Stephen Whitfield

The hostility that the Ku Klux Klan exhibited toward Jews and other minorities (Blacks, Catholics, immigrants) has long attracted the scholarly interest of American historians. They have shown virtually no interest in the ways in which American Jews-either collectively or individually-opposed the "Invisible Empire." It emerged in three distinct postwar periods-after the Civil War, exclusively in the South, by deploying violence to undermine the aspirations of the freed slaves; after the First World War; throughout the United States, when the impact of mass migration raised basic questions of national identity; and finally, after the Second World War, primarily in the South, by defying the emerging civil rights movement. Beginning in 1915, a Jewish defense agency, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), became entwined with the "Invisible Empire," which had been sensationally depicted on the screen that year in The Birth of a Nation. Habits of secrecy made the Second Klan especially vulnerable to journalists who were intent on exposure, such as Pulitzer Prize winners Herbert Bayard Swope and Louis Isaac Jaff & eacute;. In the wake of the Holocaust, other Jews launched attacks on the Klan on behalf of pluralist ideals, and helped destroy whatever influence lingered. Bigotry was increasingly grasped as un-American. Fractured and enfeebled, the groupuscules of the twenty-first century continue to promote antisemitism as well as racism but also had to compete with other white supremacist organizations freed of the historic baggage that hampered the Invisible Empire. It nevertheless remained the most notorious expression of racial and religious prejudice, and because the Klan has exercised such a hold on the American imagination, notable Jewish resistance occurred in the mass media and even in art. That the Klan has loomed far larger in collective memory than in posing any contemporary danger can be partly attributed to the work of communal defense agencies like the ADL as well as to Jewish thinkers and activists in advancing the claims of democratic inclusion.

Although the demography and economy of Florida in the mid-twentieth century diverged sharply from the rest of the former Confederacy, the political elite of the state resisted the efforts of desegregation about as firmly as the leadership of the rest of the South did, though perhaps more subtly. What made Florida so singular was its appeal to tourists and migrants, an openness that also made the state more vulnerable to outside scrutiny and pressure than more isolated states in the region. That is why, in 1964, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under Martin Luther King, Jr picked St Augustine to highlight the persistence of legally enforced white supremacy, when the city sought to celebrate the 400th anniversary of its founding. As in Birmingham, as in Selma, the SCLC chose wisely, because the vehemence of local white leadership exposed so dramatically the violence and cruelty that permeated Jim Crow. The crisis attracted outside attorneys like Alvin J. Bronstein to protect the rights of protestors and, even more importantly, drew in the Miami-based Tobias Simon, a key lawyer for progressive causes in the state. The conflict educated a federal judge named Bryan Simpson, whose sympathies the Freedom Struggle achieved in enlisting. Whitfield's article shows that the crisis in St Augustine that spring and summer served as the inescapable backdrop for the passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) that changed the South, and therefore the nation.