{"id":5767,"date":"2015-07-08T14:51:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T14:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/?p=5767"},"modified":"2015-07-10T19:33:58","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T19:33:58","slug":"5767","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2015\/07\/08\/5767\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ku Klux Klan, Rebel Pride and Anti-Klan Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Anti-Racism<\/a>

Anti-Racism Coalition of Connecticut, pamphlet.<\/p><\/div>\n

On June 18 2015, Dylann Roof, 21 years old, shot and killed nine African-Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.\u00a0 When Roof was apprehended, he wore the flags of Apartheid-Era South Africa<\/span><\/span><\/a> and Rhodesia, former white supremacist settler colonial states in Southern Africa.\u00a0 Roof also had Confederate flags hung on his walls and frequented white power websites.\u00a0 These race based murders fueled an ongoing debate about Confederate symbolism and its usage in the private and public spheres.\u00a0 The Alternative Press Collection at the Archives & Special Collections is comprised of fringe publishing from both ends of the political spectrum such as White Patriot <\/em>and Death to the Klan<\/em>.\u00a0 The current debate around the Confederate flag draws on long standing uses of historical interpretation and cultural identity dating to the Civil War and Reconstruction era of 1861-1877.\u00a0 As demonstrated in this\u00a0exhibition currently on display in the Archives\u00a0through these selected materials from the Alternative Press, Northeast Children\u2019s Literature and Labor collections, figures such as Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, abolitionists John Brown and Frederick Douglass serve as symbolic totems of heritage, spirituality and citizenship.<\/p>\n

The Alternative Press demonstrates the importance of underground publishing for dissemination of radical views outside of the mainstream outlets.\u00a0 These materials appear as independent press booklets, kitchen table press newspapers, handmade flyers and Xerox pamphlets.\u00a0 An important independently published work of fiction The<\/em> Turner Diaries <\/em>(1978) represents the modern ideology of radical white power groups which draws on conservative elements of government control, restriction to firearms, racial purity and vigilante justice.\u00a0 As described on the 1980 edition’s back cover:<\/p>\n

\"Turner<\/a>

Turner Diaries, Death to the Klan and Southern Poverty Law Report.<\/p><\/div>\n

“What will you do when they come to take your guns?<\/p>\n

Earl Turner and his fellow patriots face this question and are forced underground when the U.S. government bans the private possession of firearms and stages the mass Gun Raids to round up suspected gun owners.\u00a0 The hated Equality Police begin hunting them down, but the patriots fight back with a campaign of sabotage and assassination.\u00a0 An all-out race war occurs as the struggle escalates.\u00a0 Turner and his comrades suffer terribly, but their ingenuity and boldness in devising and executing new methods of guerrilla warfare lead to a victory of cataclysmic intensity and worldwide scope.<\/p>\n

The FBI has labeled The Turner Diaries<\/em>\u00a0“the bible of the racist right.” If the government had the power to ban books, this one would be at the top of the list. \u00a0The Turner Diaries <\/em>is the most controversial book in America today — and it’s a book unlike any you’ve ever read!”<\/p>\n

\"Members<\/a>

Members of the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan of Shelton, CT. East Windsor, August 30, 1984.<\/p><\/div>\n

From 1980 to 1985, the Klan had a resurgence in Connecticut.\u00a0 Rallying in\u00a0towns such as Meriden, East Windsor, Farmington, Scotland and Shelton, CT.\u00a0 These demonstrations\u00a0were permitted\u00a0by local\u00a0governing bodies and law enforcement.\u00a0 To match,\u00a0anti-Klan demonstrations grew out of\u00a0union organizations, student groups,\u00a0peace\u00a0activists and\u00a0community members.\u00a0\u00a0A central figure in\u00a0anti-Klan organizing was labor activist Steve Thornton<\/span><\/span><\/a> whose archives contain photographs, organizer’s materials, media reports and literature tracking the rise and fall of the Connecticut chapter of the\u00a0Klan\u00a0into the mid-1990s.\u00a0 Similarly, organizing\u00a0within the University of Connecticut community occurred\u00a0through the\u00a0Committee Against Racism\u00a0in Storrs as a result of on campus recruiting and the rally occurring in nearby Scotland, CT in 1980.<\/p>\n

As the final Civil War sesquicentennial year transitions to 150 years since Reconstruction, the importance of this formative period in American identity still reverberates. These archives demonstrate that racism and print literature have maintained their foothold in susceptible communities.\u00a0 These materials are collected to inform our present knowledge of history and the uses of racism for structural, cultural and political oppression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 18 2015, Dylann Roof, 21 years old, shot and killed nine African-Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.\u00a0 When Roof was apprehended, he wore the flags of Apartheid-Era South Africa and Rhodesia, former … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[255],"tags":[12,28,152,39,218,215],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s9NKyO-5767","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5767"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5780,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5767\/revisions\/5780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}