Module 11: They Call Themselves the KKK

Book Summary:

This book gives a very detailed history of the KKK. It starts off with how and where it began. The book includes personal stories of people who live the KKK.  The book is also riddled with pictures.

Book Citation:

Bartoletti, S. C. (2010). They called themselves the k.k.k., the birth of an american terrorist group. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.

Impressions:

This book was really hard to get through due to the first person encounters. It made me really sad to learn some of the things that happened to these poor people. I found it very interesting though and learned a lot of things I didn't know. The pictures in this book made me realize that yes this all happened and no this is not a joke.

Reviews:

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Bartoletti follows multi-award-winning titles such as Hitler Youth (2005) with another standout contribution to youth history shelves. Here, she examines how the Ku Klux Klan formed and grew out of the ashes of the Civil War. Bartoletti, who taught eighth-graders for 18 years, writes in admirably clear, accessible language about one of the most complex periods in U.S. history, and she deftly places the powerfully unsettling events into cultural and political context without oversimplifying. It’s the numerous first-person quotes, though, that give the book its beating heart, and her searing, expertly selected stories of people on all sides of the violent conflicts will give readers a larger understanding of the conditions that incubated the Klan’s terrorism; how profoundly the freed people and their sympathizers suffered; and how the legacy of that fear, racism, and brutality runs through our own time. In an author’s note, Bartoletti describes visiting a contemporary Klan rally as part of her research, and that bold, immersive approach to her subject is evident in every chapter of this thoroughly researched volume. Like the individual stories, the powerful archival images on every page will leave an indelible impression on young readers, who will want to move on to the extensive annotated resources. The adjacent Story behind the Story feature fills in more details about this lucid, important title, which should be required reading for young people as well as the adults in their lives. Grades 7-12. --Gillian Engberg

Library Uses:

This would make a great reference book for research. This would also be good to include in a unit on the KKK or slavery.