Coming to PBS’s American Experience tomorrow, Tuesday, January 13: KLANSVILLE USA
Callie T Wiser’s exploration of the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s makes its debut as part of the 27th season of the venerable PBS program, and is based in part on the book by the same name by sociologist David Cunningham.
Wiser provides a brief but informative history lesson on the origins, rise, fall, rebirth (thanks to 1915’s THE BIRTH OF THE NATION), and second fall of the white supremacist organization before focusing in specifically on its eventual re-emergence and unanticipated growth after the Supreme Court struck down Plessy vs Ferguson‘s “separate but equal” doctrine in 1954’s Brown vs Board of Education. While the growth of the civil rights movement provided the impetus for the dormant for decades group to return in the segregationist South, Wiser’s film seeks to explain how its traditionally most progressive state, North Carolina, became the KKK’s new base of power. While North Carolina sought a middle ground of gradual reform, a disaffected class of the white working poor grew increasingly resentful of the strides made by African Americans. The Klan offered a way to channel this group’s desire to not be on the bottom rung of society, with added incentive provided by their religious and anti-communist rhetoric. At the center of the North Carolina Klan was their Grand Dragon, Bob Jones, responsible for the massive expansion of the group, and the key figure of Wiser’s conventionally constructed, and very heavily narrated doc. She does a serviceable job of revealing the KKK’s history during this period, though the film’s limited running time precludes further expansion of its more interesting aspects, particularly the efforts of the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee to undermine Jones and dismantle his group’s credibility and power structure.
what (not) to doc 