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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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