For the past few months, I’ve been researching and writing a series of stories on the role of women in the 1920s-era Ku Klux Klan. It’s a sensational subject, full of disturbing anecdotes and archival photos of women in white robes and hoods, alternately holding babies or burning crosses, and upending a widely held belief that the Klan was made up of marginal but monstrous men.

When I wrote an article about women’s role in white supremacy for the Cut, one of the criticisms I heard was that I and other writers like me are “desperate to blame white supremacy on women.” If men have historically had more power than women, and if most of our country’s horrific, racist attacks have by and large been the work of men, then why have we chosen this moment to highlight women’s role in America’s racist legacy? As a feminist, I’m sympathetic to this argument. Men do deserve the largest serving of blame. Yet to label these crimes as situational rather than systemic is to dangerously overlook the scope of Americans’ ongoing problem with racism. This is a whole society problem with deep historical roots. As Daisy Douglas Barr, a leader of the Women of the KKK said ominously in 1923, “They call me the Ku Klux Klan…. YEA I AM THE SOUL OF AMERICA.” We are long overdue for a reckoning.

A look at women’s involvement in the 1920s Klan reveals that racism is not episodic, but is institutional and can take wide ranging forms from seemingly benign statements about “social welfare” to horrifying hate crimes. During the 1920s, female and male members of the notorious robed-and-hooded domestic terrorist group were engaged in every arena of public life. When D.C. Stevenson, the leader of the Indiana Klan, was convicted of murder in 1926, he tried to negotiate a plea deal by outing the hordes of politicians involved with the Klan. Though there may be fewer politicians with Klan ties in 2018 America, the 1920s Klan’s fear of the “rising tide of color” still animates parts of the right today. On the less subtle end of the spectrum, the examples range from former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke’s role in getting out the white vote (and Trump’s sluggishness in denouncing him), to a rise in hate crimes since the election, to candidate and now President Trump’s remarks about Mexican “rapists,” “shithole countries,” and the “very fine people” who participated in a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

But just as dangerous is what’s unseen; the tactics employed today against people of color are eerily similar to those of yesteryear. Kathleen Blee, a sociologist at University of Pittsburgh, put it this way in her 1991 book, Women of the Klan: “…the political lesson of Klan history for those working toward a more just and egalitarian society, is the ease with which racism and intolerance appealed to ordinary people in ordinary places.”

In other words, we cannot afford to ignore the entire picture of racism in America — and this includes men and women.

An attentive wife carefully helps her husband adjust his robes for a Ku Klux Klan street walk in Columbus, Indiana, in 1972. (AP)

Despite the pervasiveness of sexism a century ago and the outsize role of men in the KKK, women in the 1920s Klan had power. This wasn’t “soft” power. Women didn’t merely sew Klan robes or bake casseroles for Klan picnics; they wielded actual power that shaped the societies in which they lived. Though they were staunch defenders of traditional domesticity, they were also active in social welfare movements and local and state politics. Under the leadership of Daisy Douglas Barr and several other women, they formed their own autonomous arm of the KKK, the half-million-strong WKKK, which lobbied for the creation of racist immigration quotas, segregation, and anti-miscegenation laws. But as the sociologist Blee explains, the WKKK also attracted members by billing itself as a social group. Drawing from the church-supper tradition, they held picnics, fundraisers, and cross burnings where they spread the gospel of the “eternal supremacy” of the white race. Though the men’s Klan was larger, the women’s KKK was better at public relations, and left an indelible mark on the organization by cloaking their white supremacist mission behind a facade of social welfare — a move that would become a hallmark of the modern-day right.

Women weren’t relegated to the ladies’ team. Arguably the most powerful person in the 1920s KKK — that is, the one comprised of white men — was a woman. Elizabeth Tyler headed up the Klan’s publicity team, though many, including participants in a congressional investigation in 1920, suspected that she was the true leader of the Klan. The authors of a report on the matter simply stated, “In this woman beats the real heart of the Ku Klux Klan today.”

In an effort to increase membership, Tyler expanded the Klan’s repertoire of hate. Sure, hating African Americans worked in the South, but how to attract members in the North, East, and West? Her dark genius was realizing that every community has its own brand of xenophobia. Tyler added communists, Jews, immigrants, and Catholics to the Klan’s list of enemies, making her organization a perfect destination for virtually any man or woman who identified as “white.”

Daisy Barr, a WKKK and Indiana Klan leader, sought to burnish the group’s image by dignifying racism. She mingled calls for women’s enfranchisement such as, “no nation rises above its womanhood,” with statements about her “disgust” at the increasing number of immigrants coming to the country. She gave passionate sermons against the use of racial slurs. Klan robes, she said, were “uncouth.” Sugar-coating her racism in the language of patriotism and national security, she explained that white mothers needed to protect their offspring from an unknown and ever-morphing “other.” Barr’s racism was all the more pernicious because it enabled people to feel righteous — pious even. She was known to claim that if Christ were to return, he would join the Klan.

Meanwhile, WKKK recruiting pamphlets were full of benign statements that, in theory, every woman could get behind: “Are you interested in the Welfare of our Nation? As an Enfranchised woman are you interested in better government? Should we not interest ourselves in better education for our children?” But behind these words lurked a sinister agenda that kept people out of school systems because of their religious beliefs, sought to block “unwanted” immigrants, and make miscegenation illegal. It was this blending of socially acceptable and xenophobic causes that made the PR and recruitment so effective.