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Nearly eighty years after its swift downfall, the Hooded Knights of the 1920s remain a historical enigma. Only a few case studies on states or individual klaverns have been provided by historians. In the hope of filling the gap in Klan scholarship, the essayists offer The Invisible Empire of the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. The unifying theme in this anthology is that the Second Klan, while vitriolic in its opposition to Catholics, Jews, Afro-Americans, & Bolsheviks, was not a violent vigilante group. The authors concur that “local conditions profoundly shaped the Klan’s program & activities & varied from community to community.” The essayists argue that western Hooded Knights differed little from their counterparts in the rest of the nation. Lay admits that the Klan in the western states “never constituted more than 7 percent of the organization’s total membership” but asserts that case studies on these klaverns can “serve as the initial basis of a new general thesis.” Similar to chapters in Indiana, Georgia, New York, & Alabama, the Invisible Empire of the west rose up largely in response to social concerns in local communities. Rank & file Klan members shared many of the same the political ideologies of their fellow white Protestants in western communities. While the Second Klan offered a “plethora of causes” to attract members including one-hundred percent Americanism, evangelical Protestantism, racism, Nativism, strict law enforcement & brotherhood, it focused on concrete issues & offered a more militant approach to assuaging “real community tensions & neighborhood conflicts.” Cocoltchos’s essay argues that the “overall Klan experience” in the west “can be best viewed as a contest between an entrenched commercial-civic elite & a rising group of politically oriented citizens who strongly disagreed with the elite’s notion of how communities should be ordered.” The Invisible Empire in the western states was not directly affected by heightened immigration from Eastern Europe or by the migration of blacks from the South. As Toy argues, however, Klansmen expressed their suspicions about Oriental immigration & the “rising flood of color throughout the world. Although race was not a dominant social issue in Eugene, racism was deeply rooted in Oregon, & [the Klan] appealed to the ingrained prejudices” of community members. Horowitz further suggests that the order “hoped to use their movement to restore the integration & cohesion threatened by modern life & diversity” & thus sought “both immediate economic advancement &…prestige & validation.” Ultimately, however, the Klan failed to maintain its intense emotional grandstanding & “to establish an enduring political base.” “The organization… demonstrated little skill in administrative or legislative matters, & allowed its enemies to take the initiative.” The essayists also contribute the Klan’s decline to a growing opposition from the public & internal discord in not only local klaverns but also within the national movement. Mounting public antipathy, however, is not indicative of an end to reactionary politics & intolerance. Furthermore, the notion that the Klan declined because its ideology contradicted American values runs aground chilling evidence that, even years later, such beliefs & prejudices still permeated the nation. Thus, Lay urges historians not “to view the Klan’s gradual downfall as a victory of enlightened liberalism.”Read full review
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