The Day the Klan Came to Town by Bill Campbell

The Day the Klan Came to Town Reviews

• 
  Jon Nakapalau

  Fictional account based on the actual Klan march on Carnegie, Pennsylvania in 1923. The 'Karnegie Day' riot on August 25, 1923 was the debut of the new KKK; the 'civic organization' that just wanted to exercise their 1st Amendment rights. Bill Campbell has meticulously researched this event that sadly is similar to events which have recently happened this year.
• 
  Rod Brown

  In an interesting moment in history in 1923, the citizens of Carnegie, Pennsylvania, fought back with force when the Ku Klux Klan picked their small town for a demonstration of their white supremacy. Unfortunately, this fictionalized narrative of the event gets tangled up in extended flashbacks for one character set in Sicily and Italy and barely introduces the rest of its jumble of Carnegie residents. The page-by-page flow was confusing and muted the excitement of the climactic confrontation for me.
• 
  Joanne

  1.5 ⭐️ While this graphic novel about a violent riot in 1923 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania piqued my interest to learn more about this event, I felt this adaptation bit off more than it could chew by also trying to cover why immigrants were coming to America along with coverage of the deadly event. I appreciate the research that must have gone into this work, especially with the diversity and delivery of an assortment of languages, but overall, the art was amateurish and the story not clearly told.
• 
  Misha

  A powerful graphic novel based on the true story of a group of Italian, Jewish, Irish, and Black Americans who came together in Carnegie, Pennsylvania in 1923 to fight the Ku Klux Klan mob.
  
  As Campbell shares in the afterword, he had to dig to get information about this story as it had been buried, much due to the fact that many immigrants later were invited into the club of whiteness and history is told by the victors. He also reflects on how "I started to understand that the thing I was taught in school wasn't history as much as it was American fanfic."
  
  This quotation from P. Djèlí Clark's introduction struck me as particularly powerful:
  "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."--Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
  
• 
  Erikka

  This was a great historic recount of a group of marginalized people absolutely owning the KKK, but I could not get past the art style. The hands were so weird and all the characters looked so similar. I also appreciate that the characters speak different languages and I love the ambiance that built, but the story was nearly unreadable because it was about half Italian. Some footnote translations would have been welcome.
• 
  Carol

  To see the klan attacking any and everyone who's not like them is disgusting. Granted they lost this battle but sad to think people actually think this way. The illustrations were kind of weird. The forearms and hands were huge. The other languages made it frustrating to read because I had to keep using Google translate.
• 
  Deb

  I believe a book like this has the potential to be a great story, however I feel there is so much missing. While you read the foreword or the final words after the story is done, you see that it was difficult to find information about this battle. So the author was really give very little to work with.
  
  I would say the best part of the book is how it exposes how police has a tied history with far right, reactionary groups such as the KKK which we still see today. We are also able to see within the writing after the novel, that whiteness is fluid and restricting at the same time. Many who were oppressed by the Klan were not considered as white, and were oppressed. They wouldn’t be seen as people of color today (I.e Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans). However, nowadays these groups are seen as white. A lot of people have lost their traditions, but they do benefit from white supremacy through wealth and social privilege.
  
  I’m glad that Western PA was chosen in this story. A lot of people tend to think the North didn’t have any racism or racist roots/riots but it’s not true. There is plenty.
  
  I think the book could have done better with its illustration as well as translation words that were written in another language. I understand pushing the reader to look into other options to connect with the story, but in a graphic novel format it can pull someone away from the story.
• 
  Phil Lemons

  Most of us don’t want to talk about the embarrassing stuff from our past. This is as true of us as a nation as it is of us personally. This fictionalized retelling of a true event reminds us that not talking about our abusive past only gives hate air to breathe and catch fire again.
  
  As a Christian, I am saddened that people who call themselves by the name perpetrated this hate and violence, believing they were doing the work of God. I think that was a god of their own making. An idol they used to empower them to commit these atrocities.
  
  Regardless of our faith, culture, or history, I believe we will always continue to take from those who are different from those in power, who believe different, who talk different, and have different traditions, until we as a nation learn to embrace each other and truly accept and respect each other in these differences. Let us work for that goal.
• 
  Clarissa Blakely

  The tragedy this novel is based off of, I should definitely should educate myself about but I’m not sure the graphic novel forum was the right forum for this topic.
• 
  Mino

  Cops & Klan go hand-in-hand.
• 
  Andréa

  Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.
• 
  Megan

  I wanted to like this. I never heard of that riot before so I was excited to learn about it. But the storyline is so disjointed. And it’s just not clear what is happening. Also I love the fact that there are different languages in the story but there’s no translation to help the reader understand words being said. And this book isn’t being presented as a multi/bilingual book it’s presented as a book in English to the fact there wasn’t a translation and like a footnote was a little surprising to me.
  Overall I learned some really interesting things from the book and I thought it was worth my time. But it just wasn’t as good of a book as I was hoping that would be.
• 
  mad mags

  (Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Trigger warning for racist violence.)
  
