President Calvin Coolidge was fortunate to preside over what was probably the most exciting, vital, and creative decade of the Twentieth Century — the Nineteen-Twenties.\u00a0 It was a decade of youth, symbolized by Lindbergh and the Flapper.\u00a0 It was a decade when modern America came alive.\u00a0 Cars filled the roads; radios, refrigerators, and electric washing machines appeared in the home; movies sparkled with \u201cstars,\u201d whose voices would soon be heard on the screen; and thanks to a general prosperity, there was money to spend not just on the necessities of life but on its pleasures as well. \u00a0It could be rightly said that the American people had never had it so good.<\/p>\n
Yet, for all its many positive aspects, the 1920s was a period sadly marred by widespread intolerance.\u00a0 Religious, racial, and ethnic prejudices, long present in American life, bubbled to the surface.\u00a0 This intolerance manifested itself most famously in the form of the hooded knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who marched down the Main Streets of small town America as well as Pennsylvania Avenue, the \u201cAvenue of Presidents.\u201d \u00a0The Klan came to be one of the most important and certainly spectacular social movements of the postwar years.\u00a0 What follows is a description of the Klan that burst onto the national scene in 1921, reached its high point at mid decade, and then faded away.<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
The first thing the reader must understand about the Ku Klux Klan is this:\u00a0 There have been three Klans, each separate and distinct. \u00a0The Klan that flourished in the 1920s was the second<\/em> Ku Klux Klan.\u00a0 It existed as a legally chartered entity from 1915 to 1944, a total of 29 years.\u00a0 To assist the reader, sketches of the first and third Klans are presented below, followed by a detailed discussion of the second Klan.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n The Original Klan<\/em>:\u00a0 The Order of the Ku Klux Klan, self-described as the \u201cInvisible Empire of the South,\u201d came into being in the desolated Southland at the end of the Civil War. \u00a0This body functioned as an underground resistance movement, battling to preserve its members way of life.\u00a0 Its founders were bored veterans of the Confederate Army, who originally conceived of it as a fraternal society for amusement and companionship.\u00a0 The Klan, however, was soon transformed into a loosely organized vigilante or terrorist group, noted for its spook-like costumes and secrecy.\u00a0 Its mission and driving force were clear-cut:\u00a0 restoring and maintaining white supremacy in the Reconstruction South.\u00a0 At its peak, the group possibly numbered 550,000 men. \u00a0The targets of its attacks were the newly freed blacks, along with their Southern and Northern supporters (called scalawags and carpetbaggers, respectively, by local whites), who had assumed political power under the Republican banner.[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n Fear and intimidation, backed up by the terror of the whip and the noose, were the Klan\u2019s weapons.\u00a0 Excesses within its ranks, along with much external opposition, caused Klan leaders to order it disbanded in 1869, but some individual units disregarded the order and continued on.[iii]<\/a>\u00a0 Under President Ulysses S. Grant, the Federal government intervened forcibly to suppress the nightriders and end their reign of terror.<ahref=”#_ednref4″>[iv]\u00a0 As political power in the South reverted to white Democratic control after the withdrawal of Federal troops in 1877, the need for an anti-Republican, anti-black organization ceased and the first Klan passed out of existence.<\/p>\n The memory of the Klan, however, did not die off.\u00a0 Instead, it was romanticized, with Klansmen becoming the savior of white Southern civilization, and this was perpetuated in print in Thomas Dixon\u2019s best selling trilogy, The Leopard\u2019s Spots<\/em> (1902), The Clansman<\/em> (1905), and The Traitor<\/em> (1907).\u00a0 The Clansman<\/em> was adapted into a stage play soon after its publication and later in 1915 into a motion picture, D. W. Griffith\u2019s blockbuster hit, The Birth of a Nation<\/em>.\u00a0 This film became the first to be shown at the White House when it was screened for President Woodrow Wilson in February of 1915.\u00a0 The President reportedly said afterwards, the film was \u201c\u2026like writing history with lightning.\u00a0 And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.\u201d [v]<\/a>\u00a0 This romanticized view of the Klan, which became interwoven into post-bellum Southern culture, played a significant role in its later revival in the 1920s.[vi]<\/a><\/p>\n The Third Klan<\/em>:\u00a0 This Klan, which is still with us today, arose after World War II in response to a civil rights movement that was engaged in pulling down the racial barriers of segregation, especially those in education.\u00a0 It reached its greatest prominence in the South during the racially turbulent 1950s and 1960s.\u00a0 As a hate group, its hallmark was violence and murder directed against black civil rights advocates and their supporters.\u00a0 With the passage of time, this Klan has faded away into insignificance and consists today of small, fragmented groups operating on the fringes of society, with the Federal government closely monitoring their activities.<\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n The Second Klan of the 1920s<\/em>:\u00a0 This is the body\u2014known officially as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan\u2014that Presidents Warren G. Harding, 1921-23, and Calvin Coolidge, 1923-29, confronted.\u00a0 It differed significantly from its predecessor and successor.\u00a0 Most notably, it was a popular, nationally organized movement taking the form of a secret, fraternal organization and presenting itself to the public as a benevolent and patriotic society.\u00a0 Apart from its darker activities, which brought so much emotional anguish and even physical suffering to its victims, it is remembered primarily for its sinister costumes, its mysterious rituals and late night ceremonies, its bizarre titles for its officers, and especially for its symbol, the fiery cross.