The Second Coming of the KKK

by Linda Gordon

  Unfortunately we have no information about the backgrounds of the LOTIEs or other Oregon Klannish women. But the little we know about Mother Counselor Maybelle Jette may shed some light on these Klans-women of the Northwest. Jette was already on her second husband, and she would have two more before her death at some point in the 1960s—hardly a conventional woman’s biography. The Klan newspaper identified her as Oregon’s youngest grandmother, at age thirty-three, and when her baby grandson visited LOTIE headquarters he “smiled and Kooed . . . a real Hundred Percenter.” She had a particular interest in a WCTU children’s home in Corvallis and pledged that LOTIE would contribute $5,000 to it.70 She later worked as a newspaper columnist, using an alias, wrote poems, and painted landscapes.71

  Even if no other power struggles involving Klanswomen reached this level of conflict, it seems likely that other such power struggles existed. They illustrate the contradictions involved in conservative women’s activism. The umbrella-wielding, kicking LOTIEs, we must remember, would probably have enunciated conventional views about a woman’s domestic and maternal destiny, even as they resisted men’s right to govern them.

  Because the Klan rapidly declined in size and popularity after 1925, what might have become of any women’s drive for organizational independence is a matter open only to speculation. Equally unknown is whether Klanswomen would have modified Klan ideology and activity in any way. Still, conservative movements have generated many women leaders since then, and their programs have not differed notably from men’s. Their determination operates within a contradictory set of premises: that women should be equally respected in public political activity even as domestic labor and motherhood should remain women’s primary orientation.72

  There was a stream of feminism in the women’s Klan groups, discernible in the writings and speeches of leaders and in some of the activities of the rank and file. Klanswomen’s family values differed little if at all from those of most non-Klan women, but because they were clubwomen, they enunciated the women’s rights they wanted in writing and speaking. If we had minutes from WKKK meetings we might see more. But Klan feminists differed radically from the progressive feminist activists of the time. Klanswomen’s priority remained the restoration of Anglo-Saxon Protestant control of American society, economy, and government, and the accompanying disempowerment of those the Klan called “aliens.” True, many Klanswomen sought autonomy for their clubs. But even the woman suffrage supporters among them exercised their voting power in the service of Klan values and Klan candidates, all male.

  ___________

  * A reference to boxer Jack Dempsey.

  KKK poster denouncing Catholic Al Smith, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 1924.

  Chapter 9

  POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC WARFARE

  THE 1920S KU KLUX KLAN FUNCTIONED BOTH INSIDE and outside the electoral system. In places it assumed some of the roles of American political parties—influencing nominations, getting out the vote for its candidates, and lobbying officeholders. It operated a political machine that was remarkably effective for a short period of time. At the same time, its members and their supporters used social-movement techniques, such as rallies, cross-burnings, public pageants, vigilantism, and an economic boycott of “wrong” enterprises, all of which strengthened its electoral clout. Like many social movements, it built alliances with influential groups outside electoral politics, such as police forces and churches. With remarkable fluidity, Klan activity varied by place and opportunity, sometimes pouring energy into elections, sometimes into propaganda that communicated its size and determination. Sometimes the two tactics came together; this would show in the 1924 Democratic Party convention.

  The synergy between electoral and nonelectoral strategies is often missed. Many scholars have conceived them as alternatives rather than complements, and the distinction between them has often been blurred, as when some electoral campaigns elicited large-scale participation. The Klan did both, and its short-term success arose from this dual strategy, even if it was unarticulated. In fact, it owed much of its considerable electoral success to nonelectoral activities that signaled its mass following. Many a candidate sought Klan support not because of principled agreement with its beliefs but out of fear of retribution. Still, basic to both electoral and social-movement strategy was the Klan’s legitimacy and, in many locations, respectability.

  The Klan made war via elections. No one has been able to count all the Klan candidates elected to state and local offices, and the exercise would probably not be worthwhile in any case because so many nonmembers shared Klan ideology. We can, however, note the members elected to high offices: sixteen senators, scores of congressmen (the Klan claimed seventy-five), and eleven governors, pretty much equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