  Named after Andrew Carnegie (who donated a library for the honor), Carnegie, Pennsylvania is a small borough that's part of Pittsburgh metropolitan area. On August 25, 1923, it was the site of "Karnegie Day," during which 10,000-30,000 members of the KKK - many imported from other states, like West Virginia and Kentucky - descended on the borough for a celebration of violence, terror, and white supremacy. The Klan targeted Carnegie because it was majority Catholic; their intended victims were Black, Irish, Italian, Sicilian, Jewish, Chinese, and Armenian, in keeping with Klan 2.0's new and expanded list of "undesirables." They also arguably had the blessing of local law enforcement, which looked the other way.
  
  The diverse citizenry of Carnegie were abandoned to defend themselves - and so they did. Using guns, knives, bats, fire, bricks, and rocks, they coordinated and launched a counteroffensive, driving the Klan from their borough. The resistance killed one Klan member during the battle and injured many others.
  
  Sadly, like so may acts of resistance (and oppression), Carnegie's victory over the Klan was largely lost to history - a near-inevitability foretold by Freeman near the story's end. Indeed, in the afterward, author Bill Campbell relates that "Research wasn’t easy. A chapter or two in a monograph here and there, a brief mention in some old articles. Oddly enough, the actions of the Klan and government officials that day have been chronicled. All we really know about the people who fought them is that they were 'Irish and others.'" Wikipedia's entry on "Karnegie Day" is a paltry two sentences, nestled in Carnegie, PA's article.
  
  THE DAY THE KLAN CAME TO TOWN is thus "a fictionalized account of an actual historical event" - but one that's no less compelling for its fabrications (or maybe educated guesses is a better term?). It's damn exhilarating to see people from different marginalized groups band together to fight a common enemy (if not the real enemy?: which is just to say that poor white working class folks need to get their heads out of their collective asses and see that the actual enemy isn't working class black and brown people - or other "nonwhites," which in the 30s included the Irish and Italians - but the politicians and billionaires who use hate, othering, and in group/out group membership to distract from the ever-widening wealth gap and erosion of democracy.)
  
  Still, the volume is necessarily slim, and I can't help but wish we had more details about what transpired that day.
  
  I mostly enjoyed Khodabandeh's artwork, though I won't be the first or last to comment on his tendency to give everyone weirdly oversized hands. The black and white is striking, though a part of me wishes THE DAY THE KLAN CAME TO TOWN was rendered in full color, to help counter our tendency to dismiss this stuff as having occurred in the "distant past."
• 
  Shelley Anderson

  This is a fictionalised account of a true event. In 1923 the Ku Klux Klan has an estimated four million members, and is moving out of the American South throughout the country. Immigrants like Jews, Italians, Irish and Poles, are classified by the Klan as 'un-American' and non-white, and become legitimate Klan targets.
  
  The Grand Dragon of Pennsylvania decides to organize a march through the Roman Catholic enclave of Carnegie, a small town outside Pittsburgh. With the help of a corrupt local police chief, the march goes through--but is met with fierce resistance by the towns people and repelled, with the death of one Klansman. The Klan won't return.
  
  The author Bill Campbell grew up in Carnegie and had never heard of this history until he was an adult. With the help of illustrator Bizhan Khodabandeh, and seen through the eyes of the fictional Sicilian immigrant Primo Salerno, he's created this black and white graphic novel.
  
  It's an important story and I wish there was more analysis about how the temporary multicultural alliance came together. Campbell has written a thought provoking afterword, exploring how these immigrant groups finally became 'white', with all the privileges that ensues, but at the cost of erasing their own heritages and roots. A significant portion of the dialogue is in Italian, with smatterings of Yiddish, Polish and Irish. This adds to the sense of authenticity but not to an easy understanding of what is going on plot wise. But the fact that the average American reader will not understand these languages is also a poignant reminder to what has been lost. As Campbell quotes comic creator Jiba Molei Anderson, "whiteness is erasure".
• 
  Joshua

  A goofy art style that only accentuates a goofy and obvious text. It looks like if Clerks the Animated Series did an episode about injustice. What do we learn about the experience of immigrants or those persecuted by the Klan? Nothing really. In a bizarre choice, the only characters who aren't one-dimensional ethnic cliches are the Irish mayor and an unnamed Klansman. The main characters aren't much more than a hack parody of the Sopranos. Also, one page is such a blatant rip-off of Do The Right Thing that Spike Lee might have a case to sue.
  
  This is a book to be assigned in 7th-grade social studies and then never thought of again. A classic example of a book that's Important but not important.
• 
  Buck O'Brian

  I can only give a book so much credit on the basis of it's subject matter. I was interested in the new angle this book provided on Italians during the height of the klan, but this short comic unfortunately fell flat. Visually, the art is charming. But it needed some extra panels to properly show what exactly was happening through movement. The series of events were difficult to follow because of this.
  
