THE KU KLUX KLAN: A Study of the American Mind BY JOHN MOFFATT MECKLIN, Fh.D. PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE AUTHOR OF “AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL ETHICS,” “DEMOCRACY AND RACE FRICTION” Humanas actiones Deque ridere, Deque flere, nec detestari, sed intelligere. Spinoza. NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 1924 » COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY KAP.COUST, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IM THE U. 3. A BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY. N. J 1 '* 1924 V ©C1A778414 To PRESIDENT HOPKINS and the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI WHOSE FRIENDLY AID DID MUCH TO MAKE THIS STUDY POSSIBLE a ••• * •-’ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Rise of the Invisible Empire . 3 II The Rise of the Invisible Empire (Con¬ tinued) .31 III The Spiadow of the Past .... 53 IV Concerning Klan Psychology ... 95 V The Klan and Nativism.127 VI The Klan and Anti-Catholicism . 157- VII Secrecy and Citizenship .... 207 Index.241 THE KU KLTJX KLAN CHAPTER I THE RISE OF THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE In 1873 the Ku Klnx Klan, outside the South, was a synonym for the most sinister and dangerous forces in American life. In the North it was as¬ sociated with clandestine murder and masked re¬ bellion. Who then would have dared to prophesy that within less than half a century this secret, oath-bound order would be revived and spread to every section of the country? Such, however, is the fact. I The modern Klan was organized by Wil¬ liam J. Simmons in 1915, enjoyed a precarious existence for several years, suddenly assumed proportions of national importance in 1920, sur¬ vived the attack of the powerful New York World and a searching investigation by a committee of Congress, and to-day boasts of a following that is numbered in hundreds of thousands, perhaps mil¬ lions. The rise of the modern Klan is the most spectacular of all the social movements in Ameri¬ can society since the close of the World War. It 3 4 THE KU IvLUX KLAN is the object of this and the following chapter to state briefly the main facts in the revival of the so-called “Invisible Empire” of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. i Colonel William Joseph Simmons, the founder of the modern Klan, tells ns that for twenty years he had given thought to the creation of an order standing for a comprehensive Americanism that would blot out Mason and Dixon’s Line. Fasci¬ nated as he was from boyhood by the romantic story of the old Klan of Reconstruction days, which is looked upon in the South as the savior of Southern civilization, he called the new order the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. On October 16,1915, Mr. Simmons, together with some thirty- four friends, three of whom were bona fide mem¬ bers of the old Klan, met and signed a petition for a charter. The charter was granted and on Thanksgiving night, 1915, they gathered “under a blazing, fiery torch” on the top of Stone Moun¬ tain, near Atlanta, and took the oath of alle¬ giance to the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “And thus,” says Simmons in his THE RISE OF THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE 5 characteristic high-flown language, ‘ * on the moun¬ tain top that night at the midnight hour, while men braved the surging blasts of wild wintry winds and endured a temperature far below freezing [a World reporter was unkind enough to consult the weather bureau record for that night and found the minimum temperature to be only forty-five degrees], bathed in the sacred glow of the fiery cross, the Invisible Empire was called from its slumber of half a century to take up a new task and fulfil a new mission for humanity’s good and to call back to mortal habitation the good angel of practical fraternity among men” (The ABC of the Ku Klux Klan, Ku Klux Klan Press, Atlanta, Georgia). For five years the Klan seems to have passed an uneventful existence, spreading very slowly and making no great impression upon the country. By the early fall of 1918 it was organized in lo¬ calities of the South, especially in Alabama and Georgia, the usual manifestation of its presence being the posting of warnings as in the Recon¬ struction days. In Mobile, Alabama, where a strike was threatened in the government ship¬ yards, masked men leaped from their cars clad in the Klan regalia and forced the driver of a patrol 6 THE KU IvLUX KLAN wagon to surrender the strike leader who was then spirited away. In all these earlier appear¬ ances the Klan directed its activities against alien enemies and those accused of being disloyal, the idlers and slackers, strike leaders, and immoral women. Public sentiment, as in the case of the Mobile incident, seems to have supported the Klansmen, doubtless because most of them repre¬ sented the better element of the communities. There were sporadic references to the Klan dur¬ ing 1919 and the first half of 1920. But by the fall of 1920 the Klan showed a decided increase in its activities. Rumors arose that the Klan was gaining a foothold in the North. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peo¬ ple sought to check its spread by asking Post¬ master General Burleson to forbid the Klan the use of the mails. The Klan had, indeed, gained a foothold in New York though its movements were much hampered by the opposition of the police. n The rapid expansion of the order was due to a radical change in its organization in June, 1920. Imperial Wizard Simmons had proven himself to be a capable “spellbinder” but an impractical THE RISE OF THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE 7 dreamer with little organizing ability. His so¬ ciety was in financial straits. At most it num¬ bered only four or five thousand members and was doomed to go the way, apparently, of count¬ less other organizations of a similar nature. At this juncture Mr. Edward Young Clarke and Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler came to the aid of Wizard Sim¬ mons and his struggling society and rescued it from oblivion. They had been associated for years in connection with the Southern Publicity Association and had been successful in drives for funds for such organizations as the Anti-Saloon League, the Roosevelt Memorial Fund, the Near- East Relief, and similar movements. They lis¬ tened to the schemes of Simmons and thought they saw in the Klan financial possibilities. A contract was entered into by which Clarke became head of the propaganda department with com¬ plete charge of organization. Aided by Mrs. Tyler, whose gifts as an organizer and promoter he asserted were second only to his own, they pro¬ ceeded to “sell” the Klan to the American pub¬ lic. Within a little over a year, that is, in the period between June, 1920, when the contract was en¬ tered upon, and October, 1921, when the Klan was investigated by Congress, the Klan had grown 8 THE KU KLUX KLAN from a few thousand to something like 100,000 members. Clarke, aided by Mrs. Tyler, had ap¬ plied to Klan promotion the skill acquired through long experience. The country was di¬ vided into some eight or more “ domains, ” or geographical areas, such as Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, the Mississippi Valley, the Pacific Coast. Each 4 4 domain' 9 was divided into “realms,” or states. The head of the promotion department as a whole was Imperial Kleagle E. Y. Clarke. The head of the “domain” was called a Grand Goblin. The head of the 44 realm,9 9 or state, was called a King Kleagle, and the house- to-house solicitors, or legwork men, were called Kleagles. There can be little doubt that the purely commercial motive had much to do with ; the successful promotion of the Klan. The mem-1 bership fee was ten dollars, which was divided j as follows: four of the ten dollars went to the. Kleagle, or local solicitor, when he signed up a new member; one dollar went into the pocket of the King Kleagle, or state sales-manager; the Grand Goblin, or district salesman, had to be con¬ tent with only fifty cents, while the remaining four dollars and fifty cents went to Atlanta. It will be seen that the inducement to the solicitor was liberal. The purely commercial element has, THE RISE OF THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE 9 however, been overemphasized. It plays a part naturally and inevitably in every such system of promotion. But it must not be forgotten that the commercial motive alone can never explain the marvellous spread of the Klan. This period of remarkable expansion was ac- - companied by a wave of lawlessness and crime which, rightly or wrongly, was associated with the Ku Klux Klan. From October, 1920, to October, 1921, the New York World reported four killings, one mutilation, one branding with acid, forty-one floggings, twenty-seven tar and feather parties, five kidnappings, forty-three individuals warned to leave town or otherwise threatened, fourteen communities threatened by posters, sixteen pa¬ rades of masked men with warning placards. These outbreaks were characterized, generally, by two peculiarities. They were “punishments’’ administered to individuals because of alleged violation of statute law or of the demands of good morals and they were committed after nightfall by parties whose identity was concealed by masks.. The name of the Ku Klux Klan was very generally" associated by the public with these outrages. The New York World and many other papers asserted that for all these outrages the Klan was either directly or indirectly responsible. Emperor Sim- 10 TKE KU KLUX KLAN mons as emphatically denied that the official Klan had anything to do with them.