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Denver from the Bottom Up: A People's History of Early Colorado
Book by Goodstein, Phil H.
1 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 3, 2009
This book was renamed In the Shadow of the Klan: When the KKK Ruled Denver; not sure why the old title comes up here.
I got a little more than halfway through this book, skimmed the rest of the book and realized I couldn't go on! The book does do a great job of framing what the KKK did in Colorado, in that it wasn't the same as the KKK of the south. It was mainly about political power, with, of course, a good deal of intolerance thrown in there. A lot of that intolerance, according to the author, seems to be directed more to Catholics than Jews and African-Americans.
It is a really well researched book, but you can tell that the author researched primarily from historical documents. Thus, it's packed full of facts about hundreds of different people, mostly politicos. Many aren't that relevant to the big picture of the story. I would have loved a more in-depth focus on a few people, and on the impact of the Klan not just on legislation and getting its people elected, but on the day-to-day lives of regular citizens.
I got a little more than halfway through this book, skimmed the rest of the book and realized I couldn't go on! The book does do a great job of framing what the KKK did in Colorado, in that it wasn't the same as the KKK of the south. It was mainly about political power, with, of course, a good deal of intolerance thrown in there. A lot of that intolerance, according to the author, seems to be directed more to Catholics than Jews and African-Americans.
It is a really well researched book, but you can tell that the author researched primarily from historical documents. Thus, it's packed full of facts about hundreds of different people, mostly politicos. Many aren't that relevant to the big picture of the story. I would have loved a more in-depth focus on a few people, and on the impact of the Klan not just on legislation and getting its people elected, but on the day-to-day lives of regular citizens.
September 22, 2009
Generally a good book about a period in Denver's history when the KKK was especially powerful - 1920-1926. Goodstein has alot of detail, and the book - the half of it that I have read is well researched. KKK in Colorado in that period was a bit different from the terrorists that terrorized the South, their main target being Catholics and E. European immigrants. When read in tandem with Robert Goldberg's `Hooded Empire' (on the same subject) a comprehensive understanding of these WASP hoodlums, intent on preventing upward mobility for anyone other than their own kind, comes alive. Probably more interesting to Colorado residents than others. One final personal note - I learned that the middle school one of my daughters attended (Molly at Skinner), and which sits less than 100 feet from our home, was named after a KKK leader of that period, Mark Skinner
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews