Ku Klux Kulture Read online

  Ku Klux Kulture

  Ku Klux Kulture

  America and the Klan in the 1920s

  Felix Harcourt

  The University of Chicago Press

  CHICAGO & LONDON

  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

  The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

  © 2017 by The University of Chicago

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

  Published 2017

  Printed in the United States of America

  26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-37615-8 (cloth)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-37629-5 (e-book)

  DOI: 10.7208/chicago/[9780226376295].001.0001

  A portion of the material printed in this book appeared previously in the article “Invisible Umpires: The Ku Klux Klan and Baseball in the 1920’s,” in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture 23, no. 1, 2015, by Felix Harcourt and published by the University of Nebraska Press.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Harcourt, Felix, author.

  Title: Ku Klux kulture : America and the Klan in the 1920s / Felix Harcourt.

  Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017007718 | ISBN 9780226376158 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226376295 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Ku Klux Klan (1915–)—History. | United States—Ethnic relations. | Popular culture—United States—20th century. | Racism—United States.

  Classification: LCC HS2330.K63 H37 2017 | DDC 322.4/2097309042—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007718

  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  Contents

  1 Ordinary Human Interests

  2 White and White and Read All Over

  3 Fiery Cross-Words

  4 The Good, the Bad, and the Best Sellers

  5 Good Fiction Qualities

  6 Just Entertainment

  7 That Ghastly Saxophone

  8 PBS—The Protestant Broadcasting System

  9 Invisible Umpires

  Epilogue: The Most Picturesque Element

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Index

  1

  Ordinary Human Interests

  There is really no better reason for outsiders to regard Klansfolk as strange, other-worldly creatures—incapable of ordinary human interests, including clambakes—than there is for Klansfolk to think that way about outsiders.

  CHARLES MERZ, The Independent, February 12, 1927

  On October 28, 1947, in front of a crowd of spectators that included Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye, the House Un-American Activities Committee questioned three screenwriters—Dalton Trumbo, Alvah Bessie, and Albert Maltz—about alleged Communist affiliations. While Trumbo was denied the opportunity to read a prepared statement, Maltz delivered an excoriating speech that the New York Times called “one of the most denunciatory ever uttered in the presence of the committee.” A novelist and Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Pride of the Marines, as well as uncredited contributor to Casablanca, he sparred repeatedly with committee chair J. Parnell Thomas over his testimony. Maltz’s greatest ire, however, was reserved for committee member John E. Rankin, the Democrat from Mississippi who had purportedly defended the Ku Klux Klan as “an American institution.”1

  “If it requires acceptance of the ideas of this committee to remain immune from the brand of un-Americanism,” Maltz asked, “then who is ultimately safe from this committee except members of the Ku Klux Klan?” Like his fellow witnesses, the writer was cited for contempt by the committee. Maltz would be blacklisted as part of the “Hollywood Ten” and would not receive another screen credit until 1970. Nonetheless, he declared he would “not be dictated to or intimidated by men to whom the Ku Klux Klan, as a matter of committee record, is an acceptable American institution.”2

  Maltz had likely discussed this piece of political theater with the so-called Dean of the Hollywood Ten, John Howard Lawson, who had been cited by the committee the day before as the first of the “unfriendly” witnesses. J. Parnell Thomas had refused to allow the screenwriter to read a prepared statement that accused Thomas of being “a petty politician” serving forces “trying to introduce fascism.” Lawson had then answered questions about his Communist Party membership with the accusation that the committee was “using the old technique used by Hitler in Germany . . . [to] invade the rights of Americans whether they be Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Democrats, Republicans, or anything else.” The writer was ultimately escorted from the witness stand by six Capitol policemen.3

  Twenty-two years earlier, Lawson had offered a similar argument about the threat of repressive forces in a play that the Chicago Tribune described as “wild and weird beyond the dreams of the most visionary of the radicals.” It was also a play that offered a very different theatrical take on the Klan from that of Maltz’s statement. Lawson’s experimental 1925 “jazz symphony of modern life,” Processional, depicted the Ku Klux Klan deeply embedded in the firmament of contemporary society—as an American institution. Indeed, the play’s third act climaxed with what one theatergoer called “the Ballet of the Ku Klux Klan.”4

  Nor was Lawson the only one to present audiences of the 1920s with the spectacle of dancing Klan members. The touring stage production The Awakening drew audiences with a garish amalgam of mawkish melodrama (lifting the plot from The Birth of a Nation) and cabaret showgirls. One musical number in the show, “Daddy Swiped Our Last Clean Sheet and Joined the Ku Klux Klan,” was a particular hit. Copies of the song could be purchased as sheet music, a piano roll, or a phonograph record. Cultural consumers in the 1920s could not only see the Klan on stage and hear about the organization in popular song, but also listen to the Klan on radio. They could read about the organization’s exploits in newspapers—or buy the organization’s own periodicals. They could watch the group battle it out on the baseball field. They could thrill to the adventures of the Klan in novels and on movie screens. The Awakening was seen by more than ten times as many people as bought F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in the 1920s. Yet these Klannish cultural artifacts have been all but forgotten, along with their significance.

