LIFE.com

Exclusive

LIFE Goes Inside Today's KKK

Email This Photo Share This Photo Rate This Photo Print This Photo Link To This Photo
2325 diggs
digg it
Donning Klan Robes

Donning Klan Robes

The Department of Homeland Security recently issued a chilling report: Americans, it said, can expect an upsurge in "rightwing extremism" from White nationalists, militias, and groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, of course, has had a hand in some of the nation's most infamous acts of racial terror and murder. But what does the KKK look like today? Photographer Anthony Karen has documented the modern-day Klan in their homes, at rallies, and at Klan gatherings, taking us deep inside a world we would otherwise never see -- a world most of us might not even want to know about. The unnerving photos featured here, exclusively on LIFE.com, are from his new book, "The Invisible Empire: Ku Klux Klan." "The majority of people I've come across," Karen told LIFE, "you'd only know they were in the Klan if they decided to share that."

Photo: Blank/Time & Life Pictures

Apr 13, 2009