{{Short description|Historian and Ku Klux Klan propagandist (1862–1917)}} {{Infobox person | name = Laura Martin Rose | image = Laura Martin Rose.jpg | alt = <!-- descriptive text for use by speech synthesis (text-to-speech) software --> | caption = | birth_name = Laura Marcella Martin | birth_date = {{Birth date|1862|09|18}} | birth_place = Crescent View, Giles County, Tennessee | death_date = {{Death date and age|1917|05|06|1862|09|18}} | death_place = Birmingham, Alabama | other_names = Mrs. S. E. F. Rose | occupation = Historian | years_active = | known_for = Ku Klux Klan propaganda | notable_works = ''The Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire'' }} '''Laura Martin Rose''' (September 18, 1862 {{en dash}} May 6, 1917) (born '''Laura Marcella Martin'''), known professionally as '''Mrs. S. E. F. Rose''', was a historian and propagandist for the Ku Klux Klan<ref name=huffman>{{cite journal |last=Huffman |first=Greg |date=April 10, 2019 |title=Twisted Sources: How Confederate propaganda ended up in the South's schoolbooks |url=https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks |journal=Facing South |publisher=Institute for Southern Studies |location=Durham, North Carolina |access-date=8 Sep 2023}}</ref> employed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.<ref name=Lowery>{{Cite web|url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/laura-martin-rose/|title=Laura Martin Rose (1862–1917) Author|last=Lowery|first=J. Vincent|website=Mississippi Encyclopedia}}</ref>
==Biography==
thumb|Title pages of "The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible Empire" (1914) by Laura Martin Rose.Rose was born in 1862 near Pulaski, Tennessee, the town where the Ku Klux Klan would be formed three years later.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kkk-founded |title=KKK founded |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=March 4, 2010 |website=History.com |publisher=A&E Television Networks |access-date=March 8, 2020}}</ref> After her marriage to Solon Edward Franklin Rose, she often identified herself with her husband's name, as Mrs. S. E. F. Rose.
Rose wrote a pamphlet, called ''Origins of the Ku Klux Klan'', sold as a fundraiser by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, of which she was Mississippi division president.<ref name=Leonard1914>{{citation | title=Woman's Who's who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada| editor1-first=John William | editor1-last=Leonard | publisher=American Commonwealth Company | year=1914 | page=702 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=COsLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA702 }}</ref> The funds were to be used to erect a Confederate monument at Jefferson Davis's home. The pamphlet promoted the Lost Cause narrative of the American Civil War and presented racist acts of violence as heroism.<ref name=Lowery />
Encouraged by the success of the pamphlet, Rose expanded it into a textbook titled ''The Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire''. Rose justified Klan violence by claiming it was a last resort in response to supposed African American racial violence, and to encourage southern boys, if deemed necessary, to commit acts violence against African American men to defend the virtue of white southern women.<ref name=Lowery /> The book was one part of a broad campaign to insert false Confederate narratives of the "Lost Cause", glorification of the KKK, and minimalization of the role of slavery in the Civil War, into public school curriculums in the South, so as to uphold institutionalized white supremacy.<ref name=huffman/> It was unanimously endorsed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy at their 1913 annual convention in New Orleans, and again at their 1915 annual convention in San Francisco,<ref name=atlanta>{{cite magazine| author= <!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> | date= 9 Dec 2022 | title= The Connection Between the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the KKK | url = https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/blog/the-connection-between-the-united-daughters-of-the-confederacy-and-the-kkk/ | magazine= Atlanta History Center| location= Atlanta, Georgia | publisher= Atlanta Historical Society | access-date= 8 Sep 2023}}</ref> and by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Jacksonville in 1914,<ref name="Rose1914">{{Cite book|last=Rose|first=Laura Martin|url=http://archive.org/details/cu31924083530117|title=The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible empire|publisher=L. Graham Co., Ltd.|year=1914|location=New Orleans, La.|author-link=Laura Martin Rose}}</ref> with aim of promoting it in schools throughout the American South. It was frequently promoted in ''Confederate Veteran'', the official organ of the United Confederate Veterans.<ref name=confederate>{{cite journal| editor1-first= Loewen| editor1-last= James W.| editor2-last= Sebesta| editor2-first= Edward H.| date= n.d.| title= S.E.F. Rose Historian General of the UDC and Her Career in the UDC Praising the Ku Klux Klan| url= http://www.confederateneoconfederatereader.com/detail/the-nadir-of-race-relations/sef-rose-historian-general-of-the-udc-and-her-career/| journal= Confederate Truths: Documents of the Confederate & Neo-Confederate Tradition from 1787 to the Present| access-date= 8 Sep 2023| archive-date= 2 October 2023| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20231002024052/http://www.confederateneoconfederatereader.com/detail/the-nadir-of-race-relations/sef-rose-historian-general-of-the-udc-and-her-career/| url-status= dead}}</ref>
Rose succeeded Mildred Rutherford as historian-general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1916. She died in 1917.<ref name=Lowery />
Martin Methodist College (renamed University of Tennessee Southern in 2021) was named for her grandfather Thomas Martin (1799–1870), who established the college in his will.<ref name="Rose1917">{{Cite book|last=Rose|first=Laura Martin|url=https://archive.org/details/MMC17/page/n15/mode/2up|title=The Martin Box|publisher=Phi Kappa, Philosophian and Sigma Rho Literary Societies of Martin College, Pulaski, Tennessee|year=1917|volume=7|pages=17–18|language=English|chapter=Mr Thomas Martin: Founder of Martin College, Pulaski, Tenn.}}</ref> As her book describes, some of the earliest meetings of the Klan were held at her grandfather's house.<ref name="Rose1914"/>
==Re-founding of the Klan==
Rose's 1914 textbook contributed to mythologizing and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, which at that time was a nearly-extinct regional organization. It was one of a number of works of the era that would lead to the Klan's re-founding in 1915.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.history.com/news/kkk-birth-of-a-nation-film |title=How 'The Birth of a Nation' Revived the Ku Klux Klan |last=Clark |first=Alexis |date=July 21, 2019 |website=History.com |publisher=A&E Television Networks |access-date=March 8, 2020}}</ref>
According to journalist Michelle Serrano, Rose's textbook served to propagate white supremacy and helped to bring about the Jim Crow era of racist laws.<ref name=Serrano>{{cite news |last=Serrano |first=Michelle |date=January 17, 2018 |title=Confederate rock opposed |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/375541217/ |work=The Brownsville Herald |location=Brownsville, Texas |access-date=March 8, 2020 }}</ref>
==Further reading== * Cox, Karen L. ''Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture''. University Press of Florida, 2003.
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *{{commons category-inline}}
{{Neo-Confederates}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rose, Laura Martin}} Category:1862 births Category:1917 deaths Category:Members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy Category:American Ku Klux Klan members Category:People from Giles County, Tennessee Category:American women historians