  The Klan also exaggerated its political power; one of its lecturers claimed that twenty-six governors and 62 percent of Congress were Klansmen. It also took credit for reelecting Calvin Coolidge in 1924. “The New York Times conceded the fact,” Klan leader Alma White wrote, “that the Ku Klux Klan won where it was an issue in the election.”1 Its political clout rested not only on numbers but also on the powerful positions occupied by its supporting politicians. Notably, Klan member Albert Johnson of Washington served as chair of the House Immigration Committee and led the drive for immigration restriction, the Klan’s major national priority. (He had publicly bragged about his participation in a 1907 mass vigilante action that drove the entire South Asian population out of Bellingham, Washington.2) He surely knew that the Klan’s main publication, the Imperial Night-Hawk, suggested in 1923 that the Imperial Wizard appoint “an Imperial Immigration and Naturalization Commission to outline a program” of restriction.3 Other pro-Klan legislators led on other issues. Hatton Sumners, member of Congress for thirty-four years, led the House Judiciary Committee, where he smothered attempts to pass an anti-lynching bill. Congressman William Upshaw, an evangelist called the “Billy Sunday of Congress,” leader in the Anti-Saloon League, and member of the board of trustees for Bob Jones University, served four terms (1919–27); in 1932, he ran for president on the Prohibition Party ticket. In Indiana between 1924 and 1926, eleven of the thirteen men elected to the US House of Representatives were Klan members, as were the majority of Texas and Colorado congressmen. Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black and Edward Douglass White were Klansmen. (Black was “naturalized” into the Klan, along with fifteen hundred recruits, in a monster event, but resigned later in his career.4) The Klan claimed President Harding as a member, and President Truman joined when he thought it was “just” a patriotic group (he quit when he learned that he would have to break off his friendships with Catholics).5

  These examples do not include Klan-friendly politicians, who served the cause by deflecting attacks on the Klan—again vividly demonstrated in the 1924 Democratic convention. With their support, the Klan was able to thwart numerous attempts by its opponents to put together majorities that would support anti-Klan resolutions. Neither major political party and none of the presidents in this period—Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover—could be persuaded to condemn the Ku Klux Klan.6

  Klansmen and Klan supporters won elections through a national strategy referred to as “the Decade” and in Indiana as the “Military Machine.” Laying the groundwork for this plan, Klan leaders developed an analysis of their chances in every state, producing in 1923 a chart assessing all US senators as to their Klan-friendliness (see appendix 2); this was no amateur, let alone country bumpkin, operation. Each county in Indiana was labeled a Klanton, headed by an Exalted Cyclops; each congressional district became a Province, headed by a Great Titan who did the work of a district political party chairman. The “Field Regulations” of this apparatus required constructing a list with the name, address, and vocation of every “alien” of voting age. Stephenson bragged that this network enabled him to instruct his subordinates with a single phone call. He had plenty of cash to award to cooper
ative politicians. He loaned Ed Jackson his Cadillac for campaigning around the state, and later told grand jury investigators that he had spent at least $73,000 (worth over a million today) to get Jackson elected governor.7

  The Decade’s get-out-the-vote plan called on every Klan member to recruit ten people who would promise to vote for Klan candidates, and it worked. The Indiana machine was particularly methodical; in other locations electoral campaigns varied with the energy level of particular Klaverns. In La Grande, Oregon, for example, “twenty stalwart Americans placed under every door in this town a straight American ticket.”8 Klanspeople were proud of their successes. Klansman G. W. Price reported from Los Angeles that “we succeeded in having Friend Richardson nominated for Governor . . . [and] elected Chas. G. Johnson State Treasurer. . . . In Fresno we defeated Gearheart K.C. [Knights of Columbus, indicating a Catholic] . . . and elected . . . Judge Frederick Houser who presided at our trial.”9 Many candidates dog-whistled; that is, they adjusted their appeals strategically, avoiding religion-based attacks where they might hurt, focusing on cleaning up immorality when that would help. But some spoke in plain English. In the Oakland Auditorium a Klan speaker in 1922 announced that “the election of Richardson is imperative if we are to remove the Jews, Catholics and Negroes from public life in California.” Richardson won with an overwhelming majority.10

  THE KU KLUX KLAN TURNED the 1924 Democratic Party national convention into high drama and gained invaluable nationwide publicity for several weeks.11 The proceedings, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, were as hotly contested as the Garden’s sports events, and much longer. Unlike the uneventful Republican convention that of course renominated incumbent president Coolidge,12 the Democrats were divided, not only among candidates for the nomination but most intensely between pro- and anti-Klan factions. That Democratic convention came to be known as “the Klanbake,” signifying both the intensity of animosities among delegates on the floor and the record-breaking heat outside. As historian David Burner wrote, “The deadlock that developed might as well have been between the Pope and the Imperial Wizard.”13

  The Ku Klux Klan was the protagonist in this drama. It was outraged because the New York delegation had the temerity to nominate New York governor Al Smith, a Catholic, for the presidential ticket. Before the convention he appeared to be the strongest candidate, but he was anathema to the Klan. Not only a Catholic, not only an opponent of Prohibition, he also aