Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan

Popular entertainment shaped Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan terror and its meaning for Klansmen, their victims, and witnesses. Rather than presenting themselves as silent ghostly figures in white robes, many Klansmen committed atrocities while wearing bizarre costumes such as masquerade disguises, women's dresses, or squirrel-skin masks. Asserting the importance of the Klan's theatrics, Parsons shows that just as Klansmen used such popular cultural traditions as minstrelsy and the circus to spread their message of white superiority, so popular cultural venues incorporated the Klan into their acts.