Abstract
This article considers the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as a political force in Detroit in the 1924 and 1925 elections. In the 1910s, the Detroit Citizens League had risen in Detroit politics through its practice of the rhetoric of political Protestantism, designed to mobilize Protestant laymen through religious appeals. In the 1920s, this style of politics backfired on the Citizens League: after spending years focusing on Detroit’s business elite, Protestants abandoned the Citizens League in droves when that organization backed a Catholic for mayor. By turning to the Ku Klux Klan, many Protestant voters found an organization making the appeals that they had backed a decade before and which was better at incorporating them than the Citizens League. Ultimately, the Citizens League’s response to the Klan was complicated both by reluctance to further alienate past supporters and by an inability to unite politically with past foes.
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