Plot
Part I
Walt Rawley lives with his uncle and aunt in St. Louis. They treat him badly, he is forced to be outside during the daytime and he receives little to no education. Walt is a beggar without prospects. This changes when he meets Master Yehudi. He tells the boy: "You're no better than an animal. If you stay where you are, you'll be dead before winter is out. If you come with me, I'll teach you how to fly" (page 3). Walt accepts the offer, and starts the terrific journey to the art of loft and levitation. Walt has other difficulties apart from gaining the skill to fly. Walt is a racist and is shocked when he meets his new housemates: the Ethiopian boy Aesop, the Indian Mother Sioux and the Jewish Master Yehudi. He eventually accepts this diversity and focuses on the thirty-three steps towards the skill of loft and levitation. After many humiliating tasks including living burial, cutting of a finger joint and being struck by lightning, he experiences levitation for the first time. When Walt tries to do a somersault above the lake near the house, a dramatic event happens: The Ku Klux Klan kill Aesop and Mother Sioux and set the house on fire.
Part II
Master Yehudi and Walt, whose aversion against the victims had changed to love, are emotional wrecks. They bury the dead and go to live with Mrs Witherspoon, a good friend of Master Yehudi. Master Yehudi's grief continues for months and he stays distant from Walt and Mrs Witherspoon. The latter two are forced to spend time with each other and therefore they become fond of each other. Master Yehudi is suddenly relieved of his grief and life continues again. Master Yehudi plans performances starting in little country festivals. Walt's first public performance turns out horrible because of the drunken public. They do not give up, but alter the performance with Walt's ideas. The stages get bigger and bigger. When everything seems to be perfect, Uncle Slim kidnaps Walt. He claims a big part of the profit Walt has made, because of the deal Slim and Yehudi have made. After Walt has been kidnapped for a while, he manages to escape and return to Master Yehudi. Walt the Wonder Boy makes a big comeback, and he has all the success and fame he could want. However, after a show in New Haven, Walt suffers terrible headaches after levitating. He and Master Yehudi decide to stop this career, because this has happened to other levitators in the past. Walt will become a movie actor in Hollywood. On the way towards Hollywood, they are attacked by Uncle Slim and he robs them of all their money, leaving Master Yehudi fatally injured. Yehudi shoots himself through his head, for Walt to move on.
Part III
Walt sought for revenge on his uncle for killing Master Yehudi. In the three-year search for Uncle Slim, Walt turns into his old, city dwelling self again. He finds Slim working for drugs smugglers in Chicago. After Walt kills his uncle by poisoning him, Slim's boss (Bingo) appears and offers Walt a job, which he accepts. Walt climbs up the criminal ladder and eventually opens his own nightclub named Mr Vertigo. At the top of his success, Walt unexpectedly meets Mrs Witherspoon again in a hotel. She offers to get him out of the criminal circuit, but he does not see the necessity. Walt starts to lose his mind and ends up threatening the professional baseball player Dizzy Dean. Walt has to go to boot camp.
Part IV
Walt stayed in boot camp until 1945, because his eyes were too weak for flight school. He starts dwelling the city again and has several small jobs in three years. When he eventually gets a job at a baking company, Walt meets Molly Fitzsimmons. They marry, but are not able to have children. Molly dies of cancer after twenty-three years of marriage. Walt becomes an alcoholic, but Molly's family helps him get sober and finds him a job. On his way to the city he will work, Walt decides to visit the village he lived in the times of levitation. He knocked on Mrs Witherspoon's door and is surprised to see her still living in that house. She has her own Laundromats and invites Walt to work for her. He accepts it, and from then on Mrs Witherspoon and Walt live together like husband and wife. After she dies, Walt decides to write a book about his life.
