The vaunted Bureau of Publication wire service supplied the rest of the edition’s content, offering a centrally distributed selection of articles that offered a “newsy” mix. While Klan news from around the nation remained prominent, the Kourier also made a concerted effort to cover major national news and politics. Declaring that its service in providing the “truth” would allow for discussion of “serious problems by serious people,” the Klan newspaper seemingly took its role in earnest. Lest anyone doubt the organization’s commitment to compete with other digest news organizations, the Kourier supplemented its longer political coverage with a regular section titled “Important News of the Week for Busy Readers.” As well as the official editorials, which appeared without a byline, analysis of the week’s happenings by Felix Free appeared in the “Current Comment” section. Even other newspapers commented on the apparent mainstream appeal of the reporting offered.39
A more unusual form of editorializing, owing a clear debt to one of the most popular columnists in the country, Don Marquis, was also featured in the Kourier. Appearing first in the New York Sun in 1916 and then in the New York Tribune from 1922 to 1925, Marquis’s characters of Archy and Mehitabel had become favorites of thousands of readers. In creating these characters, the newspaper columnist earned favorable comparisons to Ben Jonson and Mark Twain. Archy, a cynical poet in the body of a cockroach, and Mehitabel, an alley cat who claimed to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra, gave voice to Marquis’s wide-ranging satires of modern life. The cockroach and the cat offered commentary in free verse on topics as varied as Lenin, radio broadcasting, and the place of humanity in the universe.40
Marquis was clearly no supporter of the Invisible Empire. The Klan made several appearances in his work—including as the Krew Krux Kranks in a column that ambitiously commented on both the inherent dangers of patriotic vigilantism and the Armenian genocide. The writers of the Bureau of Publication, though, were apparently enamored with Archy and Mehitabel. The regularly featured “Klan Ket” column in the Kourier aped Marquis, presenting social commentary under cover of the adventures of the official Klan kitten.41
The “Klan Ket” was far from the only feature in the Klan newspaper to stretch the definition of news. The Bureau of Publication and Education had astutely made sure to carry over some of the most popular features from the publications that the Kourier had supplanted, including the poetry of “Twilight’s Thinklings” from the Call of the North and the Fiery Cross’s “Sparks from the Fiery Cross” by John Eight Point. In a reflection of contemporary American journalism’s affinity for “lifestyle” pieces, the bureau also made sure that the paper would appeal to the whole white Protestant family. “The Hearthstone of America” was a special section for female readers, including parenting tips and recipes that all too often featured cream cheese. Like the Daily News or the astoundingly popular new magazine True Story, the Kourier offered stories of the embarrassments and triumphs of its readers. The children, meanwhile, could turn to “A Junior Today—A Klansman Tomorrow.” On this page of juvenile Klannish news and “educational” guidance, youthful readers could also enjoy the “Chuckles!” section, which reprinted short jokes from other publications.42
There was no better example of the Kourier’s effort to position itself in the American cultural milieu than the crossword puzzle. Crossword puzzles had originally appeared in the New York World in 1912 to a relatively muted appreciation. By the time the Kourier was established, however, the crossword had become a national sensation. When the fledgling publishers Simon & Schuster released the first ever book of crossword puzzles in 1924, they sparked one of the fads that defined the 1920s. Even as the bureau created the Klannish press syndicate, the country’s nonfiction best-seller list was dominated by crossword puzzle books. Readers of the Kourier were no exception to this puzzle mania. Thus, the Invisible Empire’s weekly published a “Fiery Cross-Word Puzzle,” presenting crosswords in a variety of uplifting shapes, including the Klan’s blood-drop insignia, the Liberty Bell, and a Junior Klansman. It was such a success that the newspaper started offering a special crossword puzzle dictionary (Winston-Universal edition) as a reward for buying two subscriptions. The 1920s saw Klan members and opponents alike enjoying the thrill of unlocking the secrets of 7 Across and 42 Down.43
As the syndicate saw success, the Bureau of Publication and Education also extended its Kourier brand. In December 1924, the weekly Imperial Night-Hawk was scrapped and replaced by a new thirty-two-page monthly, the Kourier Magazine. Tasked with publishing “articles of an educational value rather than current news of Klan activities,” the magazine explained that it would “deal with the deeper things of our national life.” In practical terms, that meant filling the magazine with paeans to Protestantism, long discussions on the Klan’s relationship with the virtues of Christianity, and numerous speeches and statements by Imperial Wizard Evans. The Kourier Magazine also highlighted subjects that the Bureau of Publication and Education felt were most important to Americans, publishing special themed issues on public education and the nature of patriotism.44
As 1925 began, with a central wire service and national newspaper syndicate to call its own, the Invisible Empire appeared to have triumphed. Although opposition undoubtedly remained, it was comparatively muted. Unlike earlier papers, the Kourier’s most visible face—its “newsboys”—went largely unmolested by both police and passersby, sold on newsstands and street corners across the country. Packaging Klannish ideals within contemporary press trends, the Kourier presented the Klan not as a violent and hateful vigilante group but as an appealing band of patriotic, law-abiding, white Protestants. In the Kourier, Evans had created a propagandistic information network that reached far beyond the organization’s membership.
This triumph, however, was built on a fragile foundation. As with so many Klan achievements, the Kourier syndicate quickly crumbled. The first sign of trouble came with the disappearance of many of the state editions. At the beginning of 1925, the Bureau of Publication and Education had ambitiously patented the Kourier name in twenty-nine states, preparing for further expansion.45 By the middle of the year, the Kourier was distributing only eight regional editions—all of which would soon be absorbed into a single national edition, the National Kourier. This last remaining vestige of the syndicate limped along for another year, but never regained its previous cachet. By 1927, the Klan’s national newspaper network had disappeared.46
The Kourier Magazine was even less successful. Although directly circulated to Klaverns, the magazine had seemingly never decided whether it should appeal purely to members of the organization or to the wider movement. As a 1929 editorial revealingly explained, the magazine had attempted to be both the “official organ of the Order” and “the spokesman for the Klan to the alien world.” This somewhat schizophrenic approach meant that they could neither “fill the pages with inside Klan news” nor dedicate the publication to entirely “alien” subject matter either. This left a magazine that clumsily mixed overfamiliar restatements of Klan “principle and policy” in opposition to Roman Catholicism with features like “Klan Kiddies Korner” and the comic animal stories of Old Man Ganderspank. Cartoons, a short-lived adventure fiction section, and True Story–style essay competitions sat alongside castigations of Catholic influence in the public schools. The balance that had propelled the success of the Kourier weekly eluded the monthly. “The two purposes, each essential,” the Kourier Magazine despaired, “got in each other’s way, and each prevented a wholly satisfactory carrying out of the other.47
This was particularly evident in terms of revenue. With new members flooding into the organization, the Klan’s leaders had decided that the magazine was valuable enough for outreach to subsidize as a loss leader. Breaking very sharply from publishing trends, then, the Kourier Magazine would be distributed free of charge and without any lucrative advertising. As the rate of new memberships began to slow, and existing members started to fall away, it became increasingly dif
ficult to justify that decision. By February 1925, the magazine had begun to charge a one-dollar subscription to keep the publication afloat—“not done to make money, but to conserve the situation.” The magazine’s direct-mail circulation protected it from the vagaries of newsstand sales, allowing it to outlast the weekly newspaper. But as Klan membership, and therefore readership for the official magazine, fell precipitously, it proved an ultimately unsustainable model.48
In March 1929, the monthly became a quarterly. In April, the publication admitted it could not serve two audiences, splitting into a “Klan edition” and an “open edition,” but it was already too late to stem the organizational collapse. With fewer and fewer members to sell to, the Klan edition was scrapped in 1930. The wider reach of the movement allowed the open edition to run until 1936, but it never gained the kind of readership that the 1920s had seen.49
As with the decline of the Klan organization as a whole, it is difficult to determine any single reason as to why the Klan’s press network suffered such a precipitous collapse. Certainly, the Invisible Empire’s rapid drop in membership after 1925 played a key role. The Kourier syndicate had reached its apex in late 1924, some six months after Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. Severely limiting “undesirable” immigration from southern and eastern Europe, the act also blunted some of the Klan’s appeal to the wider nativist movement. While this alone was not responsible for the Klan’s collapse from 1925 onward, this legislation undoubtedly had an impact—as did the arrest of Indiana Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson for rape and murder in early 1925. An organization that had begun hemorrhaging members could hardly expect to retain the same kind of readership base that its newspapers had once enjoyed. Locked into a vicious cycle of decline, the weakened Kourier organization was unable to then staunch the steady stream of Knights abandoning their membership.
