ABSTRACT
“EX-KLANSMAN DAVID DUKE NARROWLY LOSES LOUISIANA GOVERNORSHIP”; “DAVID DUKE ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY FOR PRESIDENT”; PASSING THE TORCH OF WHITE SUPREMACY: NEW GENERATION PERPETUATES KLAN’s TENETS”; “KLAN’s CAROLINA MARCH KINDLING FEAR AND UNITY”; “FIVE ARRESTED AS KLAN MARCHES”; “KLAN PROTESTS WINDER PRINCIPALS’s DEATH”; “THE KLAN: THEN AND NOW: DRAWN BY HISTORY, FRUSTRATED BY REALITY”
These current newspaper headlines reflect the bitter legacy of the most disgraceful but albeit successful public relations campaign that gave birth to the modern Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the 1920s, making it into a powerful national force for terror, bigotry, and racism. The evil effects of the Southern Publicity Association’s revival of the Klan live to this day to divide and haunt American society, although the Klan’s political power has been greatly diminished from its zenith in the 1920s. The lasting effects of two Atlanta publicists to the ill of society were writ large in 1991 when an ex-Klan leader, David Duke, received nearly 700,000 White votes in his race for governor of Louisiana. This unquestionably is the saddest chapter in public relations’ history.