Kenneth C. Barnes is distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of Who Killed John Clayton? Political Violence and the Emergence of the New South, 1861-1893 and Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas: How Politicians, the Press, the Klan, and Religious Leaders Imagined an Enemy, 1910-1960. For his most recent book, The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas, Barnes garnered his third J. G. Ragsdale Book Award in Arkansas History.

"Mob Rule in the Ozarks is a rare achievement, a page-turning, blood-boiling work of history that pulls the hoods off the architects of past vigilante violence to help us understand our perilous present moment."
--Guy Lancaster, author of American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching and editor of the online CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas

"Kenneth Barnes's deft analysis of the violence and repressive aspects of the 1921-23 railroad strike in the Arkansas Ozarks sheds necessary light on a class conflict that impacted the region for decades. Highlighting the KKK's role in crushing the strike, Barnes provides additional evidence that the Klan served the interests of bosses, not workers. Mob Rule in the Ozarks is an original, first-rate study."
--Chad Pearson, author of Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Pub date: 2024-11-07

Length: 304 pages