Ku Klux Kulture

by Felix Harcourt

  This remarkable rise has marked radio in the mind of many historians as the first truly modern mass medium. Marshall McLuhan, with typical bombast, declared radio to be “a subliminal echo chamber of magic power to touch remote and forgotten chords.” While this may be overstating the case somewhat, radio arguably did more than any previous system to create a common culture, consumed by a national audience. Michele Hilmes and Susan J. Douglas have masterfully detailed the impact that radio made on the United States, disrupting the cognitive practices of a visual culture that suddenly found itself in an auditory world.3

  Radio connected Americans as part of a vast listening public. Broadcasting bridged divides between rural and urban, bringing the country together in common cultural consumption. By the end of the decade, even more than newspapers, radio was able to construct a national audience, an imagined community of listeners who reveled in the “chance to feel that they were connected to others.” One of those connections was with the Ku Klux Klan. Radio broadcasting would allow for the reinforcement of an imagined Klannish community in the vast unseen radio audiences across the country—a literal Invisible Empire.4

  With millions more Americans buying radios, turning on, and tuning in every year, the demand for broadcasters soared. In 1922, there were thirty stations on the air. By 1923, there were more than five hundred. Not all were successful. More than two hundred new stations joined the airwaves in 1923, but almost three hundred closed. A key factor in this success, though, was content. All of these stations needed material. Michele Hilmes has astutely argued that as the rise of the Klan coincided with the development of radio broadcasting, the idea that “these two sets of phenomena were hermetically sealed off from each other requires a greater effort at explanation than the opposite assumption.” This was not just mutual exploitation. This was mutual development.5

  It is even easier to lose historical understanding of broadcast material than in the case of other forms of entertainment. The same cultural snobbery was present, exacerbated by the inherently ephemeral nature of early radio. H. L. Mencken complained that the occasions when he had been able to listen to “anything even remotely describable as entertainment” were few and far between. More often, he found “rubbish.” The early days of radio turned largely to the familiar—to vaudeville and musical comedy, to Broadway revues and Tin Pan Alley novelty numbers. Broadcasting from largely improvised studios, deadening sound with thick carpets, drapes, heavy furniture, even potato sacks, stations filled time with a wide variety of acts and entertainments, including the Ku Klux Klan.6

  As with newspapers and newsreels, the interest generated by the Invisible Empire made the organization attractive to radio broadcasters looking to draw listeners. August 1923 marked the first reported appearance on the new medium by Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans, who delivered an address “to the Klansmen of the Nation” from station WOQ in Kansas City, Missouri, “heard within a radius of 1,000 miles.” Evans’s address to the Alabama state Klan convention in 1926 was carried on Birmingham’s WBRC station “in one of the city’s first night radio broadcasts.” In Virginia, WDBJ and WTAR aired speeches by Evans and the proceedings of the state convention. Station KLZ of Denver, Colorado, gave time to speeches “honoring Klan notables.” Pennsylvania’s WPRC broadcast a special address by Evans on the “malign influence of the Roman Catholic Church” and the Klan’s opposition to the World Court. In a move indicative of how far the Klan had shifted from attempting to cultivate an air of mystery, Louisiana station KFFY aired a Klan initiation from the county fair, including the order’s theoretically secret oath.7

  Significant as these appearances were, the organization’s leaders once again lagged far behind the wider Klan movement in the adoption and exploitation of radio. By the mid-1920s, members of local Klans could already be heard on broadcast stations across the country. WLW in Cincinnati billed a forty-five-minute segment by the Hamilton County Klan in 1924 as “one of the first ever Klan programmes ever broadcast from a government [licensed] radio station.” It was certainly not the last. These appearances usually consisted of either lectures by Klan state officers or, increasingly, light entertainment provided by Klan musicians. KFPW in Missouri, for example, proved a friend to the Klan with its broadcasts of Ozark Klan Band concerts, consisting “mostly of patriotic selections.” James D. Vaughan, the prolific Klan music publisher, owned station WOAN in Tennessee and made it available for the use of Klan lecturers.8

