First, I am, as most of you are, surprised and saddened by the passing of
Jim Zwick.  Being relatively new to the studies, I had only been introduced
to his work within the last three years.  And, strangely enough had just
revisited his Weapons of Satire to investigate the very question that I will
put forth to the forum in a moment.  And, was just recently thwarted by the
inter-library loan system telling me that his new book (Confronting
Imperialism: Essays on Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League) was too
new for me to borrow a copy of it.  Though I didn't know Mr. Zwick
personally, I have certainly enjoyed his work and reaped the benefits of his
research.  He will indeed be missed.

Second, the question.  In short, the question is: do any of you know of
instances of Twain talking directly about the KKK?  I started poking around
on the databases and found some interesting things to read, but surprisingly
little came up with the search of "mark twain kkk" or "mark twain klan".  I
see a fair number of mentions of talk about lynching, and as near as I can
tell, the only actual mention of the KKK directly was in Weapons of Satire
in Twain's "Review of Edwin Wildman's Biography of Aguinaldo ("The pupils
were not worse than the friars who taught them these things.  And they were
not worse than were our Christian Ku-Klux gangs of a former time, nor than
are our church-going negro-burners of to-day.")

I've been revisiting many of Twain's writings, looking at the various
lynchings that occur (Huck Finn, Connecticut Yankee, Pudd'nhead Wilson,
Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, Tom Sawyer Abroad, "A
Double-Barreled Detective Story", "United States of Lyncherdom", and "Does
the race of man Love a Lord" (from The $30,000 Bequest and other stories),
but I've yet to really find much directly addressing the KKK.

So, before I sat down to the work of writing a paper on the topic, I thought
I would appeal to you all in case I've made a major gaffe and missed
something (obvious or otherwise).

Michael MacBride
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale