Daisy Douglas Barr: from Quaker to Klan “Kluckeress”
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Daisy Douglas Barr: From Quaker to Klan “Kluckeress” Dwight W.Hoover” In July, 1923, at the first annual meeting of the Grand Drag- ons of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Asheville, North Caro- lina, Daisy Douglas Barr, the only woman on the program, read a poem, “The Soul of America”: I am clothed with wisdom’s mantle; Age and experience are mine, Yet I am still in the swaddling clothes Of my existence. I am strong beyond my years; My hand typifies strength, And although untrained in cunning Its movements mark the quaking Of the enemies of my country. My eye, though covered, is all-seeing; It penetrates the dark recesses of law violation, Treason, political corruption and injustice, Causing these cowardly culprits to bare their unholy faces In the light of my all-seeing revelations. My vision is so broad That my daily meditations force upon me new problems, New situations and new obligations. My feet are swift to carry the strength of my hand And the penetrations of my all-seeing eye. My nature is serious, righteous and just, And tempered with the love of Christ. My purpose is noble, far-reaching and age-lasting. Dwight W. Hoover is professor of history and director of the Center for Mid- dletown Studies, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, LXXXVII (June, 1991) 1991, Trustees of Indiana University 172 Zndiana Magazine of History My heart is heavy, but not relenting; Sorrowful but not hopeless; Pure but ever able to master the unclean; Humble but not cowardly; Strong but not arrogant; Simple but not foolish; Ready, without fear. I am the Spirit of Righteousness. They call me the Ku Klux Klan. I am more than the uncouth robe and hood With which I am clothed. YEA, I AM THE SOUL OF AMERICA.’ Barr had come a long way to speak in Asheville, both literally and figuratively. Born Daisy Douglas Brushwiller in Jonesboro, In- diana, in 1878, she had become an evangelist at the age of sixteen and a recorded Friends minister two years later. This vigorous Hoosier Quaker was active also in Republican politics and became in the early 1920s the first woman to serve as vice-chair of the Indiana Republican party. In 1922, as the state’s key figure in women’s Ku Klux Klan activity, Barr organized the Queens of the Golden Mask and served as its Imperial Empress.2 Barr’s service as pastor of Muncie Friends Meeting and as or- ganizer of one of the Klan auxiliaries is not as disparate as might be assumed. Rather, her actions form part of one continuum. Her development as a Quaker took place amidst radical change in the Society of Friends, and Barr’s life is in many ways symptomatic of that change. Quakerism was becoming more and more a part of evangelical Protestantism, as both pastors and revivals were in- creasingly accepted. Furthermore, many members, like Barr, were being drawn from non-Quaker background^.^ As for her Klan con- nections, contrary to the contention of at least one ~cholar,~Barr did not follow her husband into the Klan but instead led him. A strong woman in her own right, she did rely upon powerful men as patrons. I Papers Read at the Meeting of Grand Dragons, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, At their First Annual Meeting held at Asheuille, North Carolina, July 1923 . ([At- lanta, 19231), 135. 2Muncie Star, April 4, 1938; Indianapolis News, April 4, 1938; Indianapolis Star, April 4, 1938. None of these accounts of the auto accident that killed Barr mentioned her connection with the Ku Klux Klan. For her Klan membership see John Augustus Davis, “The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1920-1930: An Historical Study (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Northwestern University, 1966), 141-44; Muncie Post-Democrat, January 2, 1924; Indianapolis News, July 26, 1923, January 3, 1924; Indianapolis Star, November 12, 1924. 3 See Thomas D. Hamm, The Transformation of American Quakerism: Ortho- don Friends, 1800-1907 (Bloomington, 1988). 4 For instance, Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku KlmKlan and the City, 1915-1930 (New York, 19671, 150. Daisy Douglas Burr 173 DAISYDOUGLAS BARR Reproduced from Daisy Douglas Bar, Springs That Run Dry and Other Addresses (Noblesville, Ind., n.d.),facing xvi. Although Daisy Douglas Brushwiller’s grandfather, George Douglas, was a Methodist minister, her father, John W. Brush- willer, joined the Society of Friends after service in the Civil War.5 Her mother, Sarah, who evidently made considerable impression upon her, dedicated Daisy as the seventh child to the ministry. In her early years Daisy attended both Methodist and Friends congre- gations, but at age eight she received her call to ministry during a New Castle Monthly Meeting Membership Book, 191S1932, p. 19, Indiana Yearly Meeting Archives (Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana); Rolland Lewis Whitson, ed., Centennial History of Grant County, Indiana, 1812 to 1912 . (2 vols., Chicago, 1914), 11,830-31. Such service was by no means disqualifying as the Quak- ers in Indiana had more enlistments in proportion to their membership than any other denomination in the state. See Hamm, Transformation of American Quaker- ism, 68. Parenthetically, Muncie Friends Meeting was renamed Friends Memorial in 1912. 