Why did the Klan experience a rise in membership in the 1920s? Why was it socially acceptable to be a member of such an organiza
tion? What benefits (real or perceived) did members think that joining would give them? Why did this version of the Klan target African Americans, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics? What legacies are still present in modern America from the Klan?
Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was related to the passage of the Volstead Act, which imposed Prohibition, in 1920. When she looked at how the hate group gathered members, she said, “it was often around the issue of the lack of observance of Prohibition, the issue of bootlegging, of cleaning up communities.” However, these concerns masked other ones, she explained. “This issue was used instrumentally as a mandate to target those groups they already saw as enemies of white Protestant nationalism: immigrants, Catholics and African Americans.” The Ku Klux Klan’s support of Prohibition gave the organization a way to promote its views and a way to perpetrate state-sanctioned violence against people of color, Catholics and Jews. “The war on alcohol united Progressives and Protestants, federal agents and Klansmen