Mapping the KKK 1921–1940

The first dataset I utilized was the Mapping the KKK 1921–1940 data from Kaggle. Despite the dataset’s somewhat misleading name, it contains data from the first revitalized klavern in Atlanta, 1915 to the start of WWII, 1942. The data was collected from local newspaper archives across America to confirm the existence and info of each klavern.

The only time-based variable in the dataset just gives the year that the klavern was founded. When I attempted to animate the map over time, the points were only visible for one year. To solve this, I wrote a script that would loop for a select range of years, each time parsing through each dataframe row. The script would then copy the row to a new dataframe if the year of loop is greater than the year founded. While it runs, the total rows for each year of the new dataframe grows exponentially, so I don’t recommend using this for any any longer than 30 loops. Click the Code button to see the code.

df <- read.csv("/path/to/file.csv") # Read in csv
df <- df %>% arrange(desc(-year)) # Arrange by year ascending
df <- df[!(df$year == 0),] # Remove zero values
df_new <- data.frame() # Create blank dataframe

# For range of years
for (i in 1915:1942) { 
  message("year: ", i) 
  
  for (row in 1:nrow(df)) { # For rows in dataframe

    temp_row <- df[row,] # Save the row temporarily 
    
    if (temp_row$year <= i) { # If the year founded <= year of loop

      # Give row new column of year of loop value and
      # copy row to new dataframe
      temp_row$year_folded <- i 
      df_new <- rbind(df_new, temp_row) 
    }
  }
}

write.csv(df_new, "/path/to/file_folded.csv") # Write to disk

SPLC Hate Map

I downloaded the secondary data from the Southern Poverty Law Center: Hate Map, a spatial database of SPLC known hate groups. I downloaded the spreadsheet from each year (2000-2020), and merged them using the code below. The dataset contains a variety of different ideology variables, however for this analysis we’ll filter it in Tableauto only include the KKK. Click the Code button to see the code.

# Sets working directory and loops for amount of files in folder
setwd("/Path/to/folder/") 
for (data in list.files()){

  # Create the first data if no data exist yet
  if (!exists("dataset")){
    dataset <- read.csv(data, header=TRUE)
  }

  # If data already exist, then append it together
  if (exists("dataset")){
    tempory <-read.csv(data, header=TRUE)
    dataset <-unique(rbind(dataset, tempory))
    rm(tempory)
  }
}

write.csv(dataset, "/Path/to/file.csv") # Write to disk