Battling the Ku Klux Klan: Newspaper Editor J.B. Carpenter and the Rutherford (N.C.) Star 1866-1870”
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Jonathan Beatty (Bate) Carpenter was a native North Carolinian from Rutherford County who served in the Confederate militia, and emerged after the Civil War as a Unionist sympathizer, Reconstruction supporter, fiery and polemic newspaper editor and opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. Later he became a Methodist minister. This presentation covers his relatively short but eventful career as the owner and editor of the Rutherford Star, a newspaper that was burned twice by the KKK, and his activities in politics during this time. Carpenter's KKK foes included Plato Durham and other notables who would be the inspiration for Thomas Dixon's book "The Klansman" which inspired the D.W. Griffith movie "Birth of a Nation" and the subsequent national resurgence of the KKK in the 1920s. Carpenter's career as an editor touched on issues of race, class and violence in Reconstruction-era western and Appalachian North Carolina. His transition from political editor to Methodist minister parallels the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow in western and Appalachian North Carolina.
Battling the Ku Klux Klan: Newspaper Editor J.B. Carpenter and the Rutherford (N.C.) Star 1866-1870”
Corbly Hall 333
Jonathan Beatty (Bate) Carpenter was a native North Carolinian from Rutherford County who served in the Confederate militia, and emerged after the Civil War as a Unionist sympathizer, Reconstruction supporter, fiery and polemic newspaper editor and opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. Later he became a Methodist minister. This presentation covers his relatively short but eventful career as the owner and editor of the Rutherford Star, a newspaper that was burned twice by the KKK, and his activities in politics during this time. Carpenter's KKK foes included Plato Durham and other notables who would be the inspiration for Thomas Dixon's book "The Klansman" which inspired the D.W. Griffith movie "Birth of a Nation" and the subsequent national resurgence of the KKK in the 1920s. Carpenter's career as an editor touched on issues of race, class and violence in Reconstruction-era western and Appalachian North Carolina. His transition from political editor to Methodist minister parallels the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow in western and Appalachian North Carolina.
