Hispanics and the KKK in the 20s

Outstanding historical research is near – and the findings can be quite enlightening.

The Ku Klux Klan was formed in the years after the Civil War as a paramilitary terrorist organization, committed to assuring white rule in the defeated states of the Confederacy. The KKK spread violence, fear and death, murdering thousands, until the US federal government stepped in and through military, police and judicial action, suppressed it. The KKK returned in a new format in the 1910s, growing in size and influence. The early twentieth century Klan grew through mass marketing techniques, along with white robes and communal events – cross burning and lynching. Membership was possibly as high as 8 million by the middle of the 1920s. Numbers, though, dropped precipitously by the end of the decade. Ever since the KKK has existed as a fringe organization, focused on white nationalism.

The Ku Klux Klan’s Campaign Against Hispanics, 1921-1925, a thorough work of history, was written by Juan O. Sanchez in 2018. The book is the result of several decades of rigorous research by Sanchez, who tracked down and collected numerous primary and secondary source documents from the period. He focused on Spanish language publications, but as he learned more about the period, Sanchez’s reach extended. The book is a testament to dogged investigation and systematic study. It aims to document facts, not make arguments, and it does so extremely effectively.

Between a strong introductory overview and a clear summary, Sanchez’s chapters look at Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and California. The Klan had a stronghold in Texas with more than 300 local organizations in the state. 1922 marked the KKK’s greatest electoral successes. The Klan was virulently anti-Mexican and it was only in the cities with large numbers of Mexican American was there organized anti-KKK resistance. The Mexican government was also an influence in protecting Hispanic Americans’ rights. Sanchez’s research highlights the many ways that the Spanish-speaking local press advanced pro-American anti-Klan arguments, as well as the rhetoric of KKK publications and editorials. The story was similar in other states, though the influence of the KKK was strongest in Texas. Sanchez shows how local conditions and opportunities framed local discussion, debate and action across the Southwest.

Big picture, The KKK’s Campaign Against Hispanics highlights the broad acceptance by many White Americans that Mexican Americans were dangerous criminals, robbing native born Americans of jobs, opportunities and wealth. The KKK repeatedly castigated Mexican Americans as a “mongrel race” with tendencies towards drunkenness, laziness, and criminality. Speaking Spanish was called un-American. Importantly, Sanchez’s sources underscore the KKK’s deep antipathy towards Catholicism. Religion and race were used complementarily by the Klan, which had deep ties to local Protestant churches and leadership. Mexican-Americans, they insisted, were not “real” Americans. God’s national order, the Klan affirmed, had Protestant white Americans at the top. Moreover, as Sanchez’s work documents, the KKK was as anti-Hispanic as it was anti-Black.

The KKK’s rise in the first half of the 1920s reflected long-standing trends in American society and politics. During this period controls over unions increased, immigration was great constricted, and a wide range of non-white groups were targeted. Happily, by the latter half of the decade more inclusive voices prevailed in the Southwest, thanks in great part to the organized resistance led by Spanish-language newspapers. Juan Sanchez’s scholarship ably documents a history of racism, intolerance, and resistance. It is history well worth studying and considering.

David Potash

March 22, 2025 Reviews

A Man of Sand

What makes a person, if not their values? A hundred plus years ago, someone who had commitment, courage and character was said to have sand. That meant they were a person of substance, someone you could trust. A person with sand would do what they promised, no matter the consequences. One earns sand, through conflict and hard work over time. Sand is a most worthy encomium. The late congressman John Lewis was a man of sand.

The historian and professor David Greenberg recently turned his practiced eye to Lewis. The resulting biography, John Lewis: A Life, bears much in common with its subject. It is a methodical, consistent and powerful study. There is nothing flashy about John Lewis or the book. It tells the history of a most compelling man who truly made a difference through diligence, courage, and a commitment to living his values. It is exactly the kind of history that stands in opposition to opportunism. Greenberg knows how to research and how to write history effectively, keeping the story moving and giving just enough detail to make you think that you might really know the subject.

The contours of Lewis’s life are well-known. He lived it, after all, in the public eye for decades. He was dedicated to public service. Born into a poor family and large family in Alabama, Lewis was an inveterate reader as a child. Small, shy and studious, Lewis went away to college just as the Civil Rights movement was starting to push for integrated higher education. Lewis wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to seek his help gaining admission to Troy University, which was segregated at the time. Lewis decided to attend an HBCU instead, but he made a mark on King and others in the movement. As a college student in Nashville, Lewis studied theology and became very active in civil rights. Totally committed to the nonviolence of Gandhi and others, Lewis stood out for his discipline. He was a leader through his intensity, lack of ego, and drive. Lewis was a man of great courage: physical, moral and interpersonal.

By 1961 Lewis was one of the original Freedom Riders. He became chair of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) in 1963. As Greenberg details, Lewis was everywhere in the movement, helping others, preaching and practicing nonviolence. He was always more interested in doing the work and effecting change, not being in the spotlight. Greenberg details the horrific hatred that Lewis and so many others in the movement encountered. People were murdered, beaten, threatened with regularity. The racism of the South in the 1950s and 1960s did not change without thousands putting their bodies and lives on the line. Lewis did so regularly and he practiced what he preached, perhaps most famously in the marches at Selma. The book is a chilling reminder of the danger and difficulty of pursuing civil rights.