<\/p>\n In the 1920s, fraternal organizations were in their heyday.\u00a0 The Klan took its place along side the Masons, Owls, Elks, Moose, Odd Fellows, Pythians, United Workmen, Knights of Columbus, Independent Order of B\u2019rith Sholom, among others, and was treated as one of them.[vii]<\/a> \u00a0For many, this fraternal association gave the Klan a degree of respectability and acceptance.[viii]<\/a><\/p>\n Millions of Americans, both men and women, joined the Klan\u2019s hooded ranks\u2014and, always to be remembered, many millions more who did not join, sympathized with it and shared its prejudices and goals<\/em>. As a consequence of this, many of the Klan\u2019s opponents chose to center their opposition to it on its secretive nature, extralegal activities, and divisiveness, rather than on its specific beliefs.[ix]<\/a><\/p>\n The Klan\u2019s national membership, as it is usually cited, reached a peak of four to five million before it began its decline at mid-decade. These figures are estimates.[x]<\/a>\u00a0 Other sources put its membership much lower.\u00a0 For instance, the historian Kenneth T. Jackson puts the national total over the life of the organization at a little over two million.[xi]<\/a><\/p>\n In the 1920s, vast numbers of Klansmen and Klanswomen would proudly parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in their hooded costumes and with flags flying in a display designed to convey power and might and to intimidate those who would oppose them.[xii]<\/a> \u00a0These men and women of the Klan were found in both urban and rural areas and in all sections of the country, but primarily in America\u2019s Heartland, with Indiana having the largest contingent of knights.<\/p>\n Col. William Joseph Simmons, an emotional man with a bent towards the mystical, founded the revived Klan order and served as its first Imperial Wizard.[xiii]<\/a>\u00a0 He had summoned it into being on top of Stone Mountain, Georgia, on Thanksgiving night of 1915.\u00a0 Simmons, an avid fraternalist since youth, who himself belonged to several orders, had long dreamed of creating his own group. \u00a0In reviving the Klan, he was inspired by stories of the original Klan told him as child by his father, who had been a Klansman, and his nanny.[xiv]<\/a><\/p>\n Simmons, however, got the idea for the fiery cross, which came to symbolize the Klan in the 1920s, from the writer Thomas Dixon.\u00a0 Dixon had conceived the fiery cross and introduced it in his novel, The Clansman<\/em>.[xv]<\/a>\u00a0 Later, the device appeared in Griffith\u2019s The Birth of a Nation<\/em>.\u00a0 The first Klan had never used it.<\/p>\n In its early years, 1915-20, the second Klan grew slowly and showed little promise of success.\u00a0 During the Great War, it put itself to work ferreting out disloyal Americans.\u00a0 It did not spring to life, becoming an organizational and financial success, until June of 1920, when Simmons hired two clever marketing experts, Edward Young Clarke and Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler, to head the Klan\u2019s Propagation Department. \u00a0They became, as one student of the Klan has observed, the \u201creal creators\u201d of the second Klan.[xvi]<\/a><\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n The Clarke-Tyler duo was able to exploit for the benefit of the Klan the postwar situation:\u00a0 a chaotic, violent, and stressful period, marked by strikes, a crime wave, and race riots; by prosperity followed by a severe slump; and by political battles over the future of the nation.\u00a0 They did this by developing a strategy based upon their conception of One-Hundred Percent Americanism, which consisted of a collection of religious, political, economic, and social ideas and beliefs common to the first American settlers and their descendants.\u00a0 It was cleverly designed to appeal to the ingrained patriotism and prejudices of the average American.<\/p>\n The resulting program resembled those programs of two earlier nativist movements, the Know Nothings of the 1850s and the American Protective Association of the 1890s.[xvii]<\/a>\u00a0 There was nothing new or creative about the Klan\u2019s program of intolerance, rather, it echoed the past.<\/p>\n So it was that the Klan draped itself in the flag and depicted itself as fighting for traditional American political and religious values.\u00a0 Each knight of the order could see himself and his compatriots as battling for God and country.<\/p>\n The Klan preached a message of keeping \u201cAmerica for Americans\u201d\u2014that is, white, native born, Protestants<\/em>\u2014and took as its mission securing and maintaining that birthright for them.\u00a0 Underlying it all was the idea that only these Americans were fit to govern America.\u00a0 Klan members were driven by a strong bias against Catholics, Jews, certain foreigners, and blacks.\u00a0 These groups were seen as incapable of meeting the Klan\u2019s One-Hundred Percent American standard of patriotism because of their inability to assimilate fully into American life due to various impediments.[xviii]<\/a><\/p>\n For the Klan, its prime target was what it regarded as the unholy Roman Catholic Church, with its machinations against Protestant America, and whose congregation\u2019s first loyalty lay with the Pope in Rome, not with their homeland.\u00a0 Next in line came the Jews, a people apart, avaricious by nature, and incapable of patriotism in the Klan\u2019s eyes.\u00a0 Then the unmixable immigrants from Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe, who to the Klan seemed poised to flood into America following the Great War.[xix]<\/a> As for blacks, they were judged to be inferior beings and were expected to know and keep their place.\u00a0 While not the Klan\u2019s primary target, as they had been with the first Klan, and were to be again with the third, blacks did not escape Klan harassment and violence.\u00a0 Given the black community\u2019s past history with the Klan, they were also subject to the peculiar psychological torture that the very words \u201cKu Klux Klan\u201d conjured in their minds.