"White Hoods" is the first book about the Hooded Empire in Canada. Award-winning journalist and author Julian Sher traces the Canadian Ku Klux Klan from its birth in the early 1920s, through its powerful influence within Saskatchewan's Conservative party in the 1920s and 1930s, to its renaissance under James McQuirter in the 1980s. McQuirter led the Klan to new heights in the 1980s, until he was jailed for conspiracy to commit murder and his role in a bungled coup in the Caribbean. Sher uses personal investigations and candid interviews, as well as unpublished studies and the Klan's own publications to shed light on the KKK's links with the police, with neo-Nazi movements throughout the world, and with its American counterpart.

The Klan in 1920s society -- Building a white, protestant community -- Defining Americanism: white supremacy and anti-Catholicism -- Learning Americanism: the Klan and public schools -- Dry Americanism: prohibition, law, and culture -- The problem of hooded violence -- The search for political influence and the collapse of the Klan movement -- Echoes.

This timely anthology describes how and why the Ku Klux Klan became one of the most influential social movements in modern American history. For decades historians have argued that the spectacular growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was fueled by a postwar surge in racism, religious bigotry, and status anxiety among lower-class white Americans. In recent years a growing body of scholarship has contradicted that appraisal, emphasizing the KKK's strong links to mainstream society and its role as a medium of corrective civic action. Addressing a set of common questions, contributors to this volume examine local Klan chapters in six Western cities: Denver, Colorado; Salt Lake City, Utah; El Paso, Texas; Anaheim, California; and Eugene and La Grande, Oregon. Far from being composed of marginal men prone to violence and irrationality, the Klan drew its membership from a generally balanced cross section of the white male Protestant population. Overt racism and religious bigotry were major drawing cards for the hooded order, but intolerance frequently intertwined with community issues such as improved law enforcement, better public education, and municipal reform. The authors consolidate, focus, and expand upon new scholarship in a volume that should provide readers with an enhanced appreciation of the complex reasons why the Klan became one of the largest and most significant grass-roots social movements in twentieth-century America.

The nature and objectives of the Ku Klux Klan are revealed in a study of its development, activities, and members over one hundred years

"A notable case study of the second Ku Klux Klan in a northern industrial city. The author illuminates the origins and activities of the Buffalo Klan, the social and political context in which it operated, and the character of its membership. The book contributes to the current reevaluation of the KKK and to the scholarly literature on the 1920's." D.W. Grantham, Vanderbilt University.