THE KLAN AND THE CRAFT: AN ANALYSIS OF MASONIC DUAL MEMBERSHIP WITH THE KU KLUX KLAN IN DALLAS, 1920 – 1926 by Shaun David Henry APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: _________________________________________ Dr. Michael L. Wilson, Chair _________________________________________ Dr. John C. Gooch _________________________________________ Dr. Edward J. Harpham Copyright 2017 Shaun David Henry All Rights Reserved For my Wife: The person who has endured long days and nights with our three young children during my absence for research, analysis, and writing. It has been a long and hard journey, but I thank you for your patience, support, and sacrifice! For the Craft: Though the path to enlightenment is often a rough a rugged road, exploring the history of Freemasonry on a micro level is a task I challenge each of you with. Understanding the philosophy, religion and mysteries is one thing. However, without an understanding of the history of the fraternity, its successes and its failures, enlightenment will have its limits. THE KLAN AND THE CRAFT: AN ANALYSIS OF MASONIC DUAL MEMBERSHIP WITH THE KU KLUX KLAN IN DALLAS, 1920 – 1926 by Shaun David Henry, BA THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS December 2017 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my professors Dr. Natalie Ring and Dr. Michael Wilson of The University of Texas at Dallas. My first class in graduate school was a course titled The Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century with a focus on Dallas taught by Dr. Ring. From that moment, I knew exactly what this paper would be about. She inspired me to explore a history of Dallas that, as a native Dallasite, I had never known about. Dr. Wilson’s dedicated assistance in addition to hours upon hours of revisions in preparation for the final draft of this paper has been invaluable and I am grateful for his support. Very special thanks must go to the fraternity of Freemasonry in the Dallas area, District 14. Without the access to your archives this would not have been possible. To all the Secretaries, Past Masters, and Brothers I have met during this journey, it has been an honor and a privilege to get to know all of you and establish new friendships. I also would like to thank Brothers Kevin Keith Main and Robert Brian Cook. First, to Kevin whose knowledge of Freemasonry, both past and present, is unparalleled. The stories he presented to me years ago regarding this subject were so intriguing that it, in conjunction with Dr. Ring’s class, was enough to light the spark inside of me to attempt the exploration of this subject far beyond what anyone else has been able to in the City of Dallas. To Brian who has been a friend and mentor to me. He would listen to me talk about this subject for days on end regardless if he was interested or not. He also gave me insight on how to proceed, who to talk to, or what questions to ask myself and consider while conducting research. Mark Morris deserves special thanks for generously loaning me his research from his dissertation which provided a wealth of information including sources that would have been v difficult for me to obtain. Thank you for your time and insight into a subject whose scholarship you helped advance many years ago. Thanks, must also go to Dr. Miguel Hernandez. Our correspondence over the last year has been invaluable. He has provided me with resources he used for this topic and allowed me access to some of his own research as well. It taught me data analysis and organization, which was the foundation for the lists created for this project. Finally, I must express a profound gratitude to the one person who has made the ultimate sacrifice so that this paper could be produced, my wife Emmy. She has stuck with me through some of the hardest times in our lives. The addition of twins to our family in March of 2016 meant that this process was to become much more difficult and she has borne the brunt of child rearing and other responsibilities during this endeavor. She listened to me carry on about my findings regardless if she was really interested or just humoring me. The stacks of books and papers lying everywhere added more clutter to the house which, with three kids, was not easy to manage. She is the strongest person I know and deserves all the time I can give her when this paper is complete. Thank you. December 2017 vi THE KLAN AND THE CRAFT: AN ANALYSIS OF MASONIC DUAL MEMBERSHIP WITH THE KU KLUX KLAN IN DALLAS, 1920 – 1926 Shaun D. Henry, MA The University of Texas at Dallas, 2017 Supervising Professor: Dr. Michael L. Wilson This analysis examines and builds upon the work of Miguel Hernandez, professor of History and a Fraternal Studies scholar at the University of Exeter in England, by building a comprehensive dual membership list of Dallas Masons who were members of Klavern No. 66 between 1921 and 1926. In 2014, he published Fighting Fraternities: The Ku Klux Klan and Freemasonry in the 1920’s in which he studied dual membership within two Klaverns in the