Author Interview: David Cunningham, author of 'Klansville, U.S.A.' : NPR: As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1960s, Ku Klux Klan activity boomed. That fact itself may not be surprising, but in the introduction to his new book, Klansville, U.S.A., David Cunningham also reveals that, "While deadly KKK violence in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia ha[d] garnered the lion's share of Klan publicity, the United Klan's stronghold was, in fact, North Carolina." North Carolina, Cunningham writes, had more Klan members than the rest of the South combined.Cunningham's book focuses on the rise and fall of the KKK in the U.S., and specifically in North Carolina. The violence and terror tactics of the Klan aside, one of the things that jumped out at Cunningham during his research was the Klan's organization: what it was able to do on a daily basis, and how that shaped its place in communities.
"What they would do is they would be holding a rally somewhere in the state almost every night of the year in North Carolina," Cunningham tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.
