I wasn’t familiar with David Mills, the journalist and TV writer, before he recently passed away due to a brain aneurysm, but a passing reference brought me to his Undercover Black Man blog and led me from the Giant Negro scare of a century ago to another historical post, on the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica entry for the Ku Klux Klan:
The current Encyclopedia Britannica describes the Klan as “either of two distinct secret terrorist organizations in the United States, one founded immediately after the Civil War…, the other beginning in 1915…”
But the word “terrorist” wasn’t used in the 1911 edition. To say the least. Here is how the 1911 entry begins:
“KU KLUX KLAN, the name of an American secret association of Southern whites united for self-protection and to oppose the Reconstruction measures of the United States Congress, 1865-1876.”
The past is a foreign country.
The original article mentions that the Klan’s rituals and costumes — which included weird masks, not just hoods — had a great influence over the lawless but superstitious blacks, which leads Edshugeo to comment:
I remember seeing a scene from Birth Of A Nation in some documentary (that illustrated the above point) and immediately thinking of Batman’s “criminals are a superstitious lot” moment.
I think Bob Kane was Jewish, so he wasn’t trying to glorify the Klan or anything. Just saw a decent idea and ran with it.
Not related to the above, but when I hear Ziggy Stardust, the line “when the kids had killed a man, I had to break up the band” recalls something I (think I) read on a newsgroup a while back about the Klan being founded by a Freemason who disbanded the group when they got too violent.
I love Batman and David Bowie, but sometimes they remind me of the Klan.