United States, Anaheim, California and Dallas, Texas. Dr. Hernandez, Adam Kendall, former Collections Manager for the Henry W. Coil Library & Museum of Freemasonry at the Grand Lodge of California, and Kristofer Allerfeldt, also from the University of Exeter, are the pioneers of this topic and have laid the foundation for further research to be conducted in this field. This examination will look at Freemasonry and the Klan in Dallas. It will explore the Grand Lodge of Texas’ response to the infiltration of the Klan into Masonic Lodges in Texas and in Dallas and how the Dallas Masonic lodges responded to the Grand Master. A dual membership list was created using the Grand Lodge of Texas Proceedings of 1920 to 1926 and cross referenced with Klan documents to determine a wide range of statistical information to help understand the type of men joining both vii organizations. The ability to determine dual membership was examined by analyzing three documents identifying Klansmen; The Dallas Dispatch list in May of 1922, the Special Examination audit of the Kolossal Karnival in Dallas, June of 1924 both located at the Dallas Historical Society, and the Klan Police list from the papers of Earle B. Cabell at the Degolyer Library at Southern Methodist University. Matching the names on these lists with Masonic rosters from lodges in the Dallas area then cross referencing them with the Dallas City Directories from the Dallas Public Library has allowed for the identification of either dual members or supporters of the Klan within the Masonic lodges. Using the comprehensive list, and analyzing the minutes of Dallas lodges allows for a glimpse into what these men were doing in the lodges and how Masonic lodges and its members responded to their attendance. Examining these documents provides a background for a much more detailed examination of dual membership between the two dominant fraternities in Dallas during the 1920’s, and opens up a microcosm of historical analysis never seen concerning the Ku Klux Klan and the Freemasons. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………...v ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………..vii LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………….x LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………..xi INTRODUCTION….…………………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER 1: DALLAS FREEMASONRY AND FRATERNALISM ON THE EVE OF THE KLAN……………………………………………………………………………13 CHAPTER 2: THE GRAND MASTER’S MESSAGE AND THE VOTE………………,,,……30 CHAPTER 3: THE LISTS……………………………………………………………………….46 CHAPTER 4: DUAL MEMBERSHIP IN DALLAS………………………………..…………..70 CHAPTER 5: THE DEMISE OF THE KLAN AND THE AFTERMATH……..……………..115 APPENDIX A……………………………………………………………………………...…...127 APPENDIX B…………………………………………………………………………………..128 APPENDIX C…………………………………………………………………………………..132 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………..…..133 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH………….......................................................................................141 CURRICULUM VITAE………………………………………………………………………..142 ix LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Program for Klan recruitment play at the Shrine Convention April 8, 1921……………..….26 1.2 Rice University Yearbook - Class of 1922…………………………………………….….…28 2.1 Andrew L. Randell, Grand Master of Masons in Texas 1921 ................................................34 3.1 Kolossal Karnival Advertisement in March 1924……..………………………………….....55 3.2 Distribution of Dual Members in Dallas 1922-1924……………………………...…………62 4.1 Symbol of the Triple Tau of the Chapter of Royal Arch Masons………………………..…..72 4.2 Masonic Record of Hiram Wesley Evans…………………………………………………....74 4.3 Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard 1925……………………………………………......85 4.4 Zebina Earl Marvin…………………………………………………………………………..89 4.5 Ground Breaking Ceremony for Hope Cottage July 8th, 1922 Z.E. Marvin is standing next to the flag on the right with two children ….…………………………………………………...93 4.6 Zebina Earl Marvin as Potentate of Hella Shrine standing in front of the Dallas Scottish Rite Cathedral, 1926…………………………………...………………………………………….96 C.1 Directory of Klan in Texas, Province No. 2, in 1924……………………………………....132 x LIST OF TABLES 1.1 Membership Numbers for Dallas Masonic Lodges 1920-1926…………………………..…16 2.1 Voting results of Dallas Lodges on the Grand Master’s Communication, October 1921…...37 3.1 Percentage of Dual Membership Samples in Dallas 1922 - 1924…………..………….…....58 3.2 Dual Membership in Dallas by Masonic Lodge 1921-1926……..…………...……………...64 xi INTRODUCTION Dallas was a booming city during the 1920’s. Cotton was still king, but it was quickly being replaced by the banking and oil industries. Dallas was geographically situated so well that its population had reached 189,244 people. It was fast becoming a distribution center for the nation as well as a major trading post. Because of a vast railroad network, Dallas was the largest inland cotton market in the world with 1.5 million bales in a single season.