Characters
Walter Claireborne Rawley
Walt is the protagonist and narrator of the story. His life is followed from teenager to elderly and the story shows his changing personality. As a young boy, Walt is an uneducated, rebellious racist who either does not have or show his emotions. It gradually changes after he starts living with Master Yehudi. Walt learns to have respect for opinions and nationalities other than his own. Aesop teaches him how to read and Walt becomes eager to learn. When he is at the top of his success, Walt becomes very proud. Walt becomes his own self again after Master Yehudi's death: he starts dwelling the streets and his old dialect returns. In his elderly days, he becomes very caring for Molly and Mrs Witherspoon.
Master Yehudi
The Hungarian Jew Master Yehudi came to America when he was a young boy. Yehudi spends much of his time reading Spinoza. He has a many-sided personality. On one side, Master Yehudi is a business man with interest in nothing but profit numbers, shown by the plans he makes for Walt and Aesop. On the other side, he is a strict fatherly figure, hiding his care. However, when Walts gets ill, Yehudi does show his emotions and regret.
Aesop
The crippled Ethiopian boy Aesop was rescued by Master Yehudi and he received a high quality education. Aesop is therefore very intelligent, which occurs only little in that time for black people. Aesop takes it upon himself to teach Walt about history and make him literate.
Mother Sioux
The Indian Mother Sioux is the mother figure of the household. Her grandfather was the brother of Sitting Bull and she was a rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. When she was a young woman, she was treated badly. Master Yehudi decided to help her and since that moment, Mother Sioux lives with him. She is loving and caring for everyone.
Uncle Slim
Uncle Slim is the antagonist of the story. He has treated Walt very badly and gave him no attention. When Walt is at the top of his success, Slim kidnaps Walt. He has planned this carefully. Later on, he attacks Yehudi and Walt. Also this has been prepared thoroughly. Slim gets into the criminal drugs circuit.
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. The Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets at various times have been African Americans, as well as Jews and Catholics.
Madge Augustine Oberholtzer was a white American woman whose rape and murder played a critical role in the demise of the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. In March 1925, while working for the state of Indiana on an adult literacy campaign, Oberholtzer was abducted by D. C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan. Holding her captive in his private train car, Stephenson raped and tortured her. Oberholtzer died from a combination of a staphylococcal infection from her injuries and kidney failure from mercury chloride poisoning, which she took while held captive in an attempt to commit suicide.
David Curtis "Steve" Stephenson was an American Ku Klux Klan leader, convicted rapist and murderer. In 1923 he was appointed Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan and head of Klan recruiting for seven other states. Later that year, he led those groups to independence from the national KKK organization. Amassing wealth and political power in Indiana politics, he was one of the most prominent national Klan leaders. He had close relationships with numerous Indiana politicians, especially Governor Edward L. Jackson.
The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865–1900 is the first novel of Thomas Dixon's Reconstruction trilogy, and was followed by The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905), and The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907). In the novel, published in 1902, Dixon offers an account of Reconstruction in which he portrays a Reconstruction leader, Northern carpetbaggers, and emancipated slaves as the villains; Ku Klux Klan members are anti-heroes. While the playbills and program for The Birth of a Nation claimed The Leopard's Spots as a source in addition to The Clansman, recent scholars do not accept this.
A Kleagle is an officer of the Ku Klux Klan whose main role is to recruit new members and must maintain the three guiding principles: recruit, maintain control, and safeguard.
The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan is a novel published in 1905, the second work in the Ku Klux Klan trilogy by Thomas Dixon Jr.. Chronicling the American Civil War and Reconstruction era from a pro-Confederate perspective, it presents the Ku Klux Klan heroically. The novel was adapted first by the author as a highly successful play entitled The Clansman (1905), and a decade later by D. W. Griffith in the 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation.
Johnny Lee Clary was an American former professional wrestler, white supremacist, and later preacher. Clary served as a Ku Klux Klan leader before he became a Pentecostal Christian, traveling around the world preaching the gospel and teaching against racism and hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and the Aryan Nations. Clary, under the stage name Johnny Angel, also wrestled in the National Wrestling Federation (NWF) during the 1980s.
