THE 1920S TEXAS KU KLUX KLAN REVISITED
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THE 1920s TEXAS KU KLUX KLAN REVISITED: WHITE SUPREMACY AND STRUCTURAL POWER IN A RURAL COUNTY A Dissertation by KATHERINE KUEHLER WALTERS Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, Carlos K. Blanton Co-Chair of Committee, Walter L. Buenger Committee Members, Wendy Leo Moore Sonia Hernandez Sarah McNamara Head of Department, David Vaught May 2018 Major Subject: History Copyright 2018 Katherine Kuehler Walters ABSTRACT The second Ku Klux Klan made its first public appearance in Texas at a United Confederate Veterans parade in October 1920, then quickly expanded across the state. Founder William J. Simmons created this organization as an exclusive, secretive fraternal group that both celebrated the original Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and responded to contemporary societal concerns of white native-born men and women in post-World- War-I America. Using a propaganda campaign, the organization preached the supremacy of a racialized Anglo-Saxon American identity, defined in terms of contemporary pseudo-scientific racial ideology as white, Protestant, native-born, and anti-radical, to recruit millions of members from across the nation within a few short years. Based on membership rolls and minutes of a Texas Klan chapter, this dissertation argues that, behind a façade of moral law and order, the Ku Klux Klan in rural Texas was a 1920s manifestation of a long-held racist ideology that utilized traditional practices of control through kinship, violence, and structural power to assert and protect white supremacy. It uses a localized case study approach to re-examine the second Ku Klux Klan in Texas, one of the largest and most powerful Klan organizations in the country, and challenge previous claims that the Texas KKK functioned more as a force for moral law and order and less as a white supremacy group. This particular Klan chapter, worked within the KKK’s Houston Provence, operated out of a rural county most noted for its plantation past and relatively recent end to Reconstruction, which firmly entrenched white structural control in the local economy, government, and social affairs. Based on an analysis of this Klan chapter’s individual members, their targets, and regional events, the Texas Klan used organizational power and vigilante violence to protect Anglo-Saxon white supremacy and maintain its centrality to the American identity. They conceptualized their nativistic and religious tenets through the lens of pseudo-scientific concepts of race that excluded Mexican and Japanese communities from whiteness. Furthermore, they utilized their members’ access to privileged structural power to plan and implement targeted attacks, coordinated between several chapters, on black and white individuals whose behavior they saw as threatening to the race, or for personal gain. They protected the organization’s extralegal violence through controlled police investigations and newspapers’ published narratives that surrounded the violence. When this failed, they utilized traditional white southern tools of white collective economic power and white respectability to undermine due process. iii DEDICATION To Matt, Jackson, Annagrace, and Charlotte, And my parents, Ann and Joe Kuehler iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My journey to complete this dissertation has been long and unwieldly. Throughout, I have accumulated many debts to those who have aided and supported me along the way—so many that I cannot thank everyone in the space allotted here. I owe a special thanks to the staff of the Wharton County Historical Museum (WCHM), which held the wealth of untapped sources, including the Hamilton B. Dickson Klan papers, I used for this dissertation. Janet Barrett-Hobizal, the museum’s archivist when I started this journey, and Linda Bubela, its current archivist, were generous with their time, attention, patience, local stories, and access to records, even after I changed topics. I owe them and the museum considerable gratitude and hope to work with Linda again to finish my original project once the museum has relocated and recovered from the Hurricane Harvey flood damage. I would also like to thank the staff at the Texas State Library and Archives and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History for doing what they do, day in and day out, with a shared passion for old documents and hunting for voices from the past. As someone who studies race in U.S. History, my research and worldview changed profoundly due to Wendy Leo Moore’ Critical Race Theory course in the Sociology Department at Texas A&M University. Dr. Moore introduced me to the analytical frames and race theories I needed to understand my sources and build on my previous research. Students in this seminar class, who have since graduated with their Ph.D. degrees in Sociology, patiently forced me to re-examine myself, my knowledge, v my family history, and my white privilege that, once through that uncomfortable process, resulted