Ring Shout

by P. Djèlí Clark

With all the flag-waving and cavorting, you might forget they was monsters.

“White folk don’t care ’bout pepper and spices. Like they food bland as water.”

You see, the Second Klan was birthed on November 25 back in 1915. What we call D-Day, or Devil’s Night—when William Joseph Simmons, a regular old witch, and fifteen others met up on Stone Mountain east of Atlanta. Stories say they read from a conjuring book inked in blood on human skin. Can’t vouch for that. But it was them that called up the monsters we call Ku Kluxes. And it all started with this damned movie.

See, the Shout ain’t really the song, it’s the movement. He say the Shouts like this one got the most power: about surviving slavery times, praying for freedom, and calling on God to end that wickedness.

That’s science talk for how Klan folk turn Ku Klux. Molly says it’s like an infection, or a parasite. And it feed on hate. She says chemicals in the body change up when you hate strong. When the infection meets that hate, it starts growing until it’s powerful enough to turn the person Ku Klux. Ask me, it’s plain evil them Klans let in, eating them up until they hollow inside. Leave behind bone-white demons who don’t remember they was men.

“That movie, what you call a spell, I believe, works to induce hate on a mass scale,” Molly says. “Like how a lynching riles individuals into a mob.”

“You see, the hate they give is senseless. They already got power. Yet they hate those over who they got control, who don’t really pose a threat to them. Their fears aren’t real—just insecurities and inadequacies. Deep down they know that. Makes their hate like … watered-down whiskey. Now your people!”