The reconstruction of white supremacy: the Ku Klux Klan in piedmont North Carolina, 1868 to 1872
College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History (Contributor), Brundage, W. Fitzhugh (Contributor), Proctor, Bradley David (Creator)
This thesis explores the construction of white supremacy through a close study of Ku Klux Klan violence in the piedmont counties of North Carolina during Reconstruction. It has two central goals. First, it explores the ways Klan violence illustrates competing social and political ideas among North Carolinians during Reconstruction. It contends that the localized, episodic violence committed by the Klan simultaneously mirrored and constructed the public form of white supremacy. Second, this thesis aims to explore tensions within the Klan as well as between its members and its victims. The Klan was not a static ideological bloc. Rather, the Ku Klux Klan was a crucible within which ideologies of white supremacy were forged
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2009-05
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009-05