  Most glaringly are the few instances of humor towards the second half. Not to say a story about the klan can't have humor, like Ring Shout or BlackKklansman, but a tone of "Nyuck nyuck, lynching!" left a sour taste in my mouth.
• 
  Cindy

  Bill Campbell tells the fictionalized story of a true event. The Klan did march on Carnegie PA, and they did intend to wipe the place out. The Klansman, the police chief and the mayor are all real. They were really fought off by 'the Irish and others.' Carnegie is Bill's hometown, and went to church in the old Catholic church - the one the Klansman was killed in front of - and he never learned any of this growing up. When they say the victor writes the history, it is always true.
  
  Do more, Americans. Learn the real history of your home - don't just accept the fanfic you find in the books, that praises and supports the white supremacy woven into our system. Learn, and do better.
• 
  Lily

  This is a great story, of which I knew nothing about before reading and for that it is successful in educating and informing. Some of it is a little convoluted through in its execution, I'm all for filling in the blanks of history and creating solidarity, but I also imagine there were great divisions despite the klan targeting both immigrants and African Americans. It does draw a clear historical lineage between the police supporting racism and protecting right wing movements which has parallels today.
• 
  Bruce

  The night in 1923 when the immigrants living in Carnegie, Pennsylvania beat an invading army of the Ku Klux Klan is vividly portrayed by author Campbell and illustrator Khodabandeh. Based on actual history, this graphic novel tells the story of Sicilian sulfur miner Primo Salerno, veteran of the first world war, and how he came to the United States and joined with his neighbors, fellow Catholics, Jews, African Americans, and other immigrants living in “Irish Town” bloodied thirty thousand marching White Supremacists until the pointy headed cowards turned tail and ran.
• 
  Alicia

  This started, stayed, and ended disjointedly. I understood that there were flashbacks, and a nonlinear timeline isn't in it of itself bad, but for this one that barely delves into the characters and sets the stage for what will happen (a true event in the 1920s in Pennsylvania related to the Klan), there isn't enough substance to get the significance, importance, or anguish of the event.
  
  I think it was a combination of being black and white and the style of illustration in addition to the choppy panels and pages that I wasn't engaged.
• 
  Sundee Perkins

  This is a work of fiction, but it’s based on a real event. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) really did get run out of this small town in Pennsylvania, and no one has heard about it. It’s amazing to me how much history gets pushed into the shadows. Even the author said that he hadn’t learned about this important event until he was an adult, and he lives in the town! It’s a small book, but it’s a fairly intense read, and definitely one where I was rooting for the underdogs.
• 
  Sarah Middleton

  This story is a fictional account of a historical event. The imagination and depth required to go to this place and time is truly appreciated! The foreword and afterword provided insightful context for the contents. The art style was okay - I found it to be a little static when parts of the story seemed to demand dynamism. I was also disappointed by the lack of color when the cover was so richly imaginative.
• 
  Jason

  I really, really liked the subject matter and the characters and the art. The only reason I didn't give it a higher rating is because I was a bit confused by the flashbacks. There were times where it wasn't clear what was happening in the past vs. the present. And it just went by so dang FAST. Nevertheless, a worthwhile read. I'd be curious to check out his other comics, particularly if they're about untold stories of Black history.
• 
  Justine Cucchi-Dietlin

  I thought this book was interesting since the main character fighting the Klan was not African-American, but Italian, specifically a Sicilian Catholic. It was definitely a very well-researched account of the event.
  
  I also appreciated the Italian swear words because I am a child who loves seeing profanity used by my family in print form.
• 
  Erok

  In 1923, the KKK tried marching in Carnegie, PA. The townspeople weren't having it so fought them off and drove them out of town. This fictional retelling of the very real event brings this little known piece of Western PA history alive, thanks to the Carnegie native author. Cool artwork too that captured the moment
• 
  Debra

  I did not know the Klan matched in Pennsylvania in 1923. This isn't taught in any history class I took. The Klan readatric is alive today in the form of the oath keepers and proud boys. This graphic novel is a good reminder that we all our immigrants. People leave persecution for a better life in America. I hope they can find it.
• 
  Joy Davenport

  Rating: pg violence, mild profanity, no sex
  Recommend: hs and up history readers
  
  Disjointed. Art was not engaging, tho it had a Guernica fee about it, I suspect that’s intentional. So for me the power of this historical even loses its punch. Didn’t like, overall. I was interested in the little known event, but I was mostly confused about timelines and actual events.
• 
  A

  This was interesting and informative! I had never heard of Karnegie Day, and this fictionalized version of the historical event as a short graphic novel was a good means of capturing the context to the community targeted by the KKK. Glad I read it.