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Article: Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan.
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- September 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Nancy MacLean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xvii plus 292pp. $30.00).
Behind the Mask of Chivalry is a well-written, yet flawed, analysis of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. The author, Nancy MacLean, probes Klan texts, including newspapers and readers' speeches, for their racial, class and gender implications; her goal is to understand why the Klan was able to attract millions of men to join a movement that she compares to the Nazis under Hitler For MacLean the key factor was class and the apparent loss of economic status of her sample of Klan members from an Athens, Georgia, klavern. She portrays them as a petite bourgeoisie caught between wealthy ...