The White Working Class and the Legacy of the 1960s Ku Klux Klan in the 2016 Presidential Election

Abstract

This is a theoretical and empirical exploration of how the presence of the Ku Klux Klan across southern communities in the 1960s mediated electoral support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. The analysis is prompted by divergent perspectives on the impact of working-class whites’ economic grievances and cultural identities in Trump’s victory, and by conjectures of a relationship between past white ethno-racial mobilization and support for Trump. I show that the civil rights–era Klan’s defense of Jim Crow segregation created an enduring legacy of reactionary white collective identity and mobilization that together with contemporary economic and demographic conditions shaped local-level 2016 voting patterns in Trump’s favor. I also discuss the broader implications of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and scholarship into the temporal endurance of racism’s past forms and manifestations.