Texas

by James A. Michener

  The newspaper appeared on Wednesday afternoon, and long before prayer meeting convened that night, outraged members of the church were telephoning one another and scurrying about the countryside in their new Fords and old buggies. During the service, attended by almost every member of Jordan Baptist, no allusion was made to the scandal, but during the long prayer Reverend Teeder’s voice broke several times when he sought guidance for the perilous tasks which lay ahead, and at the conclusion of the prayer meeting he asked both the deacons and the councillors to remain behind to face the infamy which had stained their community and which threatened the foundations of their church.

  Cobb, of course, was not allowed to attend this somber meeting, but by Thursday noon he was aware of what had transpired: ‘Laurel, they’re going to throw all your girls who attended that dance out of the church, and they’re going to censure you as the cause of their sin.’

  ‘That’s downright preposterous. Those girls …’

  On Friday a general meeting was held, and he was powerless to prevent it from passing a resolution ousting the girls from the church, but before a confirming vote could be taken, he demanded the floor. This was denied, but he ignored the rebuke, rose to his feet, and in quiet, forceful words defended his girls:

  ‘They danced! Did not the guests attending at Cana dance? Do little children not dance with joy when they receive a goody? Does your heart not dance at the coming of spring?

  ‘To throw these Christian girls out of their church for such a trivial offense would be an error of enormous magnitude. Do not make either the church or the men who command it appear ridiculous by inflicting such a harsh penalty.

  ‘I oppose your verdict for three reasons. Dancing is not a mortal sin. Young children of high spirit must not be denied the rights of their church because of an infraction of a man-made rule. And as their teacher, I know the goodness in their hearts. You must not do this wrong thing.’

  Reverend Teeder did not want a public debate over what was essentially a matter of church discipline, but he could not allow a layman to question his authority. ‘Dancing is forbidden by church law,’ he thundered, whereupon Cobb thundered back: ‘It shouldn’t be.’ From his place in the congregation Councillor Wilbarger shouted: ‘That’s apostasy! Repent! Repent!’ What had begun as a sedate meeting ended in wild recrimination.

  On Sunday, Reverend Teeder preached for ninety minutes, a passionate, well-reasoned defense of church discipline. Never raising his voice, never condemning any individual, but always defending the right of the church to set its own rules, he took as his text that powerful proclamation of St. Paul as delivered in Second Thessalonians, Chapter 3, Verse 6:

  ‘Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.’

  At the eighty-fifth minute of his exhortation he entered upon a most remarkable display, for without warning he stepped aside from the pulpit and extended his left leg toward the audience, and holding his extremity in this position, he concluded his sermon:

  ‘Nine years ago when my church in Mississippi faced a scandal far less severe than the one we face here in Texas, I preached for ninety minutes with my leg upraised like this, where none could see it, because it was so inflamed by an abscess that I almost fainted with pain. But I carried on because it was my duty to explain to my congregation why we must expel one of our deacons who had transgressed our law. And tonight I charge this congregation with the task of expelling one of its members. Let God’s will be done.’

  After the elders met in secret on Monday night, it became common knowledge that Laurel Cobb was to be haled before a public meeting, where he would be tried for ‘destroying the morals of the young women of this congregation in that he encouraged them in the lewd and lascivious exhibition of dancing, and that he further defended them against the due strictures of this church.’

  The trial would be Thursday night, which meant that Cobb had only two days for preparation, and this distressed him, for as he told his wife: ‘I love the church, but I cannot stand silent if it makes a horrendous mistake. Have you seen the law they propose passing the minute I’ve been expelled?’ He showed her the startling document which Councillor Wilbarger and his fellows, in their Monday night meeting, had concocted as the basis for Baptist faith:

  We, as Christians and brethren in full fellowship with one another, pledge ourselves not to drink, play cards, gamble, dance or look at others dancing, or attend card parties, theaters, music halls, moving picture shows or any other worldly and debasing amusement. And we shall expel from church membership any who do participate in the behavior we have forbidden.

  The Cobbs agreed that this was extremism of the worst sort; they had seen certain theater performances, especially by Walter Hampden and Fritz Leiber, which were ennobling, and they could not agree that all moving picture shows entailed damnation, although some might, but when they tried to enlist support for Laurel’s defense and for a more sensible church discipline, they were met with silence, and by Tuesday night it looked as if Cobb would be expelled at the huge public assembly.

  However, early Wednesday they were awakened by an extraordinary member of their church, a man to whom they had never spoken. He was five feet two, about a hundred and fifteen pounds, with a lower jaw that protruded inches as if its owner were constantly seeking a fight. His snow-white hair was cropped close, and his beady blue eyes challenged anyone to whom he spoke to refute even one comma on pain of getting his head bashed. He was Adolf Lakarz, son of Czech emigrés, and he made his living caning chairs and doing odd jobs of carpentry. He was not an easy man to do business with, for when a job was proposed, he studied it, made calculations on a note pad, and quoted a price, with his jaw so far forward that the customer was terrified to comment.