Even as its organizational base was eroded, the Kourier syndicate was unable to rely on its efforts to reach a wider audience. Much of this problem lay within. Imperial Wizard Evans’s cornerstone achievement suffered from the same kind of mismanagement that had plagued the organization of the Invisible Empire since its inception. Edgar Allen Booth made reference to “the fighting, bickering, plotting and incompetency . . . going on behind the scenes.” Lawsuits alleging broken promises and misdealing did not end with the Kluxer suit in 1924. Cases in Missouri and Iowa, among others, generated damning headlines in newspapers across the country.50
Reflecting the lasting division between the organization and the lived ideology of the movement, these management issues were exacerbated by the kind of independent publications the Klan’s leadership had attempted to eliminate. Although the Bureau of Publication and Education had managed to either buy up or force out a large number of the Kourier’s predecessors, there was still significant competition from “unofficial” newspapers for the readers of the wider Klan movement. Milton Elrod returned to the publishing field with the Daily American in 1924 and the National Democrat in 1925. In an effort to repeat the success of the broad humor of Fawcett’s Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, Klan members in Pittsburgh offered a more unusual take on Klannish publishing with the launch of their own “funny monthly,” Komic Klan Kracks.
C. Lewis Fowler of New York City, a friend and close ally of William J. Simmons, attracted a significant following in 1924 and 1925 to his American Standard. Setting aside the reserve of the Kourier, Fowler used the pages of the Standard to wage a campaign against American Catholics and Jews that would have made the Badger American blanch. One historian has called it “a semimonthly of a particularly latrine nature.” This underestimates a publication that claimed telepathic Jesuits had murdered President Harding. Even still, Fowler demonstrated that there was success to be had in publishing an independent alternative to the official Klan press and inspired a number of imitators.51
Making matters worse, as the organization itself collapsed, the Kourier not only had to compete with rival Klan newspapers, but also with publications established by new splinter groups. As contemporaries noted, “Offshoots of the Invisible Empire are undermining it.” In California, for example, the new Knights of the White Cross Clan welcomed defectors to their ranks. Their California Advance not only competed with the official Klan press for readers; it attacked the organization itself as a “dead issue.”52
The Klan’s leadership had themselves fostered some of these rivals for readership. The Fellowship Forum, one of the few semi-independents to survive the bureau’s purge, clearly demonstrated that the Klan movement reached far beyond the members of the Klan organization. It was, without doubt, a Klan newspaper and openly espoused the Klan’s ideology. Edgar Fuller, a former aide to Edward Young Clarke, claimed in 1924 that the Klan’s leaders paid a thousand dollars a month to editor George Moore. Ex-Klansman Edgar Allen Booth similarly alleged that “money from the Klan treasury has poured with a lavish hand” into the Fellowship Forum. Even as he forced other flourishing publications out of business, Hiram Evans gave the Forum his official imprimatur, telling the newspaper, “I am anxious that you prosper in the work which you are doing.” The Imperial Wizard noted that the weekly was “filling a niche peculiarly its own in the patriotic newspaper field.” Similarly, Robbie Gill Comer, head of the Women’s Klan, wrote to her members to enthuse that the Forum was doing “a very splendid piece of work” and encouraged Klanswomen to support the publication.53
That niche in the patriotic newspaper field was as a popular crossover publication, with appeal to both members and nonmembers across the country. The Grand Dragon of Oklahoma enthused that the Forum was the “best publication issued for the dissemination of pure Americanism” and “the principles of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,” with the “possible exception” of the Kourier and Kourier Magazine. The value of the Forum, the Grand Dragon explained, was its ability to attract readers who eschewed official Klan publications. By reading the Forum, though, they would still obtain “the viewpoint and information we want them to have.”54
