that groups like the Klan tended to imitate their victims, for example, by
appropriating the ritual, mystery, and vestments of the Roman Catholic
Church. A number of recent works have described the second KKK in
harsh terms similar to those of John Mecklin. David Shannon called the
Klan a "hate organization" that accommodated regional prejudices against
blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, and others, while John George and
Laird Wilcox termed it the largest extremist group in the twentieth-century
United States and "probably the most intolerant and violence-prone over-
all." Robert Moats Miller emphasized its resilient racism and argued that
the "good men" who joined the KKK "simply failed to discern" the order's
true nature. ⁷

The earliest revision of the dominant thesis can be found in Norman
Weaver's 1954 Ph.D. dissertation on the second Klan in Wisconsin, Indiana,
Ohio, and Michigan. Weaver argued that the revitalized KKK was not in-
herently violent or xenophobic. Rather, midwestern Knights concentrated
on defending Protestant values and temperance. David Chalmers's magiste-
rial Hooded Americanism, published in 1965, meticulously examined the Klan
throughout the nation. Chalmers's work discovered a strong Klan presence
in many urban centers and regions previously thought to have been unre-
ceptive to the order. Charles Alexander's 1965 study of the Invisible Empire
in the Southwest admitted that the order was violent but stipulated that its
terrorism was directed at moral offenders rather than at those previously
thought to have held a monopoly on the Klan lash: blacks, Catholics, Jews,
and immigrants. Alexander also identified postwar patriotism as responsible
for the society's revival rather than relying, as the traditional explanation
had done, on urban-rural conflict, fundamentalism, economic instability, and
bigotry. Philanthropy, social work, and civic activity dominated KKK ac-
tivity, Alexander suggested, not violence. In most of the communities in
which the Klan appeared, local residents not only tolerated it but actually
welcomed it. ⁸

Kenneth T. Jackson The Ku Klux Klan in the City ( 1967) dramatically
challenged the traditional view by arguing that the second Klan flourished
just as strongly in urban areas as in rural ones. Cities gave the Klan its lead-
ership, largest membership, newspaper support, and most impressive political
successes. The metropolis, and not the rural hinterland, was the ideal breed-
ing ground for the Klan germ after World War I. According to Jackson's
profile, the typical 1920s Klansman was a lower-middle-class white Anglo-
Saxon Protestant who felt threatened by the change in postwar America.
The Klansman lived in urban districts sandwiched between black, immi-
grant, or non-Protestant ghettoes and more insulated affluent neighbor-
hoods. ⁹

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