The Dark Side of Law & Social Movements: The KKK & American Citizenship

• In Event: Resistance & Mobilization in Constitutional Development: Potentials & Pitfalls

Abstract

Elizabeth Beaumont
University of California, Santa Cruz

Despite increasing attention to the influence of social movements and civic groups on law, there is little recognition of how the KKK and related groups used popular constitutionalism to shape American civic membership and the scope and protection of rights since the 1870s. Drawing from archival materials, including Klan publications (newspapers, broadsides, etc.) and secondary studies, this paper examines how an extended white supremacist movement helped sustain and advance restrictive views of citizenship and rights in civic institutions, public debate, party platforms, governing institutions, statutory law, and case law. These efforts played a critical role in constructing major legal frameworks operating from the Civil War through the 20th century, including the system of Jim Crow, immigration laws, eugenics and anti-miscegenation laws, and public education. We cannot understand American constitutional development or honestly confront current problems of racial injustice without reflecting on how the “dark side” of popular constitutionalism has shaped the constitutional order and the terms and rights of civic membership.

Author

• Elizabeth Beaumont, University of California, Santa Cruz