Ku Klux Kulture Read online

  That search for a unique selling point meant, often, a move toward the tabloid model. Newspapers like the New York Daily News and Evening Graphic had an immediate and enduring impact on the style of the American press. Headlines heaped across the crowded newsstand increasingly vied to catch the eye, to shock or titillate or amuse. “Ballyhoo” journalism, often witty and sharp, sought to grab your attention in short bursts of scandal and melodrama. If you weren’t drawn to the writing, perhaps the photographs would seize your interest, as pictures had become the prime weapon in the arsenal of newspaper competition. Sex and death and everything in between, just as it happened—or even as it might have happened, as the Graphic pioneered its faked “composographs.”6

  The 1920s also saw shifts in press content. Led by publications like the New York Sun in the late nineteenth century, the definition of news had long since expanded to encompass anything that might fit the “man bites dog” model. A survey of sixty-three leading newspapers between 1899 and 1923 shows that coverage of crime, for instance, increased 53 percent. The postwar period represented the consolidation and expansion of this trend as readers displayed a keen appetite for sensationalist news that took in everything from celebrity gossip to national tragedies and dramatic murder trials. Even as more and more newspapers filled their inside pages with recipes, “Bright Sayings from Children,” humor columns, and more, their headlines feasted on grand melodrama, soap operas of the front page. One of the most heavily covered stories of the decade was the 1927 trial of Ruth Snyder and her lover for the murder of Snyder’s husband. The relatively inconsequential but lurid murder case in Queens transfixed the nation. The clamor over the Daily News photograph of Ruth Snyder’s execution, smuggled from the death chamber, solidified the tabloid model. The execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti the same year barely registered in comparison. In this changing newspaper industry, reporters and editors soon found that coverage of the Klan fit neatly into the sensationalistic new business model.7

  The almost inexhaustible public appetite for news of the Ku Klux Klan first revealed itself in the New York World exposé series of September 1921. The organization had previously attracted little more than occasional comment, largely from Southern or African American publications. Nonetheless, the newly appointed editor of the World, Herbert Bayard Swope, was convinced that a major feature, “The Whole Truth” of the Klan, would be both a journalistic scoop and a massive draw for readers. Before the first article was even printed, the World had promoted it for days in full-page advertisements and agreed on a syndication deal with seventeen other prominent dailies, for a total claimed circulation of almost two million.8

  Beginning September 6, 1921, the World relegated all other news to a secondary concern for almost three weeks as headlines touted the “Secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.” Even the arrest of film star “Fatty” Arbuckle for murder partway through the series—a story that dominated the tabloid press—barely warranted a mention on the front page of the World. Article after article detailed the Klan’s secret code words, its overheated rhetoric of bigotry, and its links to vigilante violence. In doing so, the hyperbolic attack on “the most dangerous secret agency of super-government that has ever developed within the Republic” became a smash hit.9

  Plaudits from public figures as varied as ex-governor Alfred Smith, suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch, labor leader Samuel Gompers, and Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld filled the pages of the World. Reprinted editorials gave the newspaper “the thanks of the country” for the “journalistic coup.” One newspaper even went so far as to claim that “no greater public service has ever been rendered.” In Chicago, demand for the series was reportedly so widespread that “local dealers find it impossible to fill the orders.” In Detroit, copies allegedly sold for as high as fifty cents—twenty-five times their cover value. When the series is taken as a whole, historians have estimated that it increased the World’s circulation by more than a hundred thousand readers.10

  Whether or not this circulation boost was directly attributable to the series, the Hearst syndicate, one of the most powerful newspaper chains in the country, certainly believed that coverage of the Klan was responsible for the World’s success. The chain’s New York morning daily, the American, soon joined the fray with its own series of articles on the Ku Klux Klan’s “executive abuses.” As Imperial Wizard William J. Simmons later testified, William Randolph Hearst could not bear “seeing the World each day in big handsful taking his circulation away.” As a result, the newspaper magnate, “for cash profits, also attacked the Klan.” While the American’s series was less popular than the World’s smash hit, Hearst’s engagement with the Invisible Empire at least seemingly staunched the loss of readers to the competition. The perception that coverage of the Klan could boost circulation also started a rush to ape the World’s success. By 1923, one pro-Klan publication noted that readers would “find more Ku Klux Klan news printed in a week in the New York and Boston papers than in” the pages of a Klan newspaper.11

