L I B RARY OF THE UN IVERSITY OF ILLINOIS "R3GK. cop. 2. r ILLINOIS HISTORY SURVEY LIBRARY The Ku Klux Klan In American Politics By ARNOLD S. RICE INTRODUCTION BY HARRY GOLDEN Public Affairs Press, Washington, D. C. TO ROSE AND DAVE, JESSIE AND NAT -AND, OF COURSE, TO MARCIA Copyright, 1962, by Public Affairs Press 419 New Jersey Avenue, S. E., Washington 3, D.C. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 61-8449 Ste3 >. V INTRODUCTION There is something quite frightening about this book. It is not so much that Dr. Rice recounts some of the brutalities and excesses of the Ku Klux Klan or even that he measures the intelligence of those who led the cross-burners as wanting; indeed, those of us who lived through the "kleagling" of the 1920's remember that the Klansmen, while not men, weren't boys either. What is frightening is the amount of practical action the successors to the Klan have learned from it. They have learned not only from the Klan's mistakes but from the Klan's successes. Fortunately, neither the John Birch Society nor the White Citizens Councils nor the revivified Klan nor the McCarthyites have learned well enough to grasp ultimate power. All of them, however, have learned enough so that they are more than an annoyance to the democratic process. Just how successful was the Klan? It never played a crucial role in a national election. The presence of Klansmen on the floor of a national political convention often succeeded in watering down the anti-Klan plank but national candidates, if they chose, could casti- gate the Klan at will. In the presidential campaign of 1928 between Alfred E. Smith and Herbert Hoover, the Klan helped bring the virulency of anti-Catholicism to a fever point, but that virulency was always there and it was not strictly that virulency which lost Al Smith the White House. True, Klan propaganda may have helped Smith lose the electoral votes of five traditionally Democratic Southern states but Republicans and prosperity really dealt him the loss. If Daniel Boone had been running on the Democratic ticket in 1928 he would have been swamped, too. Nor was the Klan ever notably successful in state politics. Their politicking rarely won consistent effects and often resulted in abject failure: vide Dr. Rice's summary of the election of "Ma" Ferguson in Texas in the mid 1920's. The Klan dissipated, says Dr. Rice. There were too many politicians among them and of those politicians too many were simply stupid. But where the Klan was successful was in local politics. In many Southern States, in Indiana, Ohio, and New Jersey, at the precinct level the Klan was not only a potent political force, it was the electorate. Whole police departments were composed of Klansmen and the municipal committees were Hi iv INTRODUCTION composed of Klansmen and the mayor and the dog catcher, if not Klansmen too, were dependent upon Klansmen's favor. The Klan was most successful when it espoused Americanism rather than specific candidates at the state and national level. The John Birch Society which inundates its secret cells with a continuous flow of reading material learned this from the Klan; and the White Citizens Councils, whom Hodding Carter calls the "uptown Klan", imitate the Klan when they solicit doctors and other professional men before starting their larger recruiting drive for members. Why then do they never succeed to ultimate power? They fail really because they themselves become a national issue before they can create a national issue to their liking. The Klansmen loved tar and feathering, floggings, kidnappings and night riding expeditions. Thus, they made violence a national issue. The White Citizens Councils did not move to disperse the mobs which con- gregated around the public schools when the lone Negro child walked into it and they too made mob action not only a national but an international issue. Because they are a secret society the John Birch Society has made the mistake no public society would ever have committed: Robert Welch, their leader, called Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles Communists (to my mind Mr. Welch is a lot like the old-fashioned hoopskirt in that he covers everything but touches nothing). And the late Senator Joe McCarthy became a national issue because he was a Republican in a Republican Administration and while I am aware that the decency and honesty of the politicians received the bravos for discrediting him, I believe the instinct for self-preservation, which runs high in all politicians, should get some share of this glory, too. Dr. Rice, whose book is economical yet inclusive, offers up several reasons why men did don silly robes and masks and burn crosses on the hillside. They are all cogent