  As the standard narrative goes, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were “reborn” on November 25, 1915, with a cross burning at Stone Mountain, Georgia. The architect and “Imperial Wizard” of this revival was William Joseph Simmons, a former circuit-riding preacher and professional fraternal organizer. Combining elements of the original Reconstruction-era Klan with romanticized ideas lifted from the box-office smash of the year, The Birth of a Nation, Simmons hoped to create the ultimate Southern fraternal organization. The lynching of local Jewish businessman Leo Frank for the murder of employee Mary Phagan, and the ensuing calls for a revived Klan to enforce a new “home rule,” provided impetus for the Imperial Wizard’s efforts.5

  This second Ku Klux Klan initially met with limited success, garnering approximately two thousand members—predominantly in Georgia and Alabama—in its first five years. In June 1920, hoping to strengthen interest in the organization, Simmons hired Edward Young Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler of the Southern Publicity Association. In consultation with the Imperial Wizard, Clarke and Tyler created the Kleagle system, whereby professional recruiters (Kleagles) would coll
ect a portion of the membership dues from every new inductee into the second Klan. Targeting influential locals, Protestant ministers, and members of fraternal organizations like the Masons, these Kleagles identified issues of concern in a community and promoted the Klan as a solution to those problems. While white supremacy remained a cornerstone of the organization’s philosophy, the Klan widened its appeal by incorporating popular anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic sentiments sparked by immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Kleagles sold the organization as a staunch supporter of Prohibition laws and an enforcer of public morality.6

  The self-proclaimed “Invisible Empire” began to expand rapidly, accompanied by a series of violent incidents involving masked Klansmen. The organization’s growing popularity, though, seemed limited to the South. The September 1921 New York World “exposé” of the Klan changed that completely. The series sparked a congressional investigation, earned the World a Pulitzer Prize, and is remembered as one of the most celebrated pieces of American twentieth-century journalism. It also rocketed the Ku Klux Klan to national prominence.7

  For three weeks, the Klan dominated the front page of a major New York daily and affiliates around the country. With the help of disillusioned ex-Kleagle Henry P. Fry, the newspaper concentrated on revealing as many of the organization’s secrets as possible: listing violent crimes attributed to Klansmen; naming more than two hundred Kleagles nationwide; reprinting Klan advertisements, recruiting letters, and a questionnaire to determine the eligibility of prospective members; and divulging the contents of the Klan’s “Kloran,” or book of ceremonies, including the organization’s oaths and rituals, the meaning of their titles and code words, and even a diagram of their secret handshake. These revelations were accompanied by sensationalistic denunciations of the “grotesque” organization.8

  By the end of the series on September 26, the World was convinced that it had “given Kluxism a death blow.” By hounding them for statements on the story, the paper had forced the majority of New York’s officials into publicly declaring their opposition to the Klan. Little more than two weeks after the World’s exposé concluded, a congressional investigation into the Klan was called to order. The newspaper’s assertion that the series had been read “by United States officials . . . from the White House down” may or may not have been the case. Whatever President Warren G. Harding’s reading material, the World was lauded at the congressional hearings for “bringing the facts to the attention of the public.” Reporter Rowland Thomas and ex-Klansman Fry offered damaging anti-Klan testimony.9

  Far from a death blow, though, the appearance of the Klan in the New York World and its affiliates meant that word of the organization’s rebirth was transmitted nationally far more effectively than Klan members would ever have been able to achieve themselves. Even as the newspaper coverage sparked a wave of condemnation, it also saw the beginning of a surge of support for the Invisible Empire. Some readers allegedly even attempted to join the reborn Klan using blank application forms that the World had reprinted. Historian David Chalmers estimated that the “priceless publicity” supplied by the World increased Klan membership by a million or more. Moreover, the fierce opposition of a liberal New York newspaper lent credibility to the organization, endearing the Invisible Empire to readers who had a natural antipathy to publications like the World. The exposé series was not solely responsible for the rise in membership that followed, but contemporary observers certainly believed the World played a key part in the process. Leaders of the Klan crowed that the “vicious advertisement” of the newspaper had been “so materially misjudged” that they “had made us instead of breaking us.”10

  By the end of 1921, the Invisible Empire had transcended its sectional origins to become a truly national phenomenon, from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, and all points between. With considerable strength in the Midwest, Indiana became the organization’s new stronghold. Although violent attacks continued—most notoriously in the August 1922 “disappearance” of two white men in Mer Rouge, Louisiana, after a whipping by Klansmen—they became increasingly sporadic. Members of the Invisible Empire increasingly insisted the Klan was not an “anti” organization. It was, they said, simply a law-abiding and law-enforcing union of white, native-born, patriotic Protestants.11

