Ku Klux Kulture Read online

  A number of journalists and editors were also themselves Klansmen, and duly influenced the nature of their newspaper’s coverage. For several years, the managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution was the brother of Imperial Kleagle Edward Young Clarke, who had also worked as a reporter on the newspaper. Philip E. Fox served as managing editor of the Dallas Daily Times-Herald, a major city daily, until he became the Klan’s national public relations director in 1923. At least one of the reporters for the Indianapolis Star openly admitted that he was a Klansman, while the editors of the Arizona Gazette, the Daily Sentinel in Colorado, the Fremont Times-Indicator in Michigan, and the Orange County Plain Dealer in California were all known to be members of the Klan. The editor of the Marylander and Herald revealed his Klan membership in particularly dramatic fashion with an editorial entitled “A Klansman I Am.” These explicit endorsements of either the movement’s ideals or the organization itself expanded the imagined community of Klannish support to encompass readers across the country.26

  In the case of those whose sympathies were more pliable, the Ku Klux Klan thoroughly embraced the power of modern advertising. In the competitive marketplace of the 1920s, advertising revenue was increasingly crucial to the success of newspapers and magazines, allowing them to reduce subscription and newsstand prices to reach a far greater audience. This was particularly evident in popular magazines, which saw the pages dedicated to advertising—and the revenue gained—expand exponentially. The Saturday Evening Post grew so full of advertising that merchants allegedly bought the periodical in bulk as a cheap means of obtaining scrap paper. One executive summed up the trend with a claim that content no longer mattered. Magazines were simply “a device to induce people to read advertising.”27

  As more and more money went toward this end, advertising became increasingly sophisticated. Roland Marchand has noted that advertising in the twenties was a Zerrspiegel, a distorted mirror, which would reflect not reality as it was, but the reality that the reader wished for. No longer were these advertisements selling goods. They were selling lives, aspirations, dreams—and they were incredibly effective at doing so. The Klan was no exception. What would sell hats would also sell hates.28

  The opening salvo in this approach even predated the World series. Before becoming the Klan’s propagandists, Imperial Kleagle Edward Young Clarke and his partner, Elizabeth Tyler, had run a successful public relations firm. Experienced in dealing with newspapers, they perceptively recognized the benefits of national advertising, and ran copy in publications in Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, and a number of other cities. Clarke and Tyler also had the foresight to outsource much of this advertising work to add a veneer of respectability. Most was handled by the Massengale Agency of Georgia, which also represented local businesses like Coca-Cola. In a reflection of the ever-shifting cultural currents of the time, some of the work apparently also went to the influential Lord & Thomas Agency in Chicago. Lord & Thomas was not only the second largest advertising agency in the country in the 1920s; it was also headed by the influential Albert Lasker, the “father of modern advertising” and one of the few Jewish executives in the industry at the time.29

  While some newspapers rejected the opportunity, many were tempted by Imperial Wizard Simmons’s claim that the Klan had more than a hundred thousand dollars to spend on publicity. In a display of either staggering bravado or remarkable ignorance, Lord & Thomas even offered a recruiting advertisement to the New York World to carry on the same day the newspaper’s well-publicized exposé series was set to begin. Despite such missteps, the venture was a seeming success. One publicity professional even opined that the “power of advertising” was solely responsible for the Klan’s initial growth, calling it “the greatest selling campaign in recent history.”30

  Throughout the 1920s, both the national Klan and local branches used advertising liberally as a means of promotion. These advertisements were not always accepted. More often, though, newspapers were all too willing to take the Klan’s business. A widely distributed two-column advertisement in 1923 shored up an imagined Klannish self-image, boasting of the virtues of members and “correcting false and malicious propaganda.” Local Klaverns around the country even used the newspapers to publicly advertise their meetings, albeit often eliding the precise location.31

  Where the carrot failed, the stick was put into play. In some cases, this meant a physical threat. Texan Klan leader H. C. McCall (soon to become a high-ranking member of the Klan’s national organization) was fond of concocting baroque threats against Clifton F. Richardson of the Houston Informer, the second-largest African American newspaper in the state and a relentless critic of the Klan.32 George R. Dale, editor of Indiana’s Muncie Post-Democrat, was allegedly attacked and harassed by Klan members for years. Memorably, a severed human hand accompanied a threatening note to Messenger editor A. Philip Randolph.33

  Violent incidents, however, were few and far between. The economic threat was far more powerful. Purchasing advertisements in the press had the dual benefit of disseminating the organization’s message while also rendering the publication considerably less liable to antagonize its new source of income. This was reflective of a growing trend that reached far beyond those who had accepted the Klan’s advertising funds. As magazines and newspapers progressively came to depend on the economic support of advertising executives, publishers and editors were increasingly conscious of the reader as a consumer. Alienating consumers meant losing much-needed advertising revenue. Any kind of controversy risked financial ruin. As the Lynds noted in their study of the newspapers in Middletown, “Independence of editorial comment happens to be in rough inverse proportion to the amount of advertising carried.” To lean neutral or conservative on social issues—including the Klan—was simply playing it safe. After all, as Klan officials were careful to remind editors and publishers, there were many readers sympathetic to the Invisible Empire’s ideals. The movement’s reach extended far beyond the organization’s membership.34

  At the most basic level, consumers simply complained. The South Bend Tribune in Indiana was deluged with phone calls protesting its policy on the Klan. The Klan in Lynchburg, Virginia, adopted a resolution condemning the Associated Press for only circulating reports that ignored the organization’s “constructive” efforts. The resolution was sent to local newspapers as well as the AP itself. Klan members in Carlock, Illinois, formed a committee to approach the publisher of the local newspaper about “unrespectable articles” that had been printed. The meeting was apparently a success, as the publisher assured the committee that “nothing of this nature” would appear in future.35

  When complaints proved ineffective, the boycott rarely failed. Some were able to withstand the pressure. One of the reasons Mencken had pointed to the Columbus Enquirer-Sun as an example was the fact that Harris had continued his campaign against the Klan despite losing more than 20 percent of his readers. Similarly, despite the substantial loss in circulation and advertising revenue suffered by the South Bend Tribune after the Indiana Women’s Klan launched a boycott, the paper continued to publish anti-Klan articles. Most were less hardy.36

  Even for nonmembers, the Klan issue was serious business. One female subscriber to the South Bend Tribune told a circulation agent for the newspaper that she had been a consistent reader for sixteen years, but was stopping her subscription until the Tribune favored the Klan rather than opposing it. The Indianapolis News lost fifteen hundred subscribers after just one article containing “a minor misstatement of fact” was seen as unfavorable by members of the Invisible Empire. The newspaper largely ignored the Klan thereafter. A sales agent for the Daily Oklahoman claimed the newspaper’s attacks on “a certain secret fraternal organization” had meant circulation “diminished considerably.” Editors of Tennessee’s Johnson City Staff had to “put a muzzle on the paper” when their advertisers suggested that the publisher “lay off” the Klan. When the Dallas Morning News reprinted the World series, Klan members and their alli
es canceled subscriptions, deluged the newspaper with letters questioning the religious affiliation of the editors, boycotted businesses that continued to advertise in it, and even threatened sales agents for the News with bodily violence. By 1923, circulation had dropped precipitously, and cash reserves had all but disappeared, prompting the owner of the News to sell off one of its smaller affiliates and have editors discontinue their attacks on the Klan.37

  The threat was clear. Overt anti-Klan sentiment could attract readers, but also lose them. At the same time, overtly pro-Klan sentiment could both draw and repel readers. As an increasingly large segment of the press had realized by 1922, however, staking out a position was not the only way to entice readers. As more and more articles appeared on Klan parades, rallies, charitable efforts, initiations, church visits, cross burnings, and more, it seemed to many that “chronicles of Klan activities” could boost circulation with or without editorial comment. A neutral approach, then, would allow publishers to have the best of both worlds—the readership that came with coverage of the Klan without the danger of having to take a side. What that meant in reality was tacit support for the Klannish movement. With story after story portraying it as an influential and popular organization, many newspapers created an image of the Klan as an accepted and even admirable part of American culture.38

