freakonomics

y the Ku Klux Klan. Kennedy saw the Klan as the terrorist arm of the white
establishment itself. This struck him as an intractable problem, for a variety of reasons.
The Klan was in cahoots with political, business, and law-enforcement leaders. The
public was frightened and felt power-less to act against the Klan. And the few anti-hate
groups that existed at the time had little leverage or even information about the Klan. As
Kennedy later wrote, he was particularly chagrined by one key fact about the Klan:
“Almost all of the things written on the subject were editorials, not exposés. The writers
were against the Klan, all right, but they had precious few inside facts about it.”
So Kennedy decided—as any foolhardy, fearless, slightly daft anti-bigot would—to go
undercover and join the Ku Klux Klan.
In Atlanta, he started hanging around a pool hall “whose habitués,” as he later wrote,
“had the frustrated, cruel look of the Klan about them.” A man named Slim, a taxi driver,
sat beside him at the bar one afternoon. “What this country needs is a good Kluxing,”
Slim said. “That’s the only way to keep the niggers, kikes, Catholic dagos, and Reds in
their place!”
Kennedy introduced himself as John S. Perkins, the alias he had adopted for his mission.
He told Slim, truthfully, that his uncle Brady Perkins back in Florida had once been a
Great Titan with the Klan. “But they’re dead now, aren’t they?” he asked Slim.
That prompted Slim to whip out a Klan calling card: “Here Yesterday, Today, Forever!
The Ku Klux Klan Is Riding! God Give Us Men!” Slim told “Perkins” that he was in
luck, for there was a membership drive under way. The $10 initiation fee—the Klan’s
sales pitch was “Do You Hate Niggers? Do You Hate Jews? Do You Have Ten
Dollars?”—had been reduced to $8. Then there was another $10 in annual dues, and $15
for a hooded robe.
Kennedy balked at the various fees, pretending to play hard to get, but agreed to join. Not
long after, he took the Klan oath in a nighttime mass initiation atop Stone Mountain.
Kennedy began attending weekly Klan meetings, hurrying home afterward to write notes
in a cryptic shorthand he invented. He learned the identities of the Klan’s local and
regional leaders and deciphered the Klan’s hierarchy, rituals, and language. It was Klan
custom to affix a Kl to many words; thus would two Klansmen hold a Klonversation in
the local Klavern. Many of the customs struck Kennedy as almost laughably childish.
The secret Klan handshake, for instance, was a left-handed, limp-wristed fish wiggle.
When a traveling Klansman wanted to locate brethren in a strange town, he would ask for
a “Mr. Ayak”—“Ayak” being code for “Are You a Klansman?” He would hope to hear,
“Yes, and I also know a Mr. Akai”—code for “A Klansman Am I.”
Before long, Kennedy was invited to join the Klavaliers, the Klan’s secret police and
“flog squad.” For this privilege, his wrist was slit with a jackknife so that he could take a
blood oath: