Unpacking the re-emergence of White supremacist groups: The case of the 1960s Ku Klux Klan

Why do White supremacists mobilize in some places and not others? I consider this question in the context of the Civil-Rights era South, wherein the Ku Klux Klan re-surged after decades of dormancy. Curiously, however, the KKK did not re-emerge everywhere in the South, but primarily in North Carolina and Mississippi. In order to elucidate this particular puzzle and the broader forces driving White supremacist terrorism in the US, I leverage under-utilized data on North Carolina klan rallies from 1963-1967. I implement a finite mixture model to evaluate three competing explanations of KKK activity: generational klan legacies, racial threat, and school desegregation. Preliminary results suggest that generational klan legacies were important in determining rally locations at the beginning of the klan's resurgence and that racial demographics predicted rally events throughout the 1960s.

[research in progress]