City rebuilding of private anti-integration barricades aligned officials with Klan defenders

Evidence

The next morning, stunned residents grabbed saws and hand tools, chopped down nearby brush and trees, dragged the debris into the street and added a few dozen heavy stones for good measure. That night, the raiders returned and set fire to the new barricade. Once firefighters subdued the blaze, Mayor Allen announced that the city would rebuild the barricades, deploring the fact that “any group has seen fit to take the law into their own hands.” Early Monday morning, construction crews sunk new beams into the scorched asphalt, attaching steel rails this time to prevent further fires. Just to make sure, small groups of robed Klansmen stood guard at the barricades on Monday and Tuesday night. Patrolling the street, they held aloft signs: “Whites Have Rights, Too.” — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 22

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The Klan guarding barricades declaring ‘Whites Have Rights, Too’ invokes the reader’s prior framing of rights-language as a vehicle for reactionary claims.”
• BMF: Recalls the anonymous, ritualized night raids and rebuilding of a contested barrier from We by Zamyatin — the state rebuilding an object that private vigilantes then guard, though the resonance is looser here.
• XREF: connects to: The Ku Klux Klan mounted counterpickets to protect segregationist businesses — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 435; Tennessee officials equated a mosque with the KKK while institutionalizing the actual Klan. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 415

Broader Connections

• Tennessee officials equated a mosque with the KKK while institutionalizing the actual Klan. #exemplifies (0.78) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 415
• The Ku Klux Klan mounted counterpickets to protect segregationist businesses #exemplifies (0.72) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 435