  In November 1922, purportedly concerned by Simmons’s growing drinking problem and generally immodest behavior, a group of high-ranking Klansmen convinced the Imperial Wizard to relinquish his position. Hiram Evans, a dentist from Dallas and leader of the Klan there, became the new official head of the organization. Simmons, belatedly realizing his mistake and claiming to still hold the copyright on the organization’s official doctrine, began a lengthy fight to try to reclaim control. After more than a year of factional battles that engendered considerable ill feeling, Simmons finally settled his lawsuit against Evans and the Klan in February 1924.12

  Throughout this struggle, enrollment in the Klan continued to rise steeply. New members heavily outweighed the number of ex-Klansmen embittered by the fight for control of the organization. The creation of a number of partner auxiliaries, including the Women of the Klan and the Junior Klan, extended the reach of the Invisible Empire. Kleagles continued to exploit the organization’s diverse appeal to encompass anti-Catholic campaigns against parochial schooling, populist anger at political corruption, and a wide range of moralistic concerns.13

  After the 1924 election, however, the Klan began to wane in power. The election of Calvin Coolidge and, perhaps more significantly, the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act restricting immigration seemingly eased the concerns of many Americans. Although membership in each branch of the Invisible Empire fell at a different pace and for different reasons, it was clear by late 1924 that the Klan as a whole was in decline. This process was hastened by the arrest in April 1925 of David Curtis Stephenson, ex-Grand Dragon of Indiana and one of the key actors in the rise of the Klan in the North, for the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer. Although Stephenson had technically been exiled from the Invisible Empire the year before, he had retained effective power over the Klans of Indiana, and his arrest dealt considerable damage to the organization’s image.14

  While estimates vary, it seems likely that national membership in the Ku Klux Klan peaked in late 1924 and early 1925 at over four million Knights. In 1927, membership had dropped to little more than half a million, and by 1928 “no more than several hundred thousand” were thought to still belong to the organization. While the presidential candidacy of the Catholic ex-governor of New York, Al Smith, did breathe some life back into the Klan in late 1928, the election did little more than temporarily suspend the organization’s rapid collapse. By the end of the decade, the Invisible Empire had all but disappeared from public view.15

  For many years, academic consideration of the short but storied life span of the second Ku Klux Klan was directed by those who preferred to see the organization as the product of uneducated and unsophisticated Americans, most likely hoodwinked into membership by greedy hucksters. Since the 1990s, though, scholars of the Klan have made great strides in overcoming what Kathleen Blee called the assumption of marginality. An effective consensus has formed around the conception of the Klan as an important participant in the civic discourse of the 1920s. Recent work has sought to recognize both the Klan’s deep roots in the white Protestant norms of the period and the controversy that surrounded the organization, reevaluating the Invisible Empire within the context of other American social and fraternal organizations.16

  Yet the Klan has remained largely, and problematically, absent from considerations of the cultural 1920s. As Lawrence Grossberg notes, “We cannot live social reality outside of the cultural forms through which we make sense of it.” If we do not integrate the cultural products by and about the Klan into wider narratives of the 1920s, we fail to appreciate both how the Invisible Empire made sense of the postwar cultural moment of emergent pluralism and how that same popular culture made sense of the Klan—and ho
w that understanding influenced the lived social reality of the period. When we examine the Klan’s cultural “ephemera” of the period, we see that the current consensus narrative of the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan remains somewhat insufficient.17

  Exacerbating the issue is the fact that in the standard narrative of the second Klan, the issue of membership becomes prioritized. The question inherent in most studies of the Klan seems always to be how and why the membership of the group grew—whether it was a pyramid scheme, a clarion call to bigotry, a moment of postwar hysteria, a timely effort to capitalize on concerns over schooling and law enforcement. To a lesser extent, historians have debated the reasons for the organization’s precipitous decline, from Stephenson’s arrest to cultural competition to infighting among the leadership. The focus on debating this issue of organizational affiliation and disaffiliation, though, risks losing an appreciation of the Invisible Empire’s wider influence and significance.

  By concentrating on whether or not cultural actors in the 1930s and 1940s were Communist Party members, Michael Denning argued, historians had reached “a remarkably inadequate understanding of the depth and breadth” of the Popular Front. Scholars of the Klan in the 1920s face the same problem. Too often, the Ku Klux Klan’s cultural clout is sidelined or dismissed as a Klannish kultur detached from modern mass culture. In treating its influence in this way, we risk misreading the Klan’s reach and the tensions present within American culture in the 1920s.18

  The postwar era saw the melding of a powerful social movement with the cultural apparatus of mass entertainment. As Denning points out, a core-periphery model of such an encounter—an interpretation that prioritizes the question of membership—is less than satisfactory. The politics and mechanisms of affiliation do not delimit the politics of culture. The Klan wielded broad cultural power that reached far beyond a paying membership. If we are to understand that power, the Invisible Empire must be understood not only as a social and fraternal organization, but also as a deeply rooted cultural movement.19