  Without any real oversight or organizational structure, these appearances were generally sporadic and irregular. Some stations, though, offered their listeners more consistent Klan programming. Klansmen appeared on WBAP in Texas, operated by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, throughout 1923. A Klan concert aired in February could reportedly be heard as far away as Oregon. By December, the combination of “novel stunts” and “interesting information” in the Klan broadcasts had apparently made them popular enough for the station to feature the organization as their holiday entertainment. Listeners to WBAP rang in the New Year with a “Ku Klux Klan concert.”9

  The Invisible Empire found an even more influential ally in KFKB of Milford, Kansas. Originally established in 1923, the station had by 1925 become one of the most powerful broadcasters in the Midwest. In 1929, Radio Digest named KFKB the most popular station in the country after the broadcaster received more than a quarter of a million votes. Founder and operator John R. Brinkley was a “true early innovator” of radio, being among the first to air an almost full-time broadcast schedule. He was also one of the country’s most successful medical hucksters. KFKB had been built with the money Brinkley earned offering goat gland transplants for sexual revitalization. Much of the station’s programming was used to offer dubious medical advice and peddle patented “medicines.”10

  Perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit in the Klan movement, Brinkley featured local Klan members on KFKB on a fairly regular basis in 1925. The first of these broadcasts, an all-night affair on February 28, was publicized by Klan periodicals as “the first time such a program has ever been arranged over the radio.” The experimental lineup included lecturers, monologists, Klan quartets, musical selections, and the Junction City Klan’s jazz band—the superbly named Whiz Bang Orchestra. Listeners were encouraged to write in “in order to determine just what benefit such programs would be.”11

  Some audience members were not taken with the Kansas station’s decision to provide the Invisible Empire with airtime, and a number of “threatening letters” were sent to KFKB. One disgruntled listener wrote to the Department of Commerce’s radio office to complain about “broadcasting under government license the false, malicious, and un-American propaganda” of the Klan. Klan members and allies of the movement, in contrast, hailed the broadcast as “a smashing hit” and boasted that positive responses were “pouring in” from across the country. According to one Klan newspaper, the station received over two hundred long-distance phone calls praising the event, while Milford’s small Western Union office was forced to bring in extra operators in order to receive all the congratulatory telegrams. A Kansas newspaper reported that one of the telegrams commending the program was signed by the entirety of the Emporia fire department. Certainly, the program was a sufficient success that KFKB immediately scheduled a repeat performance, while Brinkley took to the airwaves to excoriate those who had threatened violence against the station for broadcasting the Klan.12

  Klan members were also listeners, and they found plenty to draw them to the early days of radio broadcasting. Some worried that the new medium, like the “Romanized, Jew-censored daily newspaper,” would become a tool of un-American interests. The Kourier Magazine ran multiple articles warning of the “Romanist and anti-American propaganda” spread by radio. The Kolorado Kourier demonstrated the organization’s usual disregard for facts, alleging that Catholics owned two-thirds of broadcasting stations. The paper warned that “the possibilities for ruining America” were “greater through air [wave] control than in any other on
e thing.” One Klan, in Batavia, New York, went so far as to boycott all General Electric products after the Knights of Columbus appeared on the company’s radio station. The American Standard, meanwhile, launched attacks on the “highly offensive” material broadcast on the radio.13

  Even the Standard had to admit, however, that radio had “quickly become a subject of first importance.” While there was plenty they could take offense at, the Klan publication also acknowledged the broadcast of “entertainment of high quality.” An officer of the Women’s Klan in Wisconsin was more effusive in her praise, telling members, “I should like very much to know that every Klan family in the land, had a radio. Used rightly, they are a gift from God.” Many did not need the encouragement. Klan members were hardly immune from soaring American enthusiasm for radio.14