174 Indiana Magazine of History visit to the woodshed for solitude.6 Although Center Friends Meet- ing in Grant County was a traditional silent meeting with limited preaching, the style of worship evidently did not make enough of an impact to deflect her from her goal to be a minister. She was much influenced by one member, Sallie Winslow Stephens, a pub- lic schoolteacher who had later gone to India as a mi~sionary.~It is unclear how much education Daisy received, but it is doubtful that she attended college. She was working as a clerk in a Jones- boro department store and living with a woman friend before her marriage, although her job also was not to deter her from the min- istry. At sixteen she reportedly preached her first sermon, after which she was “saved” at a United Brethren service conducted by a traveling woman evangelist.8 On November 21, 1893, she wed Thomas Dean Barr of Fair- mount. Born in Saint Clair County, Missouri, in 1870, Barr had come to Fairmount with his mother, Elizabeth Dean Barr, who had relatives in the area, in 1874, shortly after the death of his father. In Grant County Thomas attended Fairmount Academy. After his mother’s death in 1876 Barr attended Indiana State Normal School at Terre Haute and then began a twenty-year career as a teacher in Grant and Henry c~unties.~On December 14, 1895, the couple’s only child, Thomas Raymond, was born. At the same time Daisy was becoming more active in Friends meetings. She had trans- ferred her membership from Upland Monthly Meeting to Marion in August, 1894, and less than a year later was recorded as a min- ister at the Marion Monthly Meeting.’O For the next few years Barr apparently followed her husband as he taught in various schools in east central Indiana; frequently she pastored meetings and occasionally acted as a general evangel- ist for Indiana Yearly Meeting. In 1898, for instance, she held a series of revivals in Kennard, Indiana, and won a number of con- verts there. On April 18, 1900, she performed a wedding at Spice- fi Indianapolis Star, April 4, 1938; Indianapolis News, April 4, 1938; Muncie Star, April 4, 1938; and Daisy Douglas Barr, Springs That Run Dry and Other Addresses (Noblesville, Ind., n.d.), 19, which is a collection of Barr’s sermons that also contains some autobiographical material. It probably was published between 1912 and 1920. The recorded date for Daisy’s reception into Fairmount Monthly Meeting, which included the Center congregation, was 6th Mo. 16, 1886, using the Quaker dating system. Willard C. Heiss, ed., Abstracts ofthe Society ofFriends in Indiana (7 vols., Indianapolis, 1970), 111, 381. Whitson, Centennial History of Grant County, I, 266. In the first volume Barr is listed as the pastor of Fairmount Friends Meeting; in the second as pastor of Muncie Friends Meeting. Barr, Springs That Run Dry, 23-24. Whitson, Centennial History ofGrant County, 11, 830-31. He also took business courses at Indiana Business College to prepare himself for his second career as an auditor. See Grant County and Who’s Who (Marion, Ind., 1909), 14. In New Castle Monthly Meeting Book, 19; Whitson, Centennial History ofGrant County, 11, 830-31; Heiss, Abstracts, 111, 23. Daisy Douglas Barr 175 land, Indiana, and on May 24 her class address at Rich Square commencement was canceled because “the inclemency of the weather compelled her to remain home.” Between 1900 and 1903 Barr was pastor of the Friends Meeting in Lewisville (Henry County), which was included in Hopewell Monthly Meeting. In 1903 the Barr family took its membership from Hopewell to West- land Monthly Meeting, and in 1905 Barr and Edna Hill of Wichita, Kansas, held a revival in Fenton, Michigan, which reportedly con- verted fifty people and added twenty new members to the Friends meeting there. In 1906, while her husband was principal at Van Buren High School in Grant County, reports maintain that Barr “healed” a sick person at Portland during a revival. Thomas Barr served for a time as deputy sheriff but moved on to a succession of jobs, including meat inspector and deputy county clerk. In 1907 the Barrs returned to Fairmount where Daisy preached and Thomas taught, first at Fairmount Academy and then at the high school.ll Daisy was active in a variety of reform movements in Fairmount, usually dealing with temperance, but she also served as secretary of the Indiana Board of Charities and Corrections.12 At twenty- nine, she had already achieved a considerable reputation among Friends and even among social reformers beyond Grant County.