[xx]<\/a><\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n To build up the Klan, Clarke and Tyler hired over 1,000 energetic, young men as organizers, known as Kleagles within the Klan. They were generously compensated, based upon the number of new recruits they secured.\u00a0 Most of the Kleagles were Masons, and they made good use of their Masonic connections to gain a foothold in the community and solicit members.\u00a0 It was said that in some local units, known as Klaverns, over half their members were Masons.[xxi]<\/a><\/p>\n A new Klan recruit paid $10.00, the klectoken, to join and another $6.50 for his hooded uniform, the total cost being $16.50 ($213.00 in today\u2019s dollars).\u00a0 The $10.00 membership fee was dispersed as follows within the organization:\u00a0 $4.00 went to the Kleagle; $1.00 to the King Kleagle; 50 cents to the Grand Goblin; $2.50 to Clarke and Tyler; and $2.00 to the Imperial Treasury. The uniform fee went to the Atlanta headquarters, which owned the plant that manufactured the costumes.[xxii]<\/a><\/p>\n At its heart, the Ku Klux Klan was a money-driven operation from top to bottom, selling hate, as it was said, at $10.00 per head.\u00a0 Among its leaders, it was the face of the woman on the silver dollar that was most often on their mind.[xxiii]<\/a>\u00a0 This money-grubbing quality inspired Governor Henry J. Allen of Kansas to observe:<\/p>\n [The Ku Klux Klan] is the [American Protective Association] plus antipathy to negroes, plus antipathy to Jews, rolled up in the American flag and sold for $10 a throw, of which the organizers get $4 and the profiteers at Atlanta get the rest. [xxiv]<\/a><\/p>\n The Clarke-Tyler approach worked brilliantly and turned the Klan into a great commercial success.[xxv]<\/a>\u00a0 Yet this focus on the inflow of dollars came at a price: \u00a0the neglect of the Klan\u2019s organizational and ideological development.<\/p>\n In a contemporary assessment of the second Klan, written in 1924, Nguyen Sinh Cung\u2014later known to the world as Ho Chi Minh\u2014concluded that the organization was \u201cdoomed to disappear.\u201d\u00a0 He offered this insightful explanation as to why:<\/p>\n [T]he Ku Klux Klan has all the defects of clandestine and reactionary organizations without their strengths.\u00a0 It has the mysticism of Freemasonry, the mummeries of Catholicism, the brutality of Fascism, the illegality of its 568 various [Klaverns], but it has neither doctrine, nor program, nor vitality, nor discipline.[xxvi]<\/strong><\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n In short, with their eyes planted on the money box, the Klan leadership failed to develop the essential internal qualities needed to sustain the organization over time.<\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n Upon entering a community, the Kleagles sought to bring its leading citizens into the new Klavern.\u00a0 Naturally, businessmen, professionals, ministers, politicians and government officials were choice targets.[xxvii]<\/a>\u00a0 They also sought to identify a pressing or controversial issue to attract members, as well as give the new Klavern a focus or reason for being.\u00a0 In doing so, they made a point of pandering to local concerns, fears, and prejudices.[xxviii]<\/a><\/p>\n Lacking central direction or control, Klaverns were involved in a hodge-podge of causes.\u00a0 With their controversial methods, including late night visitations, tar-and-feathering, and applying a razor strap to the back, Klansmen were active in fighting crime and vice, focusing on bootlegging, gambling, prostitution, and dope dealing.\u00a0 Sometimes, they turned their attention to reforming with their votes corrupt local government, putting down blacks demanding social change, or backing or breaking local strikes. They also sought to protect the family against home-breakers, who were firmly warned to shape up or else, and to ensure, according to their light, a good moral tone in the community.\u00a0 The latter included keeping a close watch on youthful joyriders out for a good time.\u00a0 Klansmen occasionally employed boycotts against those they targeted and attempted to exclude them from public office and public employment, especially teaching.<\/p>\n Klaverns, too, were noted for their charity work and support of local churches, which, some critics would claim, were meant more to obtain favorable publicity than to do good. \u00a0Without warning, hooded Klansmen liked to marched dramatically into a church during worship service and after saying a few words to the startled congregation about the virtues of the Klan, deposit a donation in the minister\u2019s hand and then silently depart.[xxix]<\/a>\u00a0 At Christmastime, Klaverns enjoyed staging parties for needy children, including young blacks in some instances.[xxx]<\/a> \u00a0As for the violence associated with the Klan, it was most prevalent during the early 1920s, easing as the decade progressed, with the most excesses taking place in the South and Southwest and the least in the Northeast.<\/p>\n Klansmen, of course, needed to be kept posted on the key issues facing them.\u00a0 This was accomplished through the Klan\u2019s major publications, The Kourier, The Imperial Night-Hawk,<\/em> and The Searchlight<\/em>.[xxxi]<\/a>\u00a0 There were also local publications, such as The Jayhawker American,<\/em> published in Wichita for Kansas Klansmen.<\/p>\n The Klan also had a need to inform the people of its public and semi-public activities, for example, parades, lecture programs, and special events such as Klan weddings, funerals, and induction ceremonies; and to make public statements on issues of concern, like the presence of Catholic teachers in the public school system, and even advertise for members.\u00a0 This the Klan accomplished by designating a local newspaper to act as its voice.\u00a0 The Klan also made use of handbills left at the door during the hours of darkness or sometime dropped from airplanes circling above the city in the light of day.\u00a0 In a few places there were even Klan-friendly radio stations to keep Klansmen informed.