  Despite dire warnings of Catholic control, enough Klan members had expressed interest in the new medium by 1922 that the Searchlight introduced a regular radio column, “devoted to items of general interest to radio ‘bugs.’” Later that same year, the newspaper offered a hearty recommendation of several technical books aimed at amateur radio enthusiasts. At a Wisconsin Klan’s New Year’s Eve celebration, a large radio was the featured attraction, supplemented by a box supper and lecture. Craig Fox notes in his study of Michigan Klansmen that half those who owned radios in the town of Fremont were Klansmen. Fear of offensive material infiltrating their homes was clearly not enough to dissuade the men and women of the Klan from adopting this new technology.15

  Seemingly the Klan’s most favored broadcasting station was WHAP of New York City. WHAP was founded by Augusta E. Stetson, a Christian Scientist who had been expelled from the church for “perverted sexual teaching.”16 She retained a sizable following, including the wealthy William H. Taylor, who financed the construction of WHAP in 1925. Stetson’s station was characterized from the outset by the same kind of cultural snobbery offered by Mencken and his coterie. This attitude initially manifested itself in the same self-conscious intellectual refinement that marked much of radio’s early programming. Educational offerings, high culture and art, respectable drama—this was the order of the day for many stations. Much of WHAP’s airtime was dedicated to lectures by Ivy League professors and classical music performances that included members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.17

  By mid-1926, the veneer of civility had been stripped away. The academics had gradually been phased out, replaced by fuming lecturers who did not bother to cloak their nativist beliefs and bigoted arguments on religious differences and race relations. Leading this pack was Stetson’s personal secretary, Franklin Ford (see fig. 8.1), who was made WHAP’s station manager. Ford presented a “News Digest” program three times a week, as well as a special lecture on “political Romanism” every Saturday. He filled his broadcasts with so much anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic vitriol that Sol Bloom and Samuel Dickstein, two of New York’s congressional representatives, launched a campaign to have WHAP removed from the airwaves. As Ford gradually replaced more and more of the station’s musical programming with these kinds of lectures, the New York Herald Tribune optimistically noted that “not many broadcasters devote 40 per cent of their weekly schedule to editorial talks, and it is doubtful that many broadcasters ever will.” The WHAP broadcaster’s “jeremiad of . . . claptrap” made him something of a pioneer in the field of talk radio.18

  Figure 8.1. From Paul M. Winter’s What Price Tolerance (Hewlett, NY: All-American Book, Lecture and Research Bureau, 1928), facing p. 53.

  Ford denied he was a Klansman, and there is no evidence of a formal affiliation—he was a part of the Klannish movement, not a member of the organization. Informally, the bonds between the WHAP announcer and the Invisible Empire were clear. Ford often used his addresses to promote the Klan and its ideas. One of his most popular Saturday lectures, broadcast in April 1927, was entitled “Why Rome Fights the Ku Klux Klan.” In it, Ford made the case that “no genuine American” could object to the Klan, which was “an agency of highest value for American welfare” and a “tremendous influence for good.” These lectures were reprinted in their entirety every week by the Fellowship Forum, a Klan publication.19

  Ford also had close ties to Paul Winter, head of the Ku Klux Klan in Queens. A widely circulated booklet by Winter, What Price Tolerance, contained a lengthy hagiography of Ford. The Klansman hailed the broadcaster as a “vitriolic thunderer” and quoted his opinions on Catholicism in politics at length, including the idea that “radio is doing, and will continue to do a great work” in freeing those enthralled to the Pope. Ford, for his part, often appeared at Klan events with Winter, lecturing on the evils of the Roman Catholic Church. At some Klan events, the WHAP front man was a draw on par with Imperial Wizard Evans, with whom he shared the stage on multiple occasions.20

  Klan members were certainly not hesitant in embracing WHAP. As early as 1926, the Fellowship Forum praised “gallant old WHAP” as one of the few stations spreading “our message.” Lecturers appeared on the station to exalt the Klan and its ideals. By 1929, the Kourier Magazine referred to WHAP as one of “our radio stations,” commending its ability to “make Americans think.” The Klan publication instructed members to tune in to WHAP and send financial contributions where possible. Klansmen were also encouraged to spread the word to other radio owners, and to invite friends and neighbors with no radio to listen with them.21

