Discredited histories of the Ku Klux Klan | |
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|"It is not surprising that in these years the "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy achieved a popularity among |
|Southerners which it probably never attained between 1861 and 1865. Equally noble in retrospect was the |
|gallant fight that Southerners had waged against Yankee and Negro oppressors in the dark days after 1865. |
|The Ku Klux Klan was glorified as a saviour of white civilization—and Northerners for the most part |
|agreed. The Klan legend came to a head in 1905. Walter Lynwood Fleming reissued the old book by Lester and|
|Wilson in that year, adding a long and appreciative introduction of his own. But the primary cause of the |
|Klan cult was the appearance of Thomas Dixon’s romantic novel, The Clansman. In this book, as in his |
|simultaneous nonfiction article on the Klan in the Metropolitan Magazine, Dixon overlooked or brushed |
|aside the ugly realities of Ku Klux activity. His knights were white-robed