The Guardian

The media and the Ku Klux Klan: a debate that began in the 1920s

Dr Felix Harcourt, author of Ku Klux Kulture, breaks down the ‘mutually beneficial’ relationship between the Klan and the media
A 1930 photo of members of the Ku Klux Klan. Photograph: Henry Guttmann/Getty Images

In the 1920s, the membership of the Ku Klux Klan exploded nationwide, thanks in part to its coverage in the news media. One newspaper exposé is estimated to have helped the Klan gain hundreds of thousands of members.

Dr Felix Harcourt, a professor of history at Austin College and the author of Ku Klux Kulture, breaks down what he calls the “mutually beneficial” relationship between the Klan and the press – and explains how much the debate that raged over coverage of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s mirrors today’s arguments.

We’re looking at the debate that is happening in the media right now over how to deal with white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements. You looked at the same debate that was happening almost 100 years ago. Can you set the scene for us?

In 1921, the New York World ran a three-week front page exposé of the Klan: daily denunciations of its ideology, of its activities, of its

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Guardian

The Guardian4 min read
The Big Idea: Should We Abolish Literary Genres?
In her Reith lecture of 2017, recently published for the first time in a posthumous collection of nonfiction, A Memoir of My Former Self, Hilary Mantel recalled the beginnings of her career as a novelist. It was the 1970s. “In those days historical f
The Guardian8 min read
PinkPantheress: ‘I Don’t Think I’m Very Brandable. I Dress Weird. I’m Shy’
PinkPantheress no longer cares what people think of her. When she released her lo-fi breakout tracks Break it Off and Pain on TikTok in early 2021, aged just 19, she did so anonymously, partly out of fear of being judged. Now, almost three years late
The Guardian3 min readWorld
Historians Come Together To Wrest Ukraine’s Past Out Of Russia’s Shadow
The opening salvo in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year was not a rocket or a missile. Rather, it was an essay. Vladimir Putin’s On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, published in summer 2021, ranged over 1,00

Related