  The World and its syndication affiliates, and the subsequent campaign by Hearst, had seemingly proven that attacking the Klan could sell newspapers. As the ensuing surge in Klan membership demonstrated, however, these exposés had also proven that newspaper condemnation did very little to actually hurt the organization. In many ways, this coverage may have spurred the movement forward. The danger of providing publicity, even negative publicity, to a group that might otherwise have had only limited appeal was quickly evident. The unrelenting appearance of the Klan in the national press following the World series kept the organization in the public eye as new members kept flooding in.

  Nonetheless, the desire—the necessity—of gaining an advantage over their sensationalistic competitors meant not only that the nation’s newspapers failed to administer a “drubbing” to the Klan in the 1920s, but that their coverage of the organization often gave fuel to the wider movement. The primary aim for the overwhelming majority of publishers and editors was to increase sales. Even as coverage of the Klan became near-universal, the shape of that coverage was far from uniform in the competition for readers. As a Klan official noted in 1924, “The press of the nation seems to have no fixed plan of campaign.” Condemnation coexisted and often comingled with fascination, endorsement, and even admiration.12

  “Open and vehement attack,” following the model established by the World’s exposé, was a popular choice for many newspapers whose dramatic denunciations of the Klan found an avid readership. The Boston Advertiser’s “seven-column screamer in seventy-two point type” on the front page was a fairly typical example. By the end of September 1921, Literary Digest was providing summaries of the “sudden, violent and widespread press attack on the Klan’s methods” that had appeared around the country. By 1923, Frank R. Kent of the Baltimore Sun bemoaned the fact that “scarcely a newspaper is printed that does not daily blaze with indignation over the iniquities of the Klan.” This keen interest also extended to the increasingly competitive magazine market, as the Nation, New Republic, and Atlantic Monthly called for the exposure of the Klan’s “shams, sophistry, un-Americanism and evil.”13

  Some leavened these attacks on the Klan with mockery. Humorist Don Marquis used his popular newspaper characters Archy and Mehitabel to attack the organization, from poems on the organization of the “Ku Klux Klam” to fight oysters to pieces lampooning an organization “founded on Assonance, Asininity, and Alliteration.” Rollin Kirby’s biting cartoons ridiculed Klansmen for the New York World, as did Jefferson Machamer in the New York Tribune (see fig. 2.1), the Chicago Tribune’s Clare Briggs, and the Pittsburgh Courier’s Wilbert Holloway. Satirist James J. Montague wrote a widely republished poem bemoaning the occasion that his beagle bit a Kleagle. A writer for Collier’s claimed the Klan provided the “broad burlesque” and “delicious whimsicality” of the best newspaper comic strips. Yet this ridicule quickly proved equally ineffective at harming the growing Klan movement. As George Jean Nathan noted
, the organization “could withstand ridicule to the end of its days and prosper in the midst of the thickest bombardment of custard tarts.”14

  Figure 2.1. Detail of Jefferson Machamer cartoon. From New York Tribune, December 27, 1922.

  Others saw no humor in the situation at all, and were firmly uninterested in questions of profit. The most implacable assault on the Ku Klux Klan came from the American Unity League (AUL), a coalition of predominantly Catholic and Jewish community leaders in Chicago. The AUL’s weekly newspaper, Tolerance, was dedicated solely to exposing the Klan—one member at a time if necessary (see fig. 2.2). The first issue appeared on newsstands in Chicago on September 17, 1922, naming more than a 150 Chicagoans as Klan members. Within five months, the newspaper had printed the names of 4,000 alleged Klansmen in the Midwest and garnered a claimed circulation of 150,000.15

  Figure 2.2. Tolerance, July 8, 1923.

