Ku Klux Klan

Female Roles

The position of women within the KKK has shifted during key waves of Klan activity. The KKK has traditionally been a male-dominated organization, but it has occupied a contradictory position in relation to women, both reinforcing traditional female roles and gradually recognizing the benefits of attracting women members. During its first wave (1860s to 1870s), women were excluded from joining, with the emphasis being the development of a brotherhood of white Christian men.

The second wave of KKK activity, which began in 1915, led to the establishment of the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK) in 1923. Through forming the WKKK, the KKK sought to bolster support by capitalizing on women's recently granted suffrage. According to Kathleen Blee, the WKKK attracted an estimated half a million women in the 1920s. It had little involvement with the violent racism for which the KKK was infamous, but instead employed tactics such as boycotting and discrediting non-white, and particularly Jewish, individuals and businesses.

According to Blee, the KKK viewed the WKKK as its auxiliary force, yet WKKK leaders challenged this subordinate position by advocating women's empowerment and rights, without undermining women's reproductive and homemaker roles. Collectively, both movements have played a major role in fueling racist beliefs and acts across America. Amid leadership struggles and the exposure of corruption in the KKK, the WKKK had largely dissolved by the end of the 1920s.

The KKK in Today's Society

The contemporary KKK is a disparate collection of competing Klans. Klan organizations rarely release membership numbers, but the Anti-Defamation League estimate that there are 5,000 members across at least 40 different Klan groups. Most Klans now claim [Page 817]to be nonviolent and law-abiding, although the secret practices of some Klan groups were exposed following the murder of Cynthia Lynch when she attempted to leave a Klan initiation rite in Louisiana in 2008.

Most contemporary Klan organizations are open to men and women, with no separate women's organization. Kathleen Blee's study of women in organized racism finds that although the rhetoric of Klan organizations may portray women as equal, core responsibilities and leadership positions remain largely inaccessible to them. An exception is The Knights Party, Arkansas, which declares itself the most gender-inclusive Klan and has a separate minisite for women on their Website, an online television program for women, and a high-ranking female spokeswoman, Rachel Pendergraft.