Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement

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Summary: Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movem
Review: Terrorism is not a modern phenomenon for the black community. The Ku Klux Klan's use of physical intimidation has been well documented since its inception in 1866. Histories of the origins of the Klan and its reemergence in 1915 exist in abundance, but few works provide a profile of the Klan's evolution over the past 50 years. Chalmers (emer., Univ. of Florida) fills this void with four stories: the rise and decline of the post-WW II Klan, the struggle to punish Klan members, the legal attack against the Klan by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and, finally, the demise of the Klan as the leading white supremacist group. Chalmers argues that Klan activities of the 1950s and the 1960s--bombs, kidnappings, and murder intended to prolong segregation--resulted in federal investigations of the group, new civil rights legislation, successful legal action against individual members, and the economic collapse of the organization by the mid-1980s. Within a decade, however, new white supremacist organizations emerged to replace the Klan and present new terrorist threats to the nation. The last chapter suggests that a new chapter in the history of domestic terrorism has begun. ^