Women in White Supremacist Movements in the Century after Women’s Suffrage

Abstract

White women have long been associated with organized white supremacism in the United States, but their connection to these politics changed around the time that the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote. Until the 1920s, white women were primarily used by racist men as symbols of white vulnerability in the face of legal gains by African American men. They rarely participated actively in white supremacist politics. From the 1920s on, however, enfranchised white women have played an increasing role in racist movements of all types. Most Ku Klux Klans and white power skinhead and neo-Nazi groups recruit women as full members, although few allow women in formal leadership positions.