Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By David Cunningham
Like many teachers, I intend to treat the upcoming 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington as an occasion to revisit Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famed “I Have a Dream” speech. Many of my students will, I expect, be deeply affected by Dr. King’s ability to impart a timeless quality to the “fierce urgency of now” that he associated with the Civil Rights Movement.
How can mainstream institutions and ideals subsume organized racism and political extremism? Why did the United Klans of America (UKA) once flourish in the Tar Heel state? From lax policing to a lack of mainstream outlets for segregationist resistance, a variety of factors led to the creation of one of the strongest and most complex Ku Klux Klan (KKK) groups in America — and a dramatic conservative shift in North Carolina.