Sifting through family lore about "our Klansman" as well as public and private records, Ball reconstructs the story of his great-great grandfather, Constant Lecorgne. A white French Creole, father of five, and working class ship carpenter, Lecorgne had a career in white terror of notable and bloody completeness: massacres, night riding, masked marches, street rampages-- all part of a tireless effort that he and other Klansmen made to restore white power when it was threatened by the emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans. Ball also sought out descendants of African Americans who were once victimized by Lecorgne and his comrades, and shares their stories. -- adapted from jacket
Prologue: Our Klansman -- The Ku-Klux Act -- Grands blancs / Big Whites -- Tribes -- Introduction to an Atrocity -- White Terror -- Petits blancs / Little Whites -- Redemption.
Edward Ball's previous books include The Inventor and the Tycoon, about the birth of moving pictures in California, and Slaves in the Family, an account of his familyâs history as slaveholders in South Carolina, which received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has taught at Yale University and has been awarded fellowships by the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the New York Public Libraryâs Cullman Center. He is also the recipient of a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.