Greenberg’s history is balanced and comprehensive. While Lewis did so much before the age of 24, the biography gives equal attention to the other roles he placed, including advocating for voting rights and serving on the Atlantic City Council, where he fought a major highway development. Lewis entered Congress in the 1980s and he served until 1980, where he had an outsize influence in a wide range of issues. In many ways, Lewis became a moral figure in Congress, more than a politician. Several of the racist leaders who attacked Lewis reached out to him, seeking forgiveness and understanding. Lewis follow up, again and again. He was that good a person. He understood, too, that he represented something bigger than himself.

The research supporting the book is extensive. Greenberg truly did his homework, giving anecdotes and first person accounts that give the work texture and character. Lewis had edges and an ego, as he cheerfully would admit. But he also found ways, repeatedly, to push himself and others. He wrote, lobbied, and led, truly having an extraordinarily full and meaningful life. He truly was an American hero.

One of my favorite quotes is from John Lewis, something he said repeatedly throughout his life: sometimes we have to make good trouble. Lewis’s “good trouble” was the kind of activism that makes for better people, better communities and a better nation. Reading about John Lewis is inspirational. Pick up this book and you may want to engage in a bit of “good trouble.” It did for me.

David Potash

March 12, 2025 Reviews

Karma Smiles With Sharp Teeth

John Collier might be one of the most successful writers you have never heard of. Perhaps because of his ordinary name? His reluctance to pursue the spotlight? Collier avoided interviews and drew upon a well of British reserve. Nonetheless, whether you read one of his many pieces in the New Yorker, or saw a movie or play written or rewritten by him, or perhaps remember a Twilight Zone episode that remains rooted in your mind, there is a right good chance that Collier was the author.

Collier’s most effective metier may be the short story and an exquisite collection of his works in found in Fancies and Goodnights. First published in 1951, the book has been reprinted many, many times. It is classic, a delicious assortment and every offering comes with a bite. The latest reissue hails from the NYRB and it features a glowing introduction from Ray Bradbury, who writes “I can name no other writer in the twentieth century whose work has given me such consistent pleasure.” Collier’s prose is elegant, sophisticated, and very smart, with nary a wasted word.

Fancies and Goodnights is eminently enjoyable. It is as strong as any collection of short stories you might find, from O. Henry to de Maupassant to Chekhov. In reflection, I realized something unexpected from these many tales with a twist. Collier’s stories are consistently moral. They are far from didactic – no bland parables here – yet each, in its own way, carries a powerful message. Hubris receives a comeuppance, villainy is betrayed, and excess is justly trimmed. And in each of these, the end arrives without warning. They are simply great fun and very much “just desserts.”

Were you ever to be tasked with teaching ethics, as you debate this philosopher or that jurist, please consider Collier. His stories and their lessons would stick, delightfully so.

David Potash

March 10, 2025 Reviews

Building Blocks of Righteous Foundations

Have humans always been irrevocably divided? Is difference inevitable, simply a function of human nature? These are expansive questions, difficult to consider and challenging to attempt to address. One has to employ a structure, a disciplinary framework, to even ponder them. Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU, enthusiastically has made moral psychology a relevant tool for these kind of imponderable issues. In his 2012 tome, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Haidt goes big. It is an engaging, encyclopedic, and provocative read.

The Righteous Mind is organized into three sections. The first explores the power and prevalence of emotion in making moral judgements. Haidt weaves his personal history, experiments, and the works of others into a compelling argument. It is reminiscent, yet from a somewhat different perspective, of the seminal found in Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Emotions are often at the very foundation of how we make judgments, a fact that critical thinkers have explored for centuries. Disgust, for example, can drive out reason. Haidt notes that time and reflection dull the power of emotion, giving space to more deliberate reason.

The second section is meatier and more expansive. Drawing from contemporary politics, a wide range of experiments, interdisciplinary thinkers and personal reflection. Haidt spells out a theory of moral decision-making. He posits a framework of six continua: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression. Individuals tend to make moral decisions through these, and we tend to prioritize one or more of these. Haidt’s research suggests that American liberals tend to prioritize judgements on the care/harm and fairness/cheating continua. Conservatives in the US are more likely to use other continua. Global exploration – Haidt spent time in India – shows how different cultures prioritize different values and, subsequently, the frameworks for moral judgements. Adding to the complexity, class has a powerful impact.

Haidt does not claim that his continua are determinative. Rather, they are posited as a potential, or probable structure for further investigation. His research and insights are important, for they can give us better ways of asking questions by interrogating the questions themselves.

Group behaviors, from competition to the hive effect, figures prominently in the third section of the book. Here Haidt is less assured, wondering about evolutionary effects and the possibilities for societal interventions to improve group understanding. Throughout the work, Haidt relies on metaphors to explain these complicated concepts. The elephant and the rider for emotions and reason is an example that is woven throughout.

The Righteous Mind is a book for contemplation, discussion, and more discussion. It is not determinative. Nor does Haidt suggest that it offers all the answers. Nonetheless, give it time and all manner of downstream questions will come to mind. I thought about, for instance, the power of communication – how different people receive, digest and understand information – in this complex framework. If we are relative certain regarding the questions we’re asking – and the questions behind the questions – then what remains to be considered is the information in the hopper to be judged. There is a great deal in Haidt’s book as he moves across disciplines and time, much to consider. And as Haidt has written many other well-received books, I anticipate more reading and mulling.

David Potash

March 2, 2025 Reviews