  This was deceiving, for one day when he told a church member, an elderly lady, that it would cost her three dollars and twenty-five cents for him to rebuild her favorite rocker, she snapped: ‘Far too much,’ so he recalculated and said: ‘You’re right. Two dollars and seventy-five cents.’ and she said: ‘That’s more like it.’ She said later: ‘Mr. Lakarz always looks at you as if you were evil and about to do him in, and I suppose that in politics he’s right.’

  His visit to the Cobb plantation had a clear purpose: ‘Cobb, what they’re doing to you is wrong. My parents came to Texas to escape that kind of tyranny. We’ve got to stop them.’

  ‘How?’

  The two men, with the sun coming up behind them, stood by an old pump and discussed strategies, and the more Lakarz talked the more Cobb realized that he now had a supporter who was going to fight this battle through, even though the end might be bloody: ‘You know, Lakarz, if you do this, it could hurt your business.’

  ‘This is why we came to America.’

  When nine struck in the kitchen, they had still decided upon nothing, but then Sue Beth happened to show the carpenter the proposals for the new discipline, and as he read its prohibitions against theater and motion pictures and entertainment generally, he became furious, but in his rage he kept a cool head, and Mrs. Cobb saw his eyes flash when he studied more carefully the other details of the new regime.

  ‘By God, Cobb, we’ve got them!’ And without explaining his intentions, he dashed to his third-hand car and sped toward the county courthouse in Waxahachie.

  At two o’clock that afternoon the community was staggered by a scandal much worse than the dancing of Laurel Cobb’s girl students. Two policemen strode into the office of Councillor Willis Wilbarger and arrested him for playing high-stakes poker in a shebang north of town.

  Adolf Lakarz had never played in the games which met regularly in a hidden spot, but he had heard several times from men who had, and for some arcane reason of his own—‘I’ll throw it at them in some election’—he had kept a diary of dates, participants and amounts wagered. When the local judge saw his evidence, and listene
d to the testimony of four or five of the players summoned to his chambers, a bench warrant was issued; the players had never liked Wilbarger, who pouted when he lost and gloated when he won. ‘Besides,’ as one man told the judge, ‘he was so damned sanctimonious. Never allowed us to drink while we were playin’. Claimed it was against the law of God.’

  Now the whole crusade fell apart. Reverend Teeder, outraged that the criminal element should have attacked a member of his Council, was more determined than ever to expel Cobb, but he further insisted that Adolf Lakarz be thrown out too, so on a hot August day in a large tent usually reserved for revivals, the good farmers from the area south of Waxahachie convened to try the two men in the same spirit that had animated such trials in southern France in 1188, Spain in 1488, England in 1688.

  Three members of the Council recited the charges against Cobb, and two others outlined the misdeeds of Lakarz; Wilbarger himself was unable to lead the attack, for he was still in jail. Cobb refused to speak in his own defense, for he judged accurately that the affair had become so ridiculous that he would be acquitted, but Lakarz, having joined a defense of moral freedom, could not remain silent. Great issues were at stake, and he knew it; in Central Europe his forefathers had fought these battles for centuries:

  ‘Dear Brothers in God of Jordan Baptist. The dearest thing in my life is my wife, brought here under vast difficulties from Moravia. Second dearest is my membership in this church, which I love as a bastion of freedom and God’s love.

  ‘It is wrong to condemn young girls for dancing. Our greatest musicians have composed gigues and gavottes and waltzes so that the younger ones can dance.

  ‘It is equally wrong to condemn Laurel Cobb for teaching his girls the joy of life, the joy of Christ’s message. I am not wise enough to tell you how to live, and you are not wise enough to pass this kind of foolishness …’

  Here he waved the proposed new laws, and with biting scorn read out the interdictions against Shakespeare and Mendelssohn and Sarah Bernhardt. When he was through, no one spoke.

  But now came the vote, and white with anger, Reverend Teeder called for those who loved God and righteousness and an orderly church to stand up and show that they wanted Cobb and Lakarz expelled. The voting process was somewhat demoralized, because only twenty-six out of that entire multitude stood up, and when they saw how few they were, they tried to sit down. But at this moment of victory, Adolf Lakarz shouted in a powerful voice: ‘Keep ’em standin’. I want the name and look of every man who voted against me.’

  And with pencil and note pad he moved through the crowd, chin thrust out, blue eyes flashing as he stood before each man, taking his name and address. For the remainder of his life in Waxahachie he would never again speak to one of those twenty-six.

  The scandal in Waxahachie over the dancing Sunday School girls was an amusing diversion which might have happened in any Texas town of this period and which could be forgiven as misguided religiosity. But the much more serious madness that gripped Larkin at about the same time was an aberration which could not be laughed away, for it came closer to threatening the stability of the entire state.

  Precisely when it started no one could recall. One man said: ‘It was patriotism, nothing more. I saw them boys come marchin’ home from the war and I asked myself: “What can I do to preserve our freedoms?” That’s how it started, best motives in the world.’

