Jose Yglesias, union activist, describing a strike- ‘During the strike, the Ku Klux Klan would come into the Labour Temple with guns and break up the meetings. Very frequently, they were police in hoods..The picket lines would hold hands, and the Ku Klux Klan would beat them up and cart them off.’
Behind the façade of the economic boom in the early 20th century, there lay a nation of serious racism acts. Source 1 is a primary source of a union activist describing how the Ku Klux Klan was intimidating and terrorising anything that didn’t support their rights. During the economic boom America was a divided society. One half of the division was made up of new immigrants from all over Europe. The other half was a different America, which consisted of British descendants, Protestants and Anglo-Saxons. Within this group, the Ku Klux Klan formed after the American Civil War in 1866. Their aim was protecting whites and maintaining their control of politics and society, hence why they were meant to be a secretive group, wearing white robes, covered faces and burning crosses. Their appearance was intended to frighten. By 1924, the Ku Klux Klan had four million members spread across the USA; disliking what they saw as any foreign influence or threat to their society.
At first, the Ku Klux Klan focused its anger and violence on African-Americans (intimidating, terrorising and even lynching them), also on white Americans who stood up for them, and against the federal government which