in clarity and unalterable change. For that, I will be forever grateful to Dr. Moore, Glenn Bracey, Jenni Mueller, and Ruth Thompson-Miller. I want to thank the History Department at Texas State University, particularly, Gregg Andrews, Victoria Bynum, Frank de la Teja, James Wilson, and Trace Etienne- Gray, for their guidance and community during and since my time there as a graduate student. Many thanks to Richard Milk, my undergraduate mentor, who broadened my awareness with Chicano and Native American history, and Neil Foley, who provided challenging ideas in his senior seminar at the University of Texas. I owe much to the History Department at Texas A&M University, whose staff and faculty, many of whom have now retired, joined me on this long road. Rita Walker and Mary Johnson have a special place in my heart for always being a phone call away to help me with questions, forms, and signatures, especially after I moved away. To them, I owe much, including a few baked goods. David Vaught, Harold Livesay, Joseph Dawson, Albert Broussard, Thomas Dunlap, Troy Bickham, and Sylvia Hoffert inspired me through their exemplary teaching and professional mentorship over numerous years, as did Phillip Smith, who introduced me to Horton Foote’s work. Darlene Clark Hine and Catherine Clinton, both historians I greatly admire, graciously took time from their busy schedules at a Southern Historical Association meeting to offer advice on future research projects and publication. Researching and writing are often solitary and all-consuming endeavors. Having a community of colleagues/friends who offered advice, critical perspective, real-world vi understanding, with the occasional adult beverage, provided me guidance in balancing my academic life and family and permission to forgive myself when I lost that balance. Fellow members of the Texas State Historical Association and East Texas Historical Association have annually cheered me on and expanded my ideas, so thanks to Scott Sosbee, the always-encouraging Kay Arnold, Gene Preuss, Mari Nicholson-Preuss, Mark Stanley, Nick Nelson, Kyle Wilkinson, Bruce Glasrud, Leah Ochoa, and Allison Faber. During several periods of waning confidence, they lifted me up. I appreciate Anjie Boswell for her advice on writing with a busy schedule, Michael Phillips for affirming my analytical approach, and Debbie Lyles for her sympathetic ear and lesson in positive persistence given to me, a complete stranger at the time, over beers at a Corpus Christi TSHA meeting. Also, many thanks to my extended academic family, including Werner Steger, Keri Leigh Merritt, Christine Sears, Beverly Tomek, Rebecca Czuchry, Verity McGinnis, and Loren Jones, numerous family members, and my sister- in-law and author, Patricia Fischer-Walters, who has shared my struggle of parenting several children while trying to write. John Lundberg has my on-going appreciation for giving me a copy of an out-of- print history of Wharton County so I can return my copy to the Texas A&M Library without regret. Also deserving of a special note, Sandra Smith Davidson and David Sysma have been a constant source of passionate history conversations and intellectual collaboration since our days in the basement of Taylor-Murphy at SWTSU. During this process, I have been helped by many who read my proposal and chapter drafts, and provided useful suggestions, including Walter Kamphoefner, David vii Vaught, and my mother-in-law and fastest proof-reader, Valera Walters. I am extremely grateful to both Sonia Hernández and Sarah McNamara for agreeing to join my committee without having met me, and for their encouraging and thoughtful critique feedback during this process. I owe a special thanks to my committee co-chairs, Walter Buenger and Carlos Blanton. Dr. Buenger’s quiet encouragement and intellectual reflections, during what turned out to be a longer-than-expected journey, provided me time for family, for exploration of my ideas, and to deal with unexpected life events. Dr. Blanton graciously agreed to become co-chair within the last year of this journey, but his mentorship started much earlier with a challenging grad-class that included Foucault, Benedict Anderson, and David Roediger, and first sparked ideas for this dissertation. His patient and pressured encouragement over the last eight months pushed me across the finish line, and without him, I simply would not have finished. Equally deserving of my undying appreciation, Jessica Brannon-Wranosky—my friend, mentor, honest critic, and intellectual cohort—believed in me, challenged me, protected me, and provided me space to ramble, spar, and write, and joined me in laughter, anxiety, and motherhood stories. This would not be finished without her. Finally, my family’s unwavering belief in my ability kept me going through periods of self-doubt. To my parents, thank you for your thoughts, prayers, help with childcare, and patience. My husband and children shouldered much of this burden with me and gave me the time, space, encouragement, and consideration I needed most to complete it.