  Others argued that it had been triggered by that rip-roaring revival staged in Larkin by the ranting Fort Worth evangelist J. Frank Norris, a type much different from the spiritual Elder Fry. Norris was an aggressive man who thundered sulphurous diatribes against saloon keepers, race-track addicts, liberal professors, and women who wore bobbed hair or skirts above the ankle. He was especially opposed to dancing, which, he claimed, ‘scarlet women use to tempt men.’

  His anathema, however, was the Roman Catholic church, which he lambasted in wild and colorful accusation: ‘It’s the darkest, bloodiest ecclesiastical machine that has ever been known in the annals of time. It’s the enemy of home, of marriage and of every decent human emotion. The Pope has a plan for capturing Texas, and I have a plan for defeating him.’

  He was most effective when he moved nervously from one side of the pulpit to the other, extending his hands and crying: ‘I speak for all you humble, God-fearing folks from the forks of the creek. You know what’s right and wrong, better than any professors at Baylor or SMU. It’s on you that God relies for the salvation of our state.’

  One man, not especially religious, testified: ‘When J. Frank Norris shouted “I need the help of you little folks from the forks of the creek,” I knowed he was speakin’ direct to me, and that’s when I got all fired up. I saw myself as the right arm of God holdin’ a sword ready to strike.’

  A University of Texas historian later published documents proving that in Larkin, at least, it had originated not with Norris but with the arrival of three quite different outsiders who had not known one another but who did later act in concert. The earliest newcomer was a man from Georgia who told exciting yarns of what his group had accomplished. The next was a man from Mississippi who assured the Larkin people that his state was taking things in hand. But the greatest influence seemed to have been the third man, a salesman of farm machinery who drifted in from Indiana with startling news: ‘Up there our boys are pretty well takin’ over the state.’

  From such evidence it would be difficult to assess the role played by religion, for while very few ministers actually participated, almost every man who did become involved was a devout member of one Protestant church or another, and the movement strenuously supported religion, with the popular symbols of Christianity featured in the group’s rituals.

  Whatever the cause, by early December 1919 men began appearing throughout Larkin County dressed in long white robes, masks and, sometimes, tall conical hats. The Ku Klux Klan, born after the Civil War, had begun its tempestuous resurrection.

  In Larkin it was not a general reign of terror, and nobody ever claimed it was. The local Klan conducted no hangings, no burnings at the stake and only a few necessary floggings. It was best understood as a group of unquestioned patriots, all of them believing Christians, who yearned to see the historic virtues of 1836 and 1861 restored. It was a movement of men who resented industrial change, shifting moral values and disturbed allegiances; they were determined to preserve and restore what they identified as the best features of American life, and in their meetings and their publications they reassured one another that these were their only aims.

  Nor was the Larkin Klan simply a rebellion against blacks, for after the first few days there were no blacks left in town. At the beginning there had been two families, offspring of those black cavalrymen who had stayed behind when the 10th Cavalry rode out of Fort Garner for the last time. At first these two men had kept an Indian woman between them, but later on they had acquired a wandering white woman, so that the present generation was pretty well mixed.

  They were one of the first problems addressed by the Ku Kluxers after the organization was securely launched. A committee of four, in full regalia, moved through the town one December night and met with the black families. There was no violence, simply the statement: ‘We don’t cotton to havin’ your type in this town.’ It was suggested that the blacks move on to Fort Griffin, where anybody was accepted, and a purse of twenty-six dollars was given them to help with the expense of moving.

  One family left town the next morning; the other, named Jaxifer, decided to stay, but when a midnight cross blazed at the front door, the Jaxifers lit out for Fort Griffin, and there was no more of that kind of trouble in Larkin. The Klan did, however, commission four big well-lettered signs, which were posted at the entrances to the town:

  NIGGER!

  DO NOT LET THE SETTING SUN

  FIND YOU IN THIS TOWN.

  WARNING!

  Thereafter it was the boast of Larkin that ‘no goddamned nigger ever slept overnight in this town.’
r />   Nor did the Klan stress its opposition to Jews. Banker Weatherby, an old man now who had been among the first to join the Klan, simply informed three Jewish storekeepers in town that ‘our loan committee no longer wishes to finance your business, and we all think it would be better if you moved along.’ They did.

  The strong opposition to Catholicism presented more complex problems, because the county did contain a rather substantial scattering of this proscribed sect, and whereas some of the more vocal Klansmen wanted to ‘throw ever’ goddamned mackerel snatcher out of Texas,’ others pointed out that even in as well-organized a town as Larkin, more had drifted in than they thought. They had not been welcomed and their mysterious behavior was carefully watched, but at least they weren’t black, or Indian, or Jewish, so they were partially acceptable.

  The Larkin Klan never made a public announcement that Catholics would be allowed to stay, and at even the slightest infraction of the Klan’s self-formulated rules, anyone with an Irish-sounding name was visited, and warned he would be beaten up if he persisted in any un-Christian deportment.

  When the town was finally cleaned up and inhabited by only white members of the major Protestant religions, plus the well-behaved Catholics, it was conceded that Larkin was one of the finest towns in Texas. Its men had a commitment to economic prosperity. Its women attended church faithfully. And its crime rate was so low that it barely merited mention. There was some truth to the next signs the Klansmen erected in 1920: