298: Rallying Behind Racism: The Women of White Supremacy

BackStory

History, Education

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2019

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

White supremacy has been in the news a lot recently. It is often seen as a movement at the fringes of American society, and discussion of it rarely includes white women. But women play a critical, if overlooked, role in the white supremacy movement, and examining their involvement shows it to be far less fringe than many think. So on this episode of BackStory, Brian, Nathan and Joanne dig into the little known history of white women and white supremacy.

Image: Attention has been focused on the almost mythical Ku Klux Klan organization in the United States, following the allegations that Senator Black, the new Supreme Court judge, was a member of the sect. Virtually unknown, even in the U.S., a women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan has grown into a powerful organization in the south. The women’s Klan salute to the cross at Atlanta, Georgia, on Aug. 18, 1937. Source: AP Images

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Major funding for Backstories provided by an anonymous donor, the National Dama for
0:04.6	the Humanities and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.
0:11.4	From Virginia Humanities, this is Backstories.
0:21.2	Welcome to Backstories, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines.
0:26.0	I'm Joanne Frey.
0:27.0	I'm Nathan Connolly.
0:28.0	And I'm Brian Balla.
0:29.5	If you're new to the podcast, we're all historians, and each week along with our colleague
0:33.3	at Ares, we explore a different topic in American history.
0:37.2	Today we're talking about a difficult issue.
0:39.7	So just a disclaimer here.
0:42.0	Some things in this episode might be troubling for some people to hear.
0:48.0	If you think white supremacy is only the Ku Klux Klan burning across, or white men
0:54.0	in khaki pants and white polo shirts marching before Charlottesville, then you're getting
0:59.0	it wrong.
1:00.3	This is Glenant Gordon.
1:01.9	She's an award-winning documentary photographer, and she spent a lot of time covering women
1:06.6	in the far right and white supremacist movement.
1:10.2	Some of my portraits are, some people find some of them difficult, some people find some
1:16.1	of them upsetting because not everybody looks like a meth head from Tennessee joining the
1:22.6	Klan, which is what I think a lot of people think people on the far right look like, and
1:26.9	people can sometimes be really surprised when they see my portraits.
	...

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