White
Protestant
Nation
[1915–1925]

When Terrorism Won in America
Part 2

Now Available

hen Terrorism Won in America was released in February 2000 as two one-hour documentaries, How the South Won the War and White Protestant Nation, encompassing the period from the end of the Civil War in 1865, through the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915 and the new forms of racism that developed in the first two decades of the 20^th century. This gripping and little known history is told primarily in the words of eyewitnesses and participants or their descendents, contemporary writers and commentators, and supplemented by modern scholars.

White Protestant Nation covers the "reincarnation" of the Klan as a mass fraternal movement that endeavored to enforce its version of public morality in the region and actively opposed immigration by "alien cultures."  The first segment, "A White Man's Government", includes a recreation of the 1920 Election Day mob destruction of Ocoee, Florida in the words of Florida's own Zora Neale Hurston and contemporary newspaper accounts. Case studies focus on the perceptual gaps between "objective" reporters, both black and white.  The second segment, "Marketing Racism", discusses the effects of the film Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Klan, as well as the scandals that eventually undermined the Klan's "invisible empire."

When Terrorism Won in America was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Fund for Investigative Journalism, with additional funding from Public Radio International

PROGRAMS IN THIS SERIES How the South Won the War   Democracy's Denial: Revolutions in Wilmington   White Protestant Nation   Rosewood Reborn   American As Apple Pie   Media & Myths     Get Real Player

A 1922 Ku Klux Klan parade on the Virginia outskirts of Washington, D.C. Listen to an excerpt from the program