\u00a0 When it wished to get out its message, the Klan could do so.[xxxii]<\/a><\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n In November of 1922, Hiram Wesley Evans, a successful Texas dentist, deposed Simmons as Imperial Wizard.\u00a0 Evans, a capable manager and leader, changed the direction of the Klan.\u00a0 He exercised more control over local activities, he clamped down on violent acts, and he expanded the Klan\u2019s ranks by creating a popular women\u2019s auxiliary in 1923 and a branch for young folks in the following year.<\/p>\n Most notably, Evans attempted to make the Ku Klux Klan into a powerful political machine, working within the two major parties. \u00a0To be at the center of power, Evans moved the Klan headquarters in late 1925 from Atlanta, Georgia, to 7th<\/sup> and \u201cI\u201d Streets in Washington, D.C., where it was to remain until 1929 when it was returned to its home base.[xxxiii]<\/a><\/p>\n There were some political successes:\u00a0 Klansmen, it is said, helped to elect nine Republicans and seven Democrats to the U.S. Senate and six Republicans and five Democrats to governorships.[xxxiv]<\/a> \u00a0Generally, however, the Klan did best at the local level, where Klansmen\u2019s votes, especially in primaries, could play a decisive role.<\/p>\n Revealing his influence, Evans\u2019 picture graced the cover of TIME magazine on June 23, 1924, the day prior to the opening of the Democratic National Convention.\u00a0 Yet, in the 1924 presidential election, following the debacle created by the Klan issue at the Democratic Convention, the Klan as a national campaign topic soon faded away and it apparently was not a significant factor in the voting that November.\u00a0 As for the Klan\u2019s own involvement, Robert K. Murray, an historian of the 1924 election, has concluded, \u201cDavis lost no state because of Klan activity nor did Coolidge win one.\u201d[xxxv]<\/a><\/p>\n Ultimately, Evans and the Klan he led failed at the demanding and difficult task of politics. \u201c\u2026Klan politicking,\u201d according to one assessment, \u201cwas little more than an amateurish show of strength that only rarely achieved Klan goals and never achieved Klan unity.\u201d[xxxvi]<\/a>\u00a0 And so it was.<\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n Who were the Klansmen?\u00a0 Besides being white, native born, and Protestant, Klansmen were individuals troubled, perhaps even frightened, in these early post World War I years by what they saw going on about them at home and abroad.[xxxvii]<\/a>\u00a0 The world, it seemed, was everywhere in revolt against accepted laws and long-held customs and standards.[xxxviii]<\/a>\u00a0 They longed for a return to pre-war days, but that happy, well-ordered world was shattered and gone.\u00a0 And now, out of the chaos of war, a new age was coming into being. \u00a0This age\u2014the New Era, as some called it\u2014would make the decade of the 1920s into a transformative period, one leading into the world we know today.\u00a0 In this milieu, the Klan was a backward looking body, with an organizational format that was itself a historical relic and a quilted together program recalling bygone days, attempting to stop change.<\/p>\n As best we can surmise, the majority of Klansmen were average citizens, much like the fellow next door:\u00a0 married with children, hard-working, church-going, who thought of his country\u2014to him, \u201cthe greatest nation on God\u2019s green earth\u201d\u2014as a special place with a special mission to perform.\u00a0 Intermixed in their ranks were individuals holding positions of standing within the community.\u00a0 Some were professional men; some were ministers; others were politicians and government officials; and many were white-collar employees, workers, and farmers.\u00a0 A good number of them were Masons, too, for, as noted, Klan organizers especially targeted that group. \u00a0In some cases, persons associated with a local industry played an important role, especially oilmen in areas where oil was then booming.[xxxix]<\/a>\u00a0 The one major group that was not included was common laborers, for the cost of being a Klansmen\u2014around $20 to $30 a year ($250 to $350 in today\u2019s dollars)\u2014precluded that.[xl]<\/a><\/p>\n Why did they join? If you asked a Klansman what motivated him to join the Klan, he would usually offer a variety of reasons.\u00a0 Here are some likely responses:<\/p>\n And then there were other, less noble motives, which would have remained unspoken, such as wreaking vengeance upon one\u2019s enemies, making a few extra bucks as a Klan official, or advancing oneself or one\u2019s business.\u00a0\u00a0 And, not to be overlooked, there was the added attraction for the rural Klansman of relieving the boredom of small town life through night-riding adventures or the thrill of participating in his full regalia in secret ceremonies.[xliv]<\/a> \u00a0For urban Klansmen, many of whom came from a rural background, the organization offered companionship among like-minded souls in the alien city with its large and diverse population, including many foreigners with their strange ways.<\/p>\n One of the great strengths of the Klan was its ability to be all things to all men.[xlv]<\/a> As a consequence, however, individuals sometimes joined the Klan thinking it to be one thing, only to find later that it was something different\u2014perhaps not to their liking. \u00a0As a case in point, thinking the Klan a patriotic organization, future president Harry S. Truman, a Mason and an up-and-coming politician running for county office in the late summer of 1922, was ready to join the order.\u00a0 Indeed, he had given his $10.00 to an organizer and he may even have taken the Klan oath and signed a membership card.\u00a0 But when directed not to appoint Catholics to Jackson County jobs, Truman refused and demanded his money back.\u00a0 That ended his association with the hooded knights.[xlvi]<\/a>\u00a0 Such experiences contributed to a high turnover in Klan membership.<\/p>\n To sum up, individuals were drawn to the Ku Klux Klan by a combination of factors.\u00a0 The exact mix varied from Klansman to Klansman and will never be known.