Beyond the White Robes: Women's Agency and Influence in the Ku Klux Klan through Political Writing

The main intention of this research is to investigate the autonomy of women in the Ku Klux Klan through the study of political writings such as pamphlets and manuals. I am to explore how active women were in the movement and how they have consciously and strategically intervened in the matters of their communities, despite their non-expert status in political writing. Using technique of rhetorical analyses and logical structure, Women of the Ku Klux Klan have crafted works that inspired and moved audiences through the convention of several genres: journalism, pamphlets, essays, books. Their life was portrayed as happy, perfect and enviable but behind it they were organizing and design another organization based on the same principles of racism and white superiority. Nevertheless, women will always be remembered as the innocents, caring, mother-wives-daughters of America. The study will focus on the texts tracing the history of the Women Ku Klux Klan, and their involvement in this organization. The main texts that will be analyzed are a pamphlet “The Torch” and a manual “The Constitution and Laws of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan”. Since the prevalent portrayal of racialized violence has always been described to masculine members of the group and has erased the contributions of women from the historical narrative of racialized violence, the primary aim of this dissertation is to shed light on the structure, influence and motivations of Women of the Ku Klux Klan.