The Foreigner is a 1984 two-act comedy by American playwright Larry Shue. The play has become a staple of professional and amateur theatre. The Foreigner has earned two Obie Awards and two Outer Critics Circle Awards as Best New American Play and Best Off-Broadway Production.
Bill Riccio is a leader in the white power skinhead movement in the United States who gained public notoriety for his appearance in the 1993 documentary Skinheads: Soldiers of the Race War. He has been convicted numerous times on illegal weapon possession charges, the most recent of which was in 1992.
Arthur Hornbui Bell was an attorney and the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey.
Heroes of the Fiery Cross is a book in praise of the Ku Klux Klan, published in 1928 by Protestant Bishop Alma Bridwell White, in which she "sounds the alarm about imagined threats to Protestant Americans from Catholics and Jews", according to author Peter Knight. In the book she asks rhetorically, "Who are the enemies of the Klan? They are the bootleggers, law-breakers, corrupt politicians, weak-kneed Protestant church members, white slavers, toe-kissers, wafer-worshippers, and every spineless character who takes the path of least resistance." She also argues that Catholics are removing the Bible from public schools. Another topic is her anti-Catholic stance towards the United States presidential election of 1928, in which Catholic Al Smith was running for president.
Branford Edward Clarke was an Evangelical preacher, poet and artist who promoted the Ku Klux Klan through his art which was drawn for the Pillar of Fire Church and their publications.
Alex Cross's Trial is the 15th novel in James Patterson's Alex Cross series. It follows Cross Country in the series, and comes before his novel I, Alex Cross. It is written by Patterson and Richard DiLallo, and its premise is that it is a book written by Alex Cross.
The Ku Klux Klan has had a history in the U.S. state of New Jersey since the early part of the 1920s. The Klan was active in the areas of Trenton and Camden and it also had a presence in several of the state's northern counties in the 1920s. It had the most members in Monmouth County, and operated a resort in Wall Township.
Leroy Magnum McAfee was an American Confederate veteran and politician. He was a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives. He later served as the inspiration for the protagonist of his nephew Thomas Dixon Jr.'s infamous 1905 play The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan and its 1915 film adaptation The Birth of a Nation.
The U.S. Klans, officially, the U.S. Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. was the dominant Ku Klux Klan in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The death of its leader in 1960, along with increased factionalism, splits and competition from other groups led to its decline by the mid-to-late 1960s.
Legion of Terror is a 1936 American drama/action film, directed by Charles C. Coleman. The film, which stars Bruce Cabot, Marguerite Churchill, Ward Bond, and Crawford Weaver, is a fictionalized story about the real-life Ku Klux Klan splinter group called the Black Legion of the 1930s. It was inspired by the May 1935 murder in Michigan of Charles Poole, a Works Progress Administration worker.
The Ku Klux Klan is an organization that expanded operations into Canada, based on the second Ku Klux Klan established in the United States in 1915. It operated as a fraternity, with chapters established in parts of Canada throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The first registered provincial chapter was registered in Toronto in 1925 by two Americans and a Canadian. The organization was most successful in Saskatchewan, where it briefly influenced political activity and whose membership included a member of Parliament, Walter Davy Cowan.
R. R. Sneed was an American politician. He served as the Tennessee Secretary of State from 1913 to 1917.
Ring Shout, or, Hunting Ku Kluxes in the End Times is a dark historical southern gothic fantasy novella written by American fiction writer P. Djèlí Clark. A hardcover of the novella was published by Tor.com Publishing in October 2020. The story follows Maryse Boudreaux on her quest to hunt and destroy the demons summoned by the Ku Klux Klan known as "Ku Kluxes". She is joined by fellow hunters Sadie Watkins and Cordelia Lawrence, as a supernatural evil is rising in an alternate history of 1920s Macon, Georgia.
