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Making the Invisible Empire Visible
The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
 The Ku Klux Klan is, as one historian has put it,
"America's recurring nightmare"--a repeated challenge to
American ideals of tolerance that has had extraordinary
influence in three different periods in our history. The
first came immediately after the end of the Civil War; this
first Klan mobilized white Southerners who instigated a
reign of terror against black Americans (and white
Republicans) in an ultimately successful effort to
re-establish white supremacy in the South. In the 1950s and
1960s, the "invisible empire," as the Klan called itself,
returned to the South in a desperate--and now ultimately
unsuccessful--effort to block the Civil Rights movement from
finally winning formal equality for black Americans.
Although these two racist and Southern Klans shape
our popular images of the KKK, the era in which the Klan
attracted its largest membership was the 1920s. And,
interestingly, the 1920s Klan was not centered in the South,
nor was its ideology as single-mindedly focused on race.
Nevertheless, the initial impetus was both Southern and
racist. It was revived in the aftermath of D. W. Griffith's
wildly popular 1915 silent film, Birth of the Nation,
which presented the late nineteenth-century Klan in a heroic
light, and the man who got it started was William Simmons, a
former Methodist minister from Georgia. But when the real
growth came in the 1920s, the Klan spread well beyond the
South. More than three million Americans joined; many of
them were urban residents and it won political power in such
non-Southern states as Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon. In
this period, its public statements were more likely to
attack Jews, Catholics, and immigrants than African
Americans.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the great size and
influence of the 1920s Klan, historians have not been able
to agree on its central values and its larger significance.
The traditional interpretation, as historian Leonard J.
Moore writes, sees the 1920s Klan as "the story of a
backward segment of American society, one trapped by
economic insecurity, dying small-town ways, and an inability
to adjust psychologically to the 'modern age' which seemed
to emerge so clearly in the decade before the Great
Depression." In different ways, this interpretation of the
1920s Klan as backward looking, irrational, and a reflection
of "status anxiety"is echoed in the work of many prominent
historians of the 1950s, including Richard Hofstadter, John
Higham, William Leuchtenberg, and John D. Hicks.
Moore himself, who is the author of a study of the
Klan in Indiana, favors a different interpretation, which
depicts the 1920s Klan in "populist" terms. He and some
other recent historians (including Robert Alan Goldberg and
Shawn Lay) have argued that "the Klan served different
purposes in different communities, but that in general, it
represented mainstream social and political concerns, not
those of a disaffected fringe group. Prohibition
enforcement, crime, and a variety of other community issues
seemed most responsible for the Klan's great popularity in
these states and communities." Without excusing the racism
and nativism of 1920s Klansmen, historians like Moore want
to downplay the centrality of ethnic and racial bias to Klan
activities and to present the men and women of the Klan as
more ordinary representatives of their time. "The Klan,"
Moore concludes, "appears to have acted as a kind of
interest group for the average white Protestant who believed
that his values should be dominant in American society. . .
. The Klan became a means through which average citizens
could resist elite political domination and attempt to make
local and even state governments more responsive to popular
interests." [353]
Populists? Reactionaries? Racists? Nativists?
Extremists? Which interpretation is right? This excursion
allows you to consider a range of different documents from
the period and reach your own conclusions about the nature
and significance of the 1920s Klan.
The Klansman's Manual, the first
document included here, provides some support for both
interpretations of the Klan. On the one hand, this 1925
manual, which all members were supposed to study and learn,
is reminiscent of other fraternal organization such as the
Masons or Odd Fellows with their elaborate rituals, symbols,
titles, and secret handshakes. (The sale of Klan regalia and
the collection of membership dues made some Klan leaders
wealthy.) On the other hand, the manual equally reflects a
deepseated commitment to racism and nativism. The document
casually mixes together a dedication to protecting
"children, the disabled, and other helpless ones" and to
upholding "the God-given supremacy of the white race."
The second document--some excerpts from a weekly
Klan bulletin, The Imperial
Nighthawk--even more forcefully suggests the seeming
"normality" of the Klan. These chatty notes suggest that
Klan membership in many communities was quite respectable
with members donating flags to schools and carrying fiery
crosses of roses to local funerals. Note also their use of
modern advertising techniques--searchlights illuminating a
white-robed horseman and an airplane bearing a fiery
cross--as well their description of a Missouri Klan chapter
as "a very progressive organization." Yet, the final
sentence indicates that not all Americans viewed the Klan in
quite so benevolent terms.
It was long believed that Klansmen were more likely
to come from fundamentalist and evangelical Protestant
churches, but statistical studies do not bear this out.
Historian Leonard Moore compared the religious affiliations
of Klansmen from Richmond, Indiana with that industrial city
as a whole and concludes that it appealed "across
denominational lines." Fundamentalist churches were not
important in the city or in the Klan, and the organization
even appealed to Richmond's Quakers. Other studies bear out
these conclusions about the breadth of the Klan's support.
But that conclusion must always be qualified--the Klan
appealed to a cross-section of white Protestants, not a
cross-section of all Americans.
Given that the Klan often reflected a cross-section
of the community, its members were often deeply embedded in
the local power structure. In Atlanta, Georgia, the Klan
pervaded the political and legal system--Klansmen filled
prominent positions in the police, the courts, and the city
government. Newspapers sanctioned their activities and
important local businesses like Coca-Cola advertised in
their publication. In this interview, Harold Sheats, the
former City Attorney of East Point, a town outside Atlanta
explains, that he joined the Klan when he realized that many
other city officials were already members.
An explicit version of the anti-immigrant and
racist ideology of the Klan is in this speech, which is
probably delivered by Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans.
"Our unity is threatened by hordes of immigrants . . .
who bring foreign ideas and ideals into our land," he
intones. "Two things must be done: first, we must stop
influx of foreigners; second, we must through education,
bring all people to common program of acting and thinking."
Is there anyway to reconcile these different
conflicting portraits of the Klan? In a recent study of the
Klan in Georgia, Nancy MacLean offers one possibility. She
argues against what she sees as "false polarities, which
have dominated thinking about the Klan." Instead, she finds
a "basic consistency" in a world view she calls "reactionary
populism," which combined "the anti-elitism characteristic
of populism" with "the commitment to enforce the
subordination of whole groups of people." The Klan, she
writes, "was at once mainstream and extreme, hostile to big
business and to industrial unions, anti-elitist and hateful
of blacks and immigrants, pro-law and order and prone to
extralegal violence. If scholars have viewed these
attributes as incompatible, Klansmen themselves did not."
A. "A Real Brotherhood" for
"Eternal Maintenance of White Supremacy:" The Klansman
Manual
These excerpts from a 1925 edition of the
Klansman's Manual reflects some of the basic principles and
organizing devices of the 1920s Klan.
B. "A Very Progressive
Organization?" Notes from a Klan Newspaper
These excerpts from The Imperial Nighthawk of June
13, 1923 emphasize the ways that the Klan saw itself as a
social club that played an "ordinary role" in different
communities--contributing flags to local schools, for
example. Yet the last sentence suggests that not every
member of these communities viewed them so positively.
E. Why I Joined the Klan: The Confessions of A Georgia
Klansman
In this interview, Harold Sheats, the city Attorney
of a town adjacent to Atlanta, explains how he came to join
the Klan after learning that many other city officials also
belonged. |
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