book about reprehensible acts of inhumanity? Do you look at the writing? Scanning old newspaper articles and running the scans through optical recognition (OCR) software without judicious proofreading is a bad idea.Then there is the contemporaneous history it provides. This compilation of articles, showing the dates of publication, describe the political and social climate of the day. Unfortunately, I find myself beating back the feeling of déjà vu as I read, almost word for word, articles from one year to the next. I got the point the first time. After the civil war this was a country of racists, and not just racists but violent racists.Apparently, the Klan has had two iterations… the first, after the Civil War and during Reconstruction, and the second during the early 20th century. As I read through the many articles, it seemed to me the first Klan was far less organized than the second. There are several articles that delineate the lynching (which seem to include not only hanging, but burning at the stake, and other forms of killing) carried out by ethnicity, by state, and by crime for which punishment was dealt. It is also interesting to note that newspapers of the day referred to lynching as the court of Judge Lynch. These long lists of so-called crime and punishment reminded me of David Fahrenthold's exposé of Donald Trump's non-charity after the dubious rally for U. S. Veteran's.The second iteration of the Klan is described favorably by some of the articles and negatively by others. There are reproductions of Klan letters to prospective initiates, there is scandal, big money, and all the things we currently associate with the current administration in Washington, DC.The value of this book to me was somewhat of a shock. Since 2015, I have heard the pundits say that there is nothing in American history that stands as a precedent for the isolationist nationalism, racism and outside influence we are seeing today. I beg to differ. You need not look to the European fascists of the mid-twentieth century for precedent. Look to the KKK in 1920's American. You will find the same rhetoric you hear and see each and every day.So now, let's go back to my initial question; how do you rate this book? It's at least a 3-star research effort and a 5-star eye-opener when you look around at the world today. I guess we can average that out and give it 4 stars.

Having grown up in the 40's and 50's in SW Missouri and central Illinois I was aware of the KKK as a boy. My father even once drove by a field in which the KKK was assembled and saw their cross burning. I also read a book or two about them as a young boy which dealt with the earliest formation of the KKK after the Civil War and who it's leaders were at that time. Later on in the 1980's as a police officer in Southern Maryland I was assigned to help provide security at an announced parade of a local group of rednecks calling themselves the KKK. They did this in support of a police officer who was being sued over brutality. Of course this announced parade resulted in a counter demonstration by the local NAACP. On the day of the event we had a massive police presence to insure the two groups did not come into contact with each other. The NAACP turned out a number of supporters while the KKK knuckleheads produced about 12 to 15 in sheets who paraded through downtown. So I thought I knew a bit about the KKK, but I quickly learned in reading Ken's KLAN that I really didn't know a lot about it's growth in the 1920's and 1930's. The KLAN was a real eye opener as I had no idea they had been able to clam such a vast membership nationally during those years and I was astounded at one picture near the end of the book which showed the KKK marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC in numbers one would expect to see in one of today's Inauguration Parades in the sheets with flags flying.I found the KLAN to be a very informative and interesting read and learned a great deal from it that I didn't know and would recommend this to anyone.

If you are filled with revulsion by some of the content of this book, then the author has fulfilled his purpose. If you are not filled with revulsion by this content, then there is something wrong with you and you should seek psychiatric help before it is too late. That said, I have to point out that this book contains more typos than I can even begin to count. We're not talking about the occasional thicket here, we're talking about endless forests of the pesky things. On ever page. In nearly every paragraph. The publisher should be ashamed. I, for one, intend to boycott books from this source until the publisher takes some responsibility for the quality of its products.

what a terribly written book I cannot read this due to the poor layout and poor spelling,awful