Exhibit Overview
Kloran: Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Handbook from Greensboro, North Carolina,
c. late 1960s
This exhibit consists of an archival document associated with the Ku Klux Klan's presence in North Carolina, accompanied by an analytical consideration of that object's context and meaning. In particular, it attends to this record of the Klan's rhetoric and ritual as it relates to the practice of lynching.
Kloran: Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a handbook that delineates the Klan's purpose, basic tenets, and organizational structure, as well as ritual guidelines and qualifications for membership (amongst which whiteness is, of course, chief). The Klan's hierarchy of leadership is laid out in some detail, as are procedures for initiation and justifications for terrorist acts.
The significance of the Klan's role in perpetuating anti-Black violence during the Civil Rights era cannot be overstated; the group's formality of design and symbolic continuity bespoke and buttressed the institutionalized force of White supremacy in the South. This Kloran handbook, housed in the Southern Historical Collection of Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides a direct and self-authored account of the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Produced amid the gradual wane of the Klan's third boom and during a unique period of Klan activity in North Carolina, this document reveals the nearly liturgical grandeur in which the Klan couched its mission to defend White dominance in the United States through terrorism.
The links on the right allow for navigation between pages of the exhibit, with images of the document available through the "View Full Handbook" link.
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Exhibit curated by Rhagen Olinde