During the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan experienced a remarkable resurgence, drawing millions of American men and women into its ranks. In Not a Catholic Nation, Mark Paul Richard examines the KKK's largely ignored growth in the six states of New England -- Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont -- and details the reactions of the region's Catholic population, the Klan's primary targets.

Drawing on a wide range of previously untapped sources -- French-language newspapers in the New England--Canadian borderlands; KKK documents scattered in local, university,...