This chapter examines how the civil rights-era Ku Klux Klan promoted
white supremacy and antagonized racial minorities in relation to salient
political and cultural themes of the era. It explores cultural politics
to identify tendencies and examples, by which the Klan produced
expressions for certain racial groups to contrast whiteness. In the
cultural and ideological domain of Klan action, salient cultural
signifiers had both positive and negative uses as they were rendered to
serve certain political aims. Unlike national discourse about race,
which sought to hide the nature of white supremacy, the Klan’s racial
ideology opted for aggressive simplicity. For example, the Klan
transformed familiar and reassuring symbols and language of Christianity
and patriotism into expressions of hate, terror, and racism. Relying on
both reassuring symbols and racist myths, Klan adherents and supporters
of segregation were given not racial code words but explicitly racist
explanations that provided a standard through which social issues and
political struggles of the 1960s were understood.