(ISSN 0043-6534) WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY The State Historical Society of Wisconsin • Vol. 77, No. 1 • Autumn, 1993 THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN H. NicHOiAS MuLLER III, Director Officers FANNIK E. HicKi.iN, President (iERAU) D. VisiE, Treasurer Gi.F.NN R. Cx)ATKS, First Vice-President H. NICHOLAS MLT.I.ER III, Secretary JANE BERNHARDT, Second Vice-President THK STATE HISTORKVU, SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN is both a state agency and a private membership organization. Founded in 1846—two years before statehood—and chartered in 1853, it is the oldest American historical society to receive continuous public funding. By statute, it is charged with collecting, advancing, and disseminating knowledge of Wisconsin and of the trans-Allegheny West. The Society serves as the archive of the State of Wisconsin; it collects all manner of books, periodicals, maps, manuscripts, relics, newspapers, and aural and graphic materials as they relate to North America; it maintains a museum, library, and research facility in Madison as well as a statewide system of historic sites, school services, area research centers, and affiliated local societies; it administers a broad program of historic preservation; and publishes a wide variety of historical materials, both scholarly and popular. ME:MBERSHIP in the Society is open to the public. IndixMualmemhcr&hvp (one person) is $25. Senior Citizen Indixndual membership is $20. Family membership is $30. Senior Citizen Family membership is $25. .SM/)(!?ortm^membership is $ 100. .Sit^towmgrnembership is $250. A Patron contributes $500 or more. Li^membership (one person) is $1,000. MEMBERSHIP in the Friends of the SHSWis open to the public. Individualvaemhers\ra\y (one person) is $15. Family membership is $25. THE SOCIETY is governed by a Board of Curators which includes twentyTour elected members, the Governor or designee, three appointees of the Governor, a legislator from the majority and minority from each house, and ex officio, the President of the University of Wisconsin System, the President of the Friends of the State Historical Society, the President of the Wisconsin History Foundation, Inc., and the President of the Administrative Committee of the Wisconsin Council for Local History. A complete listing of the Curators appears inside the back cover. The Society is headquartered at 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1488, at the juncture of Langdon and Park streets on the University of Wisconsin campus. The State Historical Museum is located at 30 North Carroll Street. A partial listing of phone numbers (Area Code 608) follows: General Administration 264-6400 Library circulation desk 264-6534 Affiliated local societies 264-658.S Maps 264-64.58 Archives reading room 264-6460 Membership 264-6.587 ("ontribntion of manuscript materials 264-6477 Microforms reading room 264-65,36 Editorial offices 264-6461 Museum tours 264-6555 Film collections 264-6466 Newspaper reference 264-6531 Genealogical and general reference inquiries..264-6,'535 Picture and sound collections 264-6470 Government publications and reference 264-6525 Public information office 264-6586 Historic preservation 264-6500 Sales desk 264-6565 Historic .sites 264-6586 School services 264-6567 Hours of operation 264-6588 Speakers bureau 264-6586 Institutional Advancement 264-6585 ON THE COVER: John W. Quinney, who led the Indian Party opposition to individual allotments of Stockbridge-Munsee land in the mid-nineteenth century, as painted by Amos Hamlin. The pcrrtrait is in the Society's collections. WHi(X3)45436. An article on the reorganization of the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe begins on page 39. Volume 77, Number 1 / Autumn, 1993 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF Published quarterly by the State HISTORY Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1488. Distributed to members as part of their dues. Individual membership, $25; senior citizen individual, $20; family, $30; senior citizen family, $25; supporting, The Campus Klan of the University of Wisconsin: $100; sustaining, $250; patron, Tacit and Active Support for the $500 or more; life (one person), Ku Klux Klan in a Culture of Intolerance $1,000. Single numbers from Volume 57 forward are $5 plus Timothy Messer-Kruse postage. Microfilmed copies available through University Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106; The Tribal Reorganization of the reprints of Volumes 1 through 20 Stockbridge-Munsee: Essential Conditions and most issues of Volume 21 in the Re-Creation of a Native American thorugh 56 are available from Community, 1930-1942 39 Kraus Reprint Company, Route 100, Millwood, New York 10546. John C. Savagian Communications should be addressed to the editor. The Society does not assume responsibility for statements made Communications 63 by contributors. Second-class postage paid at Madison, Wisconsin. Book Reviews 65 