  This implicit endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan was not an unconscious, or uncontroversial, decision. The Pittsburgh Courier, an African American weekly, complained loudly of the “notoriety” afforded the Klan by the unceasing press fascination with the organization. Every time Klan members paraded, held an initiation, or participated in anything remotely newsworthy, they garnered “great head lines” and “liberal space” within the newspapers. Even if those newspapers opposed the Klan, the editorial policy would be “drowned in the mire on the first page.” If the press continued to look only at the readership (and, by extension, the money) garnered by these “scoops” as “the criterion by which journalistic success is to be measured,” the Courier warned, then “the end is in plain view.”39

  A survey of the press of the 1920s shows, though, that it was a relative minority that did not care “more for pocketbook than for principle.” The vast majority of those that did refuse to treat the Klan’s activities as news were black, Catholic, and Jewish publications. While there was no single, unified response to the Klan from members of these communities, there was a distinct trend in these newspapers and magazines to refuse to grant column inches to Klan activities. Mentions of the Klan were largely confined to the editorial page. When news articles on the Klan did appear, they were almost uniformly descriptions of its failures or reprints of denunciations.40

  Writing in the American Ecclesiastical Review, an influential Catholic theological journal, Reverend Thomas M. Conroy of Fort Wayne, Indiana, noted that the “wide and intensive publicity bestowed upon the Klan” had made it “a live subject.” To combat it effectively, Conroy argued, the answer was not more publicity. John B. Kennedy made a similar observation in the national Jesuit weekly America. It was “conceivable that there is less news interest in a group of Knights of Pythias bound for a clam bake than in a group of Ku-Klux Knights bound for a Nigger bake,” but there was “no question of the relative patriotic merit” of articles on each. Leading Jewish journals like the American Hebrew were similarly prudent in their approach to reporting, even as Louis Marshall of the American Jewish Committee warned that the “immediate effect” of Jewish coverage of the organization would “be to increase the numbers of the Klan.” A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen’s socialist “Journal of Scientific Radicalism,” The Messenger, simply urged its readers “not try to carry on any debating society” about the Klan. The best way to defeat the Invisible Empire would be to deny it the oxygen of publicity.41

  Nonetheless, the far more common response by newspapers was to compete for readers by lavishing attention on the Klan. “Dignified silence,” one Klansman noted, “gets a newspaper nowhere.” In doing so, editors and publishers created a press landscape that reinforced Klan power and popularity. As Mencken recognized in 1924, “Whenever the Klan wins, the fact is smeared all over the front pages of the great organs of intelligence; when it loses, which is three times as often, the news gets only a few lines.”42

  Until the late 1920s, breathless accounts of triumphal parades and rallies dominated reports on the Klan. These stories were more interested in the “picturesque” (in the words of a Washington Post headline) nature of the organization than in violent vigilantism or any ideological issues. In 1921, the Chicago Defender complained that the greater part of white Southern newspapers’ headline space was “taken up with the doings of the Klan.” By 1922, it was clear that this tendency was not limited to the South. Front-page articles across the country reported on the “mysterious” ceremonies that attracted thousands.43

  As the Klan grew, so did the events they staged—and the spectacle that surrounded them. The hyperbole of reporters increased accordingly. The age of the Klan was also the age of journalistic ballyhoo. In Minnesota, one newspaper called a massive initiation, complete with burning crosses and fireworks, “one of the most spectacular scenes ever witnessed in this part of the state.” Alabama’s Prattsville Progress made note of the “beautiful and interesting” character of a Klan initiation marked by “perfect order and good feeling,” while a reporter present for a giant initiation ceremony in Birmingham remarked that even “the most solid anti would have admitted the ceremony was impressive.”44

  Even newspapers ostensibly opposed to the Klan fell prey to the trend. The Dallas Morning News, for example, had carried the World’s series and was known as an “implacable foe” of the organization. Nonetheless, between mid-1921 and late 1924, the newspaper averaged almost an item a day on the Klan and hailed the massive initiation held at the Texas State Fair’s Klan Day as “the most colorful and unique event ever seen in the city of Dallas.” This reportage was skewed even further in the Klan’s favor by reporters who often simply accepted the organization’s own estimates of attendance at events. Space was given not only to local Klan events but also to activity of interest from all over the country. In some rural areas, even locals traveling to Klan events became news.45