and I do not wish to anticipate his way of telling his story, but, in conclusion, I would like to touch on one reason he does not mention. America was the first moral idea among nations and being an American is a heady moral experience. It is so heady an experience that literally it drives some people insane. The experience is too much for them and they don foolish costumes and invent an equally foolish nomenclature and yet, possibly because their wellsprings are American, they manage for a short while, to terrorize the rest of us. We had best understand them. Habby Golden Charlotte, North Carolina PREFACE The Ku Klux Klan of the twentieth century has been a many-sided organization. Comprising its creed have been a half dozen or so tenets. To carry out its program based upon these articles of faith, the secret order has used a variety of political methods. Unfortunately, the Klan has left the scantiest amount of documentary evidence con- cerning its activities. For this reason no work on the Klan—'in- cluding this one—can pretend to be truly comprehensive. Contrary to general belief, Klanism has been nationwide. In practi- cally every state of the union there have existed local chapters. In- deed, on the Pacific coast and in the Middle West in the 1920's the secret order achieved tremendous power and success. Nevertheless, it is a matter of historical record that the Klan has been predominantly a southern phenomenon. The brain of the Klan, the heart of the Klan are stamped "Dixie." Therefore, this work necessarily lays stress on Klanism in the South. As used herein the term "the South" refers to thirteen states—the eleven states that comprised the Confederacy plus two of the border slave states which held for the Union during the Civil War, Maryland and Kentucky. While the other border slave states of 1861-1865, Dela- ware and Missouri, and the post-bellum state Oklahoma are sometimes considered with West Virginia to be a part of the twentieth century South, Klan influence in those states has not been strong enough to warrant detailed treatment. The period from 1915 to the present is covered herein. Both cere- monially and legally, 1915 marks the beginning of the secret order pat- terned after the Ku Klux Klan of Reconstruction days. In a sense 1960. is of terminal significance since a Catholic was chosen President of the United States despite all the efforts of the Klan to prevent his election. The progress of the author's research was greatly hampered by the Klan's secrecy. Moreover, because the organization has been discredit- ed, former Klansmen have been unwilling to discuss with outsiders their recollections of the inner workings of the order. In addition, the personal papers of ex-Klansmen relating to their activities in the — vi PREFACE fraternity have either been destroyed or kept hidden. Thus writing this book has been far from easy. Happily, many individuals have given me generous assistance journalists and historians, librarians who made every effort to satisfy my requests for source materials, fellow teachers who read individual chapters and commented thereon, relatives and friends who gave me lodging while I was away from home doing research. But there are two people to whom I owe especial thanks for the completion of this book. One is Dr. Chase C. Mooney, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University. A critic extraordinary, he always counselled, never prescribed. The other is Marcia Griff Rice, my wife. As research assistant, grammarian, and literary stylist, she con- tributed vastly more than a husband had the right to expect. Arnold S. Rice Colonia, New Jersey CONTENTS i Historical Background 1 II Expansion in the 1920's 13 V The Klan Enters the Political Arena 30 IV Local Chapter Antics 38 v Statewide Activities 58 VI Debut in National Politics 74 VII War Against Al Smith 85 VIII Disrepute and Decline 92 IX A Splintered Body 108 References 130 Index 140 Chapter I HISTORICAL BACKGROUND On Thanksgiving night, 1915, sixteen men motored from Atlanta, Georgia, to nearby Stone Mountain, a six hundred and fifty foot dome- shaped rising of solid gray granite. Stumbling in the dark on the steep, smooth stone trail, the men worked their way slowly to the broad top of the mountain. There, braving the "surging blasts of wild wintry mountain winds and ... a temperature far below freez- 1 ing," they quickly and quietly carried out their appointed tasks. Soon the small group found itself gathered under a burning wooden cross and before a hastily constructed rock altar upon which lay an American flag, an opened Bible, an unsheathed sword, and a canteen of water. A sacred oath of allegiance was taken to the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.