After World War I, the United States went through a tough period were the whole country was being dominated by social discrimination, however what was surprising was that after the war, the quantity of immigrants entering the country decreased, specially because the demand for unskilled workers had gone down. In the 1920s the U.S created a law against mass immigration of the foreigners entering the country, such law led to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. A group that consisted of hardcore Whites who believed that foreigners from other regions and Blacks did not have a place in the United States and they would have their own ideas on how to combat this problem.
Sadly, The Congress supported the Klan’s efforts to minimize the proliferation of immigration through the enactment of the per centum limits. The major concerns of the KKK are shown in an article authored by Hiram Evans dubbed The Klan’s Fight for Americanism (1926). Putting the aspects into the wider historical context helps in understanding. The 1920’s were marked by nativism and fear of cultural erosion because the influence of the immigrants was felt in different states and this led to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan that aimed at restoring Nordicism.
The Klan’s Fight for Americanism as it is discussed by Hiram Evans shows the role played by the group in protecting what they called the “First Nations People” culture against the infiltration by other foreign investors that were going to ruin this culture . The Klan was formed as a protest against modernity that was experienced after the First World War. According to the author, most of the immigrants in the United States came from the European countries that were war-stricken (Shi and Tindall 184) and were in under recovery.
Since the United States did not participate in the First World War from the beginning. It only engaged Japan after the attack on the Pearl Harbor, unlike the other participants in the war including Germany, France, and Japan, the U.S did not suffer a massive economic loss (Shi and Tindall 184.) Instead, in the 1920s known as the “Roaring Twenties” the number of goods been made and sold by American Businesses had increased notably, this led individuals from other nations to target the United States to take advantage of the flourishing economic growth and therefore migrate to this country to have a job opportunity and have a chance to get a better life and this angered the klan even more .
The Ku Klux Klan began its activities in the South in states such as Delaware, Florida, Georgia and Maryland. However it was clear that this was happening because the South had a bigger black population than the Northern states due to the slavery that had been prevalent so the klan’s activities would have a bigger impact here. In 1900, the South was dominated by Protestantism and non-Catholics and they were not embraced for this. The Klan’s Fight against trade unionism (The Klan’s members controlled access to better-paying industrial jobs), Jews and Catholics, was an illustration of their efforts to maintain an original American culture (Shi and Tindall 184)
In his article The Klan’s Fight for Americanism, Evans is categorical that the Klan was against granting voting rights to people that they considered not real Americans, rights that were granted by the 15th Amendment enacted in 1869 which indicated that all the native-born American men had the right to vote. Therefore the klan sought to concentrate more in politics to make “the not real Americans” have a hard time participating in them.
In 1869, about 44% of the African-American men had been registered as voters, and as more Blacks held offices in the South this infuriated the Klan, and a form of voter suppression emerged. The second generation of the Klan opposed the voting rights by instilling fear among the Blacks. Therefore, by the end of First World War, the Klan saw an opportunity to once more demonstrate the White supremacy, by discriminating not only blacks this time, but also immigrants that were coming from many different countries. In addition, the Klan’s rebirth arose at a time where industrialization and urbanization were starting to grow rapidly, promoting the idea that all immigrants and blacks, were a threat to the society’s ideals.
The First Great Migration (1916–1930) increased the number of blacks in other states like Chicago, New York, St. Louis and Los Angeles. For instance, in Chicago, the percentage of the Blacks in the population rose by 600% (Shi and Tindall 186). Those who were opposed to the free movement of the Blacks and the establishment of their churches scaled up their efforts to intimidate them in their new locations.
The government saw the need to curb the massive movement of people into the country through the Immigration Act of 1917. The Klan’s idea was to retain the original American culture of civilization and literacy. According to the article authored by Evans, the Congress seemed to share the Klan’s sentiments and instituted the literacy test to bar those who could not write and read into the United States. Hiram W. Evans mentions “During the greater part of this period of agitation the so-called literacy test for aliens was the favorite weapon of the restrictionists, and all its widespread popularity appears to have been based quite largely on a belief, or at least a hope, that it would reduce to some extend the stream of “new” immigration” (The Klan’s Fight for Americanism, p. 186) This supported the intention to prevent importing unskilled labor and individuals who would swell the dependency rates