  Yet WHAP was not the Ku Klux Klan radio station that many of the organization’s members wanted. The Invisible Empire was far from alone in this desire. Although the majority of early broadcast stations were owned and operated by companies, fraternal groups across the country had eagerly welcomed the potential of radio for spreading their message and boosting their membership. A wide variety of churches had embraced the airwaves. Klan members were determined to get the Invisible Empire a foothold on the air as well.22

  The most sophisticated and stable stations were those built as a means of increasing sales by radio manufacturers and dealers, who accounted for roughly 40 percent of the total station ownership. Many other stations were run by educational institutions and newspapers, which could afford to subsidize the new medium. The significant financial outlay required to establish and operate a broadcast station was a major obstacle for many, including the Klan. Given this impediment, it would seem reasonable that the national leadership—with access to the organization’s sizable finances—would take the lead in this process. In reality, though, the Klan’s efforts to conquer the world of broadcasting would see the efforts of local Klaverns and sympathizers achieve the greatest success. The split in radio once again reflected the power of the wider movement to construct a national Klannish community where the organization failed.23

  Initially, the Invisible Empire’s national leadership considered establishing a centrally controlled network of stations that would supplement the Kourier newspaper syndicate as a national propaganda outlet. In 1924, two years before NBC became the first national network in the United States, the Klan reportedly considered “extensive plans for a system of stations throughout the country.” That project was temporarily abandoned: radio was still a fledgling medium, with crowded airwaves, and control of the newspapers was the national leadership’s primary objective. By 1925, more of the Klan’s officials had awakened to the possibilities presented by radio, and the Invisible Empire sought once again to build a “chain of stations.” As newspapers noted at the time, the system would be “unique in the United States broadcasting field.” While many organizations owned one or two small transmitters, “no body of this nature has ever considered a group of stations that would cover all or a section of the country.” The Klan’s ambition had vaulted it to the forefront of radio innovation.24

  Like many of the Ku Klux Klan’s grand plans, however, its ambition to broadcast outstripped its ability. With the Klan’s organizational power already on the wane in 1925, the national “Protestant Broadcasting System” never seems to have progressed any farther than
the planning. Instead, as with so many other cultural endeavors, Klannish broadcasting was left to members across the country who aimed to establish their own radio stations. In 1925, the King Kleagle of New Jersey (which had been mentioned as a potential home base for the national broadcasting system) declared his intention to erect a Klan station “from which matters of interest to the organization may be broadcast.” The state’s Klan even went so far as to purchase a tract of land from RCA that housed a Marconi wireless station. While it is unclear what went wrong, no broadcasts were forthcoming. By 1926 the land had been put to use as a Klan-only summer resort. In Iowa, the Des Moines Women’s Klan did successfully establish a radio station, NSSA, and an accompanying newsletter, The Iowa Broadcaster, in 1926. For some reason, neither enterprise seems to have made much of an impression. The station did not even manage to garner a mention in the official Klan press. As the Klan’s national membership continued to fall and its power weaken, it seemed as though the organization would never achieve its dream of a Ku Klux Klan broadcaster.25

  The Fellowship Forum of Washington, D.C., came to the organization’s rescue. With the Kourier syndicate already in rapid decline, the Forum represented the Invisible Empire’s only remaining power base in the world of newspaper publishing. Newspapers constituted one of the largest and most powerful corporate interests invested in broadcasting. As Chicago newspaperman William Hedges noted in 1924, radio provided a powerful tool for a newspaper to promote itself, to “[pour] inoffensively its name into the willing ears of thousands of listeners.” The Forum was a natural choice to get the Klannish voice on the air.26

  In 1926, the Forum printed a “flood of letters” from around the country encouraging the publication to erect its own broadcasting station. Homer B. Summers of Illinois, in a typical example, called on the newspaper to “get some Protestantism on the air.” In response, the newspaper declared that it was open to donations to finance the construction of a new home for the publication, complete with radio transmitter. As of May, the newspaper began publishing the names of contributing individuals and organizations as a mark of thanks. Supporters would have to hurry. The newspaper declared that it intended to break ground on the project with a “patriotic fete” on July 3.27