The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America

excellent book. The author was a personal friend of mine. I have his other book, Titanic. He took his research quite seriously and did an excellent job.

In this book Wyn Wade has given us a very good overview but not an extremely detailed look at the Ku Klux Klan. That is not to say that he has not done his research for he has found lots of material. The simple fact is that a book of this length cannot possibly cover the subject in any great depth. That would require a book at least twice this long, and probably three times as long. This book was obviously not intended to be a Shelby Foote type narrative of the Klan, but the basic survey that it is. Wade has done a good job with the post reconstruction Klan, but he tends to take revisionist history a bit too far. One thing that puzzles me is that he refers to Tennessee as the, "the only border state" that left the Union. Many historians refer to the Volunteer State as a border state even though it was surrounded by slave states on all sides, so I can let that part of the statement slide. I have never however heard of Tennessee referred to as a border state without at least Virginia and Arkansas also receiving that label. It's not a big thing I realize, but it did bug me.After reconstruction, Wade takes the reader to the history of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation", the movie that made the rebirth and rise of the post World War I Klan possible. Then he traces the new Klan through its phenomenal growth to its demise. Wade then moves on to the Cold War anti-Communist Klan, the Civil Rights era Klan, the David Duke Klan, and today's Aryan crowd. He does a fine job of bringing out the personalities of various Klan leaders and giving the lowdown on various politicians who, while not Klansmen themselves, were more than happy to court Klan support. He also does an outstanding job of telling the story of Klan violence, with special attention to the victims. Wade ends this fascinating book with the story of the groups that have been organized to oppose the Klan and the FBI campaign that brought the Klan to its knees. Finally, Wade warns the reader that the Klan is still out there and should never be pronounced dead. The Klan has proven its resilience again and again he warns and his excellent book will give the reader many reasons to be wary of the men behind the masks.

The Fiery Cross is the best one-volume history of the Ku Klux Klan I have read. I have always had a hard time accepting the claims of the academics that historically, Klan membership in America was a civic-minded, even virtuous impulse on the part of ordinary citizens. (How the academics manage to say this in view of the Klan's anti-ethnic activities has always stumped me.) Wyn Craig Wade reveals the historic KKK in all its aberrant glory. Of special interest, I believe, is his chapter on the KKK's triumph in Indiana during the 1920s. It seems anomalous that this landlocked midwestern Hoosier empire, rather than some southern state, was the KKK's major stronghold during the decade it reached its greatest national prominence. Wade explains how KKK organizers skillfully exploited Indiana's penchants for organized religion, joining clubs, and arrogance. At one point, thousands of people accepted as true a rumor that the Pope was going to relocate the Vatican to Indiana. Why? Simply because Indiana was the most desirable real estate on earth.