The Forum, like the Kourier, took a “newsy” approach to providing that viewpoint. The weekly, which varied between eight and twelve pages long, declared itself “the LEADER in the field of Fraternal Journalism.” In practical terms, that meant the same kind of mix of content found in the official Klan publications. Flattering news of Klan events and other fraternal organizations dominated the Forum’s pages, alongside longer articles on the evils of Catholicism and the benefits of Americanism. At the same time, befitting the newspaper’s D.C. location, the Forum provided significant coverage of all the latest political news. By 1925, the ambitious weekly even had its own foreign correspondents.55
News pieces were supplemented by a variety of human-interest and lifestyle features. Reflecting the growing importance of photography in finding readers, the Forum regularly carried pictures of events of interest, from portraits of politicians to Klan weddings. The weekly’s editor boasted the “wonderful” diversity of its reporting could rival any newspaper. In a long piece of self-reflection, the publication noted that while the majority of its content was “general news,” readers could find plenty of information on Klan events and other fraternal affairs, “miscellaneous” news, “patriotic editorials,” and a mix of regular features and special “promotion features.” The weekly women’s page, for instance, focused on fashion and food. Sympathizers to the movement could have learned how to serve “Klansman’s Dream Toast,” garnished with a pimento cross, at their next dinner party.56
As the Invisible Empire’s official press network began to collapse in early 1925, the Fellowship Forum played an increasingly important role for the movement. Under the direction of publisher James Vance, the paper eagerly targeted Klan readers as a semiofficial rival that most likely hastened the Kourier’s demise. Walla Walla Klan No. 3 of Washington State declared that the paper was “of untold benefit to the Ku Klux Klan” and “one of the best mediums through which we can chronicle the things of interest to our members.” Two Klans
in Baltimore “went on record endorsing the work of The Fellowship Forum.” The nearby Mt. Rainier Klan urged members to subscribe to “the Klan paper, the ‘Friendship [sic] Forum.’”57
The Forum’s ability and willingness to take the place of the national publication as a respectable mainstream weekly was evident. The year 1925 saw state Klans pitted against each other in a competition to drive the Forum to five million readers. The massive national Klan parade through the District of Columbia that year was marked by the Forum with a front-page article by W. A. Hamlett, editor of the Kourier Magazine, and a specially commissioned poem, “I Am (the Ku Klux Klan),” by “Twilight” Orn, late of the Minnesota Fiery Cross and the “Twilight’s Thinklings” column in the Kourier. At the end of the year, even as the Kourier faltered, the Forum published an article from Imperial Wizard Evans himself on the topic “What Christmas Means to Members of the Ku Klux Klan.” By 1927, with the Kourier network defunct, the Fellowship Forum’s union with the Invisible Empire became official. The semi-independent newspaper of the Klannish movement was effectively folded into the organization. Readers were encouraged to save money with a joint subscription to the Forum and the Kourier Magazine.58
Ironically, it was this union of movement and organization that marked the beginning of the end for the Forum. It is telling that while readers flocked to a publication espousing Klannish ideology, significant sections of that readership were seemingly alienated by an explicit connection between the newspaper and the Klan. Although Vance would continue to publicly deny “Klan affiliations,” the increasingly close ties between the publication and the Invisible Empire had not gone unnoticed. In the eyes of many potential and existing subscribers, it was now a Klan paper, little different from the defunct Kourier. Certainly, other newspapers began to classify it as such. In 1925, the Washington Post had been happy to refer to the Forum as part of the fraternal Protestant press. By 1927, it was simply “a Ku Klux Klan publication.”59
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