<\/p>\n One thing, however, is clear from reading the local newspapers of the early 1920s when the Klan first made its national appearance:\u00a0 Rampant crime was a pressing public concern.\u00a0 A Kleagle, while selling the Klan, was asked, \u201cWhat was the objective of the Klan?\u201d\u00a0 He replied that it was \u201cto combat lawlessness\u201d\u2014the only issue cited.[xlvii]<\/a><\/p>\n His answer was on the mark, for the nation was then suffering from a major outbreak of crime.[xlviii]<\/a> Holdups, housebreaking, and other lawlessness were commonplace happenings. \u00a0Indeed, crime was so bad around the campus of the University of Chicago that male students formed a Klavern to protect young co-eds and property.[xlix]<\/a><\/p>\n Among other lawlessness were serious problems with the illegal sales of alcohol and dope, but it seems that the worst problem of all was auto theft, which was epidemic in some parts of the country. \u00a0The crime situation got so bad in some locations that the police, who as a rule were understaffed, undertrained, and underfunded, were forced to call upon American Legion volunteers for help.<\/p>\n For concerned citizens, like those students at the University of Chicago, and there were many of them, the Klan offered a means to address the problem of exploding crime in the community.\u00a0 The Klan had eyes everywhere, and Klan secrecy allowed the organization to function as an extralegal body backing up the police or itself imposing punishment on wrong doers.<\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n The Klan reached its high point in the mid 1920s.\u00a0 It then commenced its rapid nationwide descent.\u00a0 Writing in 1926, William Allen White described Kansas \u201cKluxers\u201d as being \u201cas dejected and sad as last year\u2019s bird\u2019s nest\u2026.\u201d[l]<\/a> The Klan\u2019s downfall was the result of several factors.\u00a0 Internally, the Klan suffered from embarrassing, well-publicized power fights among its top leadership.\u00a0 Charges of financial impropriety\u2014extravagance, waste, and misappropriation of funds\u2014were not uncommon at all levels of the organization.\u00a0 The quality of leadership had always varied among the Klaverns, and it clearly deteriorated as time passed and the better class of people dropped out and the hustlers and wheeler-dealers moved in.\u00a0 As for overall membership, its quality declined over the years, with some critics coming to place its members in the category of \u201chicks\u201d and \u201crubes\u201d and \u201cdrivers of second-hand Fords.\u201d[li]<\/a><\/p>\n An important factor contributing to the Klan\u2019s decline was the rejection of the Klan and all it stood for by Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. \u00a0Both presidents rose above the prevalent prejudices and bigotry of their day.\u00a0 They offered deeds, not words, to the Klan\u2019s victims:\u00a0 This was manifested, for example, in their support for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill; in their support for a homeland in Palestine for Jews and encouragement of Jewish philanthropic efforts; and in Coolidge\u2019s granting citizenship to all Native Americans and urging his cabinet secretaries to give black employees \u201can even chance,\u201d as he put it.[lii]<\/a> \u00a0Most importantly, they did not distance themselves from blacks, from Catholics, or from Jews\u2014rather, both Presidents reached out to them publicly as worthy patriotic citizens contributing to the wellbeing of the republic.<\/p>\n The United States was indeed fortunate to have at the helm of state two men of tolerance in this time of intolerance.\u00a0 Of them, there is no question but they stood foursquare for the principle of \u201cone nation with liberty and justice for all\u201d as embodied in the Great Charters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.\u00a0 It could have been otherwise.<\/p>\n For instance, what if the popular Henry Ford, who was considered as a possible presidential candidate in 1924, had run and won?\u00a0 He was publicly sympathetic to the Klan, expressing his feelings this way:<\/p>\n If the truth were known about the Ku Klux Klan, it would be looked upon as a patriotic body, concerned with nothing but further development of the country in which it was born and the preservation of supremacy of the true American in his own land.[liii]<\/a><\/p>\n Ford, it should be recalled, was noted for his anti-Semitic writings, which sullied the pages of his Dearborn Independent<\/em>.[liv]<\/a><\/p>\n While not denouncing the Klan by name, Harding and Coolidge through inference clearly spelled out their opposition to the hooded knights.\u00a0 Harding (who had been sworn into office by Chief Justice Edward D. White, purportedly a member of the first Klan and a Catholic) did so most clearly in a speech denouncing the corruption of fraternalism, which he delivered before the Imperial Council of the Shrine in Washington, D.C., on June 5, 1923.\u00a0 In it, the President, who himself was an ardent fraternalist, spoke out against \u201cmenacing organizations\u201d\u2014by which those present, according to the New York Times<\/em>, understood he meant the Ku Klux Klan\u2014engaged in \u201cmischief,\u201d \u201cmisguided zeal,\u201d and \u201cunreasoning malice,\u201d and seeking to \u201cundermine our institutions.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThis isn\u2019t fraternity,\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cthis is conspiracy.\u201d[lv]<\/a><\/p>\n Not long after President Harding\u2019s death in August of 1923, a Klan spokesman claimed that the former president had been a Klansman, having been inducted into the organization in the dining room of the Executive Mansion.\u00a0 This was nothing more than a brazen falsehood directed at the first 20th Century President to speak out publicly for African American civil rights and support anti-lynching legislation.\u00a0 The Coolidge White House immediately issued a statement, which received national dissemination, declaring the claim was \u201ctoo ridiculous to discuss\u201d<\/em>\u2014strong presidential words, indeed, for that day and time.[lvi]<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t live in America,\u201d it is said; rather, \u201cAmerica lives in us.\u201d[lvii]<\/a> \u00a0This was Calvin Coolidge\u2019s mature thinking, too.\u00a0\u00a0 For him, being an American was a state of mind in which one accepted the American way of life and conducted oneself accordingly. \u00a0One\u2019s birthplace, one\u2019s race, or one\u2019s religion had nothing to do with being a patriotic American; rather, it called for believing in American ideals and values as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and in respecting and supporting American civil and political institutions. \u00a0In doing so, as he saw it, any of God\u2019s children could rejoice in the title of American.[lviii]<\/a> \u00a0It was in this spirit that speaking at the dedication of the John Ericsson statue on May 29, 1926, the President stated his belief that–<\/p>\n \u2026[W]hen once our feet have touched this soil, when once we have made this land our home [that is, become Americanized], wherever our place of birth, whatever our race, we are all blended in one common country.\u00a0 All artificial distinctions of lineage and rank are cast aside.\u00a0 We all rejoice in the title of Americans<\/em>.[lix]<\/a><\/p>\n As President, Coolidge expressed his antipathy to the Klan by reaching out in a positive, public way directly to its victims:\u00a0 Blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants, with whom he had good relations\u2014especially so for Irish Catholics\u2014going back long before the rise of the Invisible Empire.[lx]<\/a>\u00a0 Coolidge sought to highlight their positive achievements and contributions to American life.[lxi]<\/a>\u00a0 This approach suited him well as it reflected his thinking and personality.[lxii]<\/a> \u00a0Here are examples: [lxiii]<\/a><\/p>\n President Coolidge summed up his approach as follows:<\/p>\n The only way I know to drive out evil from the country is by the constructive method of filling it with good.[lxix]<\/a><\/p>\n In the same vein, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would later observe:<\/p>\n Darkness cannot drive out darkness:\u00a0 only light can do that.\u00a0 Hate cannot drive out hate:\u00a0 only love can do that.[lxx]<\/a><\/p>\n There were, of course, other factors behind the President\u2019s approach:\u00a0 He was probably fearful that a direct attack on the Klan by name would detract from addressing the pressing issues of postwar reconstruction then demanding the attention of the American people, as well as sow the seeds of discord among them at the very moment when national unity was essential for moving forward.\u00a0 In addition, such an attack would provide the Klan with a goldmine of publicity and likely bring it renewed vigor.[lxxi]<\/a> \u00a0In fact, this is what occurred after the Congressional investigation into the Klan in 1921, when Klan membership skyrocketed 20%. \u00a0Imperial Wizard Simmons was fond of saying, \u201c\u2026Congress made us.\u201d[lxxii]<\/a>\u00a0 Moreover, the President undoubtedly realized from his study of history that hate groups like the Klan had historically come and gone, and that this Klan would be no different.\u00a0 Thus, it was best to let the Klan burn itself out, which, indeed, it did.<\/p>\n The President\u2019s approach of focusing on those affected by Klan\u2019s hatred, rather than on the Klan itself, did not satisfy all.\u00a0 Indeed, for some individuals\u2014notably the victims of the Klan\u2019s intolerance, especially blacks\u2014nothing less than a public denunciation from him would suffice. When such was not forthcoming, they were not silent in their criticism of him.[lxxiii]<\/a><\/p>\n Among these critics was Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York.\u00a0 He took to task the President during the 1924 presidential campaign, saying that Coolidge had \u201ca special commission to speak for the heart and conscience of the American people\u201d against the evil of the Klan but had failed to do so; nor had he encouraged those who did speak out against it.[lxxiv]<\/a>\u00a0 Others echoed these sentiments.\u00a0 One political consequence was that black leaders, especially the younger ones, began to question their historic relationship with the Republican Party, and urban Democrat politicians like Smith moved to take advantage of this.<\/p>\n Coolidge\u2019s most important statement on tolerance\u2014by which he meant \u201ca liberality of mind\u201d with its \u201crespect for different kinds of good\u201d\u2014was given in a speech in October of 1925 before the American Legion, an organization with a broad and representative membership of Americans of all stripes.[lxxv]<\/a>\u00a0 In it, the President famously said,<\/p>\n Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower<\/em>, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of to-day is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.<\/p>\n He went on to observe,<\/p>\n If we are to have that harmony and tranquility, that union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our section of the country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language. If we are to create on this continent a free Republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed.<\/p>\n And to cap it off, the President declared:<\/p>\n Divine Providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character.<\/p>\n This Coolidge\u2019s addressed received much attention and much praise.[lxxvi]<\/a><\/p>\n Another factor in the Klan\u2019s fall was the opposition of those groups who were the object of the Klan\u2019s abuse:\u00a0 18.6 million American Catholics, 3.6 million Jews, 14 million foreign-born, and 10.5 million African-Americans.\u00a0 They all mobilized to make known the true nature of the Invisible Empire and to counter its attacks, sometimes even taking the attack directly to the hooded knights. \u00a0In several instances, in a sign of support, state and local officials, along with private organizations, joined in denouncing the Klan, as well as in working for measures aimed against it.[lxxvii]<\/a><\/p>\n By the mid 1920s, there came about a lessening of social tensions. \u00a0America was in the midst of the Coolidge boom, and with money in their pockets, there was much for folks to do in the way of activities in this new and exciting world. Many of the issues that had driven individuals into the Klan had disappeared or faded in importance or urgency.\u00a0 For instance, Congress had passed immigration legislation in 1921 and again in 1924 reducing significantly the flow of new immigrants, primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe, into the country. This had been one of the Klan\u2019s principal goals. \u00a0(This legislation, by the way, did not<\/em> apply to the citizens of Canada, Mexico, Cuba, or Latin America.)\u00a0 The crime wave had receded somewhat.\u00a0 At least it was safe again to park one\u2019s auto on Main Street.\u00a0 And in 1924, the Klan had succeeded in denying the Catholic Governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic presidential nomination, although it failed to install its favorite, William Gibbs McAdoo, a former Secretary of the Treasury and son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson.[lxxviii]<\/a><\/p>\n Probably the most decisive factor in the Klan\u2019s downfall took place in 1925, when a major scandal broke involving one of the Klan\u2019s most celebrated leaders:\u00a0 David C. Stephenson, the powerful Grand Cyclops of Indiana, whose power extended beyond Indiana to several other Midwestern States.\u00a0 Stephenson abducted, raped, and murdered a young woman, for which, after a sensational trial, he was sent to prison.\u00a0 His fall into disgrace was a major blow to the Ku Klux Klan, doing it untold damage, especially among its faithful.[lxxix]<\/a><\/p>\n Finally, as the Klan came to resemble more and more a traditional fraternal order, with no more secret nighttime activities, it lost its aura of excitement and adventure.\u00a0 Going through Klan rituals week after week got to be a bore, and it was costly, too.\u00a0 Educational lectures on this and that danger to the republic eventually lost their appeal as well.\u00a0 Many Klansmen simply decided to seek their entertainment elsewhere, mostly in family-centered ways, such as listening nightly to the new medium of the radio, taking in the new talking movies, or just going for an outing in a new Model A on the newly paved highways and byways.<\/p>\n The Klan\u2014now renamed the Knights of the Great Forest\u2014did experience a brief revival in 1928 with the Democratic presidential campaign of Alfred E. Smith.\u00a0 Smith, an Irish Catholic, a member of the hated Tammany Hall, and a vigorous opponent of Prohibition, personified everything the Klan opposed.\u00a0 Yet, whatever revival there was soon passed, and by mid 1929, the Klan was running ads beseeching delinquent Klansmen to re-enlist.\u00a0 By 1930, it is estimated that Klan membership had dropped from its peak of four to five million at mid decade to 45,000, which was concentrated primarily in the South.[lxxx]<\/a><\/p>\n The second Ku Klux Klan was heading down the westward slope to its demise.\u00a0 The Great Depression of the 1930s finished it off as a meaningful presence in American life. \u00a0Its later association with Nazi elements further blackened its reputation. \u00a0The Klan managed to limp along until 1944, when it was dissolved by bankruptcy and passed into history.<\/p>\n o o o O o o o<\/p>\n December 2012<\/p>\n Jerry L. Wallace is a Coolidge scholar, whose interest in Calvin Coolidge and the 1920s dates back over half a century.\u00a0 He has been a member of the Coolidge Foundation since 1972 and has served as a Trustee and is now a member of the National Advisory Board. He has written extensively on Coolidge, including Calvin Coolidge: Our First Radio President <\/em>(2008)<\/em>. By profession, he is an historian and archivist, formerly with the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC.\u00a0 Now retired, he spends his time researching and writing on Coolidge and local history.<\/p>\n ENDNOTES<\/p>\n <\/a>[i] The author\u2019s primary sources of information in preparing this essay are the various publications listed in the accompanying bibliography.\u00a0 All were important in their own way\u2014but the author must call special attention to his paper, \u201cThe Ku Klux Klan Comes to Kowley Kounty, Kansas:\u00a0 Its Public Face, 1921-1922.\u201d\u00a0 Certain sections from this paper have been modified and incorporated into this essay.\u00a0 More importantly, however, the preparation of this paper brought with it insights into the operations of the Klan at the local level that were invaluable in the preparation of this work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[ii] A Scalawag was a white Southerner who, during the Reconstruction period, supported the Republican Party and black emancipation.\u00a0 A Carpetbagger was a Northerner who went into the South during Reconstruction for political or financial advantage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[iii] Units of the first Klan operated individually, with little effective overriding control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[iv] The Klan was seen as engaged in a conspiracy against the Federal government.\u00a0 Grant used his powers freely under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 (also known as the Civil Rights Act) to suppress and dismantled the organization.\u00a0 For further information see: http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1871<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[v] Gerald R. Butters, Banned in Kansas: \u00a0Motion Picture Censorship, 1915-1966<\/em> (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007).\u00a0 Griffith\u2019s film The Birth of a Nation<\/em> made its debut on March 3, 1915. It is considered the first blockbuster hit, and it went on to become one of the most admired and profitable films ever produced by Hollywood.\u00a0 Showing its long-lasting appeal, the film was re-released in 1924, 1931, and 1938.\u00a0 As late as 1950, there were suggestions in Hollywood of remaking the picture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[vi] An interesting account of how the first Klan differed from the second is found in a letter of Nannie Nutt Holt to the New York Times<\/em> (June 10, 1923, Sec. X, p. 5).\u00a0 The letter is entitled, \u201cTwo Ku Klux Klans:\u00a0 Daughter of One of the Founders of the Original Denounces Appropriation of Its Name and Its Traditions.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Mrs. Holt\u2019s father was Captain L. M. Nutt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[vii] The up-and-coming man was urged to associate himself with a fraternal organization.\u00a0 \u201cJoining of a good fraternal society,\u201d it was said, \u201cis with many men a first step toward better citizenship\u2026When they associate themselves with industrious and substantial men they set a standard for themselves to live up to\u201d; see Winfield (KS) Daily Courier<\/em>, Nov. 12, 1920.\u2026Note:\u00a0 The Catholic Church prohibited its members from joining secret societies.\u00a0 In 1882, Father Michael McGivney established the Knights of Columbus as an acceptable fraternal organization for them.\u00a0 It closely paralleled the structure of other fraternal groups, having rituals, degrees, and passwords, and offering the all-important life insurance.\u00a0 Its motto was \u201cCharity, Unity, Fraternity and Patriotism.\u201d\u00a0 See \u201cMany Fraternal Groups Grew from Masonic Seed,\u201d retrieved Dec. 5, 2011, from http:\/\/www.phoenixmasonry.org\/many_fraternal_groups_grew_from_masonic_seed_part_2.htm<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[viii] An example of this acceptance is seen in The<\/em> Americana Annual:\u00a0 An Encyclopedia of Current Events\u00a0 \u2013 1923 <\/em>(New York: The Encyclopedia Americana Corp., 1923), which covered the happenings for 1922.\u00a0 This volume, which was published as a supplement to the Americana Encyclopedia<\/em>, included a section on the Ku Klux Klan (pp. 467-468) written by the Klan Emperor, William J. Simmons himself.\u00a0 The Americana<\/em> editors may have had some misgiving about doing so; nevertheless, since, as a rule, they included information on fraternal orders, they felt obliged to include the Klan as well.\u00a0 In future years, however, they would not do so\u2026.One approach to dealing with the Klansmen, it should be remembered, was simply to ignore their existence.\u00a0 This represented the refusal of doing the Klansmen the honor of paying attention to them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[ix] One of the first and most aggressive foes of the Ku Klux Klan was Governor Henry J. Allen of Kansas.\u00a0 His opposition to hooded knights was based not on their intolerant creed but on the disturbing manner in which they operated.\u00a0 Many of his contemporaries shared this view.\u00a0 In mid December of 1922, in an address to the Governors\u2019 Conference on the Ku Klux Klan, Allen offered this revealing statement:<\/p>\n The essence of our opposition to this organization is not in the fact that it fights the Catholic Church, or expresses it antipathy to the Jew or to the negro, but in the fact that it does this under the protection of a mask and through the process of terrorism and violence.<\/p>\n Earlier, at an election rally at Great Bend, Kansas, Allen remarked to his audience, which included Klansmen:<\/p>\n Now, as a fellow American having the same impulses that you have, I am opposed to the Klan because it suggests terrorism and outlawry.\u00a0 I am not against your organization because you do not like the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n In this speech, Allen actually attacked both Klansmen and<\/em> Catholics for rousing religious hatred.\u00a0 \u201cYou are both to blame,\u201d he asserted.<\/p>\n See \u201cGovernors Discuss Curbing Of Ku Klux,\u201d New York Times<\/em>, Dec. 17, 1922, p. 3; and \u201cAllen Hits Klans And Bigots,\u201d Times<\/em>, Nov. 1, 1922, p. 17.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[x] Without solid documentation, Klan membership numbers are to be taken with a grain of salt.\u00a0 The author believes both the Klan and<\/em> its opponents exaggerated them to the high side to suit their interests\u2026.It should be noted here that the second Klan\u2019s headquarters and local Klavern records were destroyed, with certain exceptions, when it closed down operations in 1944.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[xi] \u201cKu Klux Klan,\u201d retrieved, from http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ku_Klux_Klan<\/a>; and Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan In The City, 1915-1930<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 237.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/a>[xii] The Klan staged its first gathering in Washington, D.C., in late September of 1922.\u00a0 The Searchlight<\/em>, the paper of Klan, reported, \u201cThe first open air ceremonial of the Ku Klux Klan in Washington\u2026brought consternation to hundreds of Catholics who had made the boast that the Klan dare not hold one in the District of Columbia.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The meeting was held in the Northeast section of Washington in a wooded grove, \u201cloaned for the occasion by a friendly Mason.\u201d\u00a0 Fifty new Klansmen were initiated.\u00a0 Prior to this, the Klan had held open-air meetings nearby in Virginia and Maryland.\u00a0 See \u201cKlan Holds Open Air Meeting in Washington,\u201d The Searchlight<\/em>, Oct. 7, 1922\u2026.The first massive Klan parade took place on August 8, 1925.\u00a0 Between 30,000-35,000 white robed men and women and children (Washington police estimate) marched unmasked down Pennsylvania Avenue.\u00a0 The parade reflected the Klan new interest in politics under Grand Wizard Evans.\u00a0 Such parades would continue over the next few years\u2026.One can only wonder why the Klan would have chosen the month of August for its Washington gatherings.\u00a0 Not only was it one of the hottest months of the year but the President and other high government officials were absent from the city on vacation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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