The Ku Klux Klan and the War on Poverty

Abstract

Chapter three traces the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi from Reconstruction to the 1960s, before exploring the wave of white supremacist violence that exploded across the state of Mississippi in 1967. This renewed wave of Ku Klux Klan attacks was directed at the state’s antipoverty programs, and in particular at white men and women involved in those programs. The chapter traces the rhetoric used in Klan literature in opposing the war on poverty, which claimed the programs were part of a move toward federal dictatorship. The language fused the core myths and fears on which white segregationists drew—miscegenation, the spread of venereal disease, interracial sex, the threat of black power, and liberal welfare policies that benefitted African Americans. It also illustrates how gender shaped both the Klan violence and its ideology, as attacks on white women teaching in Head Start classes intensified.