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Wisconsin Magazine of Book Review Index 73 History, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1488. Copyright © 1993 by the State Historical Society of Accessions 74 Wisconsin. Wisconsin History Checklist 76 The Wisconsin Magazine of History is indexed annually by the editors; cumulative indexes are assembled Contributors 78 decennially. In addition, articles are abstracted and indexed in America: History and Life, Historical Abstracts, Index to Literature on the American Indian, and the Combined Retropective Index to Jirurnals in Editor History, 1838-1974. PAUL H. H.ASS Photographs identified with WHi Associate F^ditors negative numbers are from the WILLIAM C. MARTEN Historical Society's collections. JOHN O. HOLZHUETER Honorary Junior Stxiety Kill Klux Klan t t t t fit f f t T ' .1^ Mttk .. .flR. .^^S. ABI- ^^HI l^K. i^Ki rff ft fft 1f Teckeoicyer K.dk Haniniond Edc Culberison P>urn> Westoa Barlow BickeLHarris Bump CaiducU Haik-y Wellaucr Bunge Taylor \klnloaii Brittingliam Hiibbcl) Piakertosi Buck master Naccke! Stolte FoUett Travers Steele Rounseville Hoard Fairfield .MEMBERS Seniors ANTHOXY G. ZULFER RALPH HORTON' FRANKLIN BI^MP E!>wAKi> K. BURNS H. KENNETH HARLEY CHARLES D.CULBERTSON H, VV. N'AECKEL D. J. GODFREY ALFRED H, TAYLOR THOMAS B. CAU>WEI.L HARRY C, WELLAUER WILLIAM D. HOARD CifAutES M. LADUE LoRiNG T. HAMMOSI> STANLEY K. GAVENEV DEAN A. BUCKMASTEK RAY O. SCHMIDT F. LAURENCE WESTON FREDERICK AT. BR:KEL Jun iors DEWITT VAN- PINKERTON JOHN W. BRINWLEY LoTHROI' F. FOLLKTT KENNETH L. EDE FHILUP H. FALK JOHN R. HARRs.^i THOMAS E, BaiTTmoHAM GEOROE C. BUNGE WILLIS A, ROUN.SEVILLE ADOLPH O. TECKKMEYER MILLARD M. BARLOW GORDON G. FAiRrmty CLARENCE W, MCINTOSH ERNEST H. HUBBELL HERBERT A. STOLTE C. WESLEY TRAVERS RicHARB W, STEELE The honorary Ku Klux Klan at the University of Wisconsin, from the 1921 Badger yearbook. All illustrations used with this article which do not have a WHi negative number are courtesy the University of Wisconsin Archives. The Campus Klan of the University of Wisconsin: Tacit and Active Support for the Ku Klux Klan in a Culture of Intolerance By Timothy Messer-Kruse T was the spring of 1919 when a Klan was never the object of debate or I group calling itself the Ku Klux controversy; to the contrary, it blossomed Klan HonoraryJunior Societv made its first into one of the most prominent and pow­ appearance at the Universit)' of W'isconsin, a erful interfraternity societies on campus, growing land-grant university whose sprawl­ and its members, all male, included some ing, wooded campus dominated Wisconsin's of the university's best and brightest. Still, capital. (Madison, the state's fifth-largest city, even though the Klan was instrumental in had a population of less than forty thousand organizing the fund drive that helped to residents; the university enrollmentexceeded build the Memorial Union on Langdon seven thousand.)' Street, its heyday was brief and it did not There is no evidence that the new orga­ have much lasting impact on either Madi­ nization was in any way tied to the better- son or the university community. Seventy known Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux years later, like many another campus or­ Klan. But for four years the group pros­ ganization, it is all but forgotten. But the pered under the name Ku Klux Klan, and rise and fall of the campus Klan is histori­ it made no attempt to distinguish itself cally instructive because it serves well as a from the Invisible Empire. Nor did the barometer of the cultural and ideological question of its affiliation ever become an climate of Madison and the university cam­ issue for the university administration or pus in the I920's. the campus press. The campus Ku Klux "N May of 1919, members of the r Phi Gamma Delta fraternity took the initiative by inviting a number of ALTIIOR'S NOIF: 1 should like to thank Professor David juniors from other fraternities to a secret Zonderman and Professor Herbert Hlill, both of the Univer­ sity of Wisconsin—Madison, for carefully reading an earlier meeting in Madison where a branch chap­ version of this article. Their critical comments kept my ideas ter of an honorary fraternity called the Ku focused and my rhetoric in check. My thanks also to John Klux Klan was to be organized. Franklin Straw and the staff of the University of Illinois Archive Research Center, and J. Frank Cook and his staff at the University of Wisconsin Archives in Madison, all of whom went out of their way to assist me. Wiscon.sin Blue Book, 1921, pp. 419, 494. Copynghl @ 1993 hf 'fl:e Slair llislorual Suciely iij W'isamsin All ri^//!s aj ippmducUon in ft/iy ftirji/ rrsenml. UWXcgM174 The baby carriage parade, May, 1920, a part of Itie KKK initiation. Bump, one of the Phi Gamma Deltas, made with baby carriages up State Street and a pitch for the new organization that was around the Capitol Square—was one of the too strong for some of those present; the major activities of the group.