  Despite this apparent success, Tolerance did not last long. The newspaper’s editorial staff was less than meticulous in the difficult task of double-checking whether the names they printed truly were Klansmen. This tendency became ruinous with the publication of Tolerance’s 1922 New Year’s Eve issue, which named millionaire gum manufacturer William Wrigley Jr. as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Wrigley, declaring that the signature on his alleged application was a “rank forgery,” promptly filed a fifty-thousand-dollar lawsuit against the AUL. Although others had sued the newspaper before for naming them, Wrigley’s suit was by far the largest. Heavily publicized, it inspired a flood of similar, successful suits and saw the newspaper’s editorial board collapse into infighting. To add insult to injury, the aggrieved editor of Tolerance, Grady Rutledge, began working with Chicago Klansmen to publish a series of stories that targeted the AUL as “intolerant fanatics.”16

  Even with the failure of Tolerance, condemnation of the Klan was so prevalent that during the decade five newspapers won Pulitzers for their work combating the organization. Setting the standard, the New York World was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1922 for its initial series. A year later, the Memphis Commercial Appeal was awarded the Public Service prize for the work of editor Charles P. J. Mooney and cartoonist J. P. Alley. In 1928, the Montgomery Advertiser won the Pulitzer for Editorial Writing for denunciations of “gangsterism, floggings, and racial and religious intolerance,” while the Indianapolis Times won the Pulitzer for Public Service for “exposing political corruption in Indiana,” much of which was related to earlier Klan involvement in public affairs.17

  The most relentless of the Pulitzer winners was the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, from the Klan’s home state of Georgia. The newspaper had actually launched its initial attack on the organization months before the World’s expose, and was the only newspaper in Georgia to reprint the New York paper’s series. Circulation dropped by an estimated 20 percent, and advertisers abandoned the newspaper in droves. When the series ended, more than a hundred Klansmen paraded up and down in front of the newspaper’s offices in an attempt to intimidate the newsmen. Publisher Julian Harris, undeterred, stood in front of the building with his city editor and wrote down names, pretending to recognize Klansmen as they went past, until the parade disbanded. When Klan members took more direct action—including throwing sand and oil into the newspaper’s presses—some of the paper’s staff began carrying handguns for protection.18

  The Enquirer-Sun’s greatest triumph came in 1924, when Harris forced Georgia governor Clifford Walker to admit not only that he was a Klansman but also that he had lied about his whereabouts to the press so that he could address the Second Imperial Klonvokation of the Klan. In a telling indication of public sentiment, though, not only was Walker not then impeached, he was overwhelmingly reelected later the same year. While not winning any friends in his home state, Harris attracted much praise from the press outside Georgia. When the Enquirer-Sun was finally awarded the Pulitzer in 1926, Mencken and the American Mercury noted that its articles “of a daring and unprecedented character” had made Harris’s local daily “the most quoted and probably the most influential newspaper south of the Potomac.”19

  The experience of the Enquirer-Sun was certainly influential, but perhaps not in quite the way Mencken might have imagined. As Tolerance had shown, the Enquirer-Sun also showed that filling a newspaper with attacks on the Klan—even dedicating an entire newspaper to the task—could attract plaudits, but could lose readers. As the World had shown, it could also bring new attention to the Invisible Empire. In doing so, condemnation often proved an ineffective and even counterproductive tactic. A study of the Klan in Dallas found that press attacks on the Klan in that city had most likely “inadvertently enhanced the membership” of the organization. A high-ranking Klansman claimed that the press had, “more than any one agency, increased the membership” of the Klan, receiving for nothing, and “still receiving daily, advertisement that is worth millions in cold cash.” Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans boasted in 1924 of the “fifty million dollars’ worth of free advertising” that the newspapers had provided. Frank R. Kent of the anti-Klan Baltimore Sun agreed, complaining in 1923 that the Klan would already have collapsed “if not continuously stimulated by the hysteria of the press.”20

  Klan members understood that this constant and increasing coverage worked largely to their benefit. One ex-Klansman, Edgar Allen Booth, claimed that the Klan organization dealt very deliberately in provocative statements, knowing they would garner front-page headlines. If it was indeed a conscious tactic, it was a highly successful one, alienating those who disagreed with the organization’s principles but garnering them valuable exposure on a regular basis. Any publicity, it seemed, was good publicity. As the Klan grew through the early 1920s, though, that publicity was increasingly positive.21

  Part of this change was an awareness by much of the Klan leadership of the importance of good public relations. One Imperial Klan representative advised his fellow members that “the time is ripe for a closer co-operation between newspapers the country over and the Klan.” Another advised members to abandon the reflexive response to “berate the daily newspapers.” Instead, it made “good sense to work with rather than against them.” After all, with the cooperation of the press, the Klan would “much more rapidly attain a position of dominance in the life of the nation.” Thus, the supposedly Invisible Empire assiduously courted the publicity and worked to woo newspapers wherever possible.22

  The organization could, to some extent, rely on a significant portion of the press that offered more than tacit support for the aims and ideals of the Klannish movement. The most open of these were the numerous anti-Catholic publications that predated the Klan’s resurgence. Senator Tom Watson’s quixotic Columbia Sentinel in Georgia was an early example that followed the pattern of Watson’s earlier Jeffersonian. The old Populist was joined by the likes of Judge Gilbert O. Nations’s Protestant in the District of Columbia, William Parker’s New Menace in Missouri, Reverend Bob Shuler’s Shuler’s Magazine in Los Angeles, William Lloyd Clark’s Rail Splitter in Illinois, and Bishop Alma White’s Good Citizen in New Jersey.

  Most of these publications owed no formal allegiance to the Klan. On numerous occasions, they made their displeasure with the organization clear when they felt it had failed to live up to expectations. The New Menace, for example, would later turn against the Invisible Empire, claiming that the “unscrupulous bunch of scoundrels” were now in collusion with Catholics. Yet these publications became the organization’s unofficial champions as part of their larger agenda of intolerance, and may have better reflected the lived ideology of the wider Klan movement than many official publications. Klan members were avid subscribers. More importantly, these publications were a valuable means of reaching nonmembers. Many Klans used them as recruiting aids. Editors like William Parker were invited to lecture on behalf of the Klan and attracted huge crowds. The King Kleagle of Tennessee described publications like the Protestant as “the most valuable dope” for communicating with a wider audie
nce. Such publications allowed the Klan to reach not just members of the organization, but sympathizers with the movement.23

  Nor was this reach limited to these kinds of specialized publications. Scores of local newspapers promoted the Klan and its goals. The oddest example of this tendency appeared in the otherwise liberal New York Evening Post almost a year before the World’s series. For three months, the newspaper ran Our Ku Klux Klan, a cartoon strip by Alfred Ablitzer under the name “Al Zere.” The strip portrayed the Klan as lovable and admirable helpers who banded together to aid others with familiar comic problems. These ranged from irascible relatives (the Klan saved a man from his mother-in-law’s visit by forcing her onto a train home) to the idle rich (kidnapping a “lounge lizard” and delivering him to a factory to be put to work) to daily annoyances (abducting a noisy trumpet-playing neighbor and abandoning him on a mountaintop).24

  Most publications were more serious in their encouragement of the Klan. The Public Journal in Virginia officially changed its front-page affiliation from “Independent” to “Independent and Ku Klux Klan.” A front-page editorial in the Kentucky Democrat declared that “after careful and unbiased study,” the editor was “unable to find any fault” with the principles of the organization. In Ohio, the Noble County Leader noted that the Klan’s activities had its “endorsement and commendation,” while the Oskaloosa Independent provided a “tardy and long-needed defense of the Klan.” In Indiana, the Kokomo Daily Tribune, Richmond Evening Item, and Franklin Evening Star “openly gushed enthusiasm for the Klan’s appearance in their communities.”25