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The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida. By Michael Newton. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. xvi, 260 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0-8130-2120-0.)
Few books on the Ku Klux Klan have chronicled its activities in a single state from Reconstruction to the present. Michael Newton-a journalist from Indiana who has published 168 books, most of which are novels (p. 136) and popular historical reference works-has undertaken that task in Florida where the Klan has had a continuous, yet at times weak, existence for the past 135 years. Using secondary sources as a major part of the story, Newton portrays a Klan bent on the use of violent and illegal means to resist efforts of the black population to advance. The story also depicts the ignoring of Klan atrocities by judicial and political officials...