  Nor was this tendency limited only to large-scale events like parades and initiations, even as they vied for recognition as the “largest ever” or “most spectacular.” One Klansman observed that newspapers around the country were “so willing to give the Klan space that they even print stories whenever a contribution is made to a pastor by Klansmen, or whenever Klansmen take part in funeral services, or call, in a body, upon an errand of mercy.” In Klan strongholds like Indiana, newspapers would publish regular front-page columns detailing upcoming Klan events and meetings. Klan officers encouraged members to approach their local newspapers about running a regular “Klan Kolumn” that would carry news of the organization and “constructive arguments for patriotic Protestant Americanism.” As this broader range of Klan activities became “news,” newspapers around the country not only reinforced the idea of the organization as exciting and popular; they also drew attention to the constructive and charitable social work that the Klan trumpeted as one of its most attractive qualities. “Similar activities by other fraternal organizations,” one Klan member noted with satisfaction, “do not usually receive so much publicity.”46

  As members of the organization quickly recognized, the apparent hunger for Klan news meant that coverage of the movement could be manipulated. The striking unanimity in early reports of Klan initiations and parades as “weird” proceedings was no coincidence. The organization was well aware that these public events were not only for the benefit of the Klan members present. They also shaped the ways in which the Klan would be represented in the wider culture, and allowed for outreach to the wider movement—constructing the imagined community of Klannishness. As such, the Klan carefully cultivated a tantalizingly mysterious atmosphere in a tactic that predated t
he World’s exposé.

  In January 1921, the “Imperial Propagation Department” of Clarke and Tyler began allowing a few short interviews with Imperial Wizard Simmons. At the end of the month, the first “open” initiation ceremony was staged at the Alabama State Fairgrounds in Birmingham. Reporters were given a prime view of the occasion, but guards were stationed to prevent any attempt to approach closer. Nonetheless, three newspapers presented unanimously positive coverage of the initiation. With this success, the Birmingham meeting set the model for a careful balancing act of secrecy and publicity.47

  Across the country, the prescribed pattern for initiations was the same: allow the public to draw close enough to spot the fires and ghostly figures and half hear the words of the rituals. Journalists were allowed a little closer to assure the event would appear in the newspaper, but not so close that they could see faces, recognize names, or be able to fully recount any of the secrets of the Klan. The requirement of “deepest secrecy” was apparently no bar to inviting favored reporters and photographers.48

  Perhaps the best recounting of the experience came from Tennessee journalist L. W. Miller. The Knoxville reporter described receiving an anonymous note inviting him to “something worth seeing.” Known to be friendly to the organization, Miller was allowed a particularly close view of a Klan initiation ceremony. Once the oath began to be recited, he was “led to the edge of the clearing where I joined my companions who had been on the outskirts.” From there, he could “scarcely distinguish the words uttered,” only catching “a few snatches”—exactly the desired effect.49

  By controlling the access reporters had to these events, Klan members clearly hoped to control the coverage they would receive in newspapers. As in the case of Miller, those friendly to the Klan were given preferential treatment. In Houston, for example, the pro-Klan Houston Post was given exclusive access to Klan events, while reporters from the anti-Klan Houston Chronicle were denied access to the “scoop.” In rural areas, prominent journalists could expect to be invited personally to events. Befitting its stature as one of the largest Klan meetings ever assembled, the “Konklave at Kokomo” featured one of the most organized attempts at controlling press coverage. Local reporters would only be allowed to attend under “special dispensation” after agreeing not to repeat the names of any speakers or participants, “other than the general officers.” In order to gain admission, newspapermen would have to act as supplicants, reporting to the Klan’s offices to receive a card allowing entry. Those who gave the Klan favorable attention would be rewarded with access. Those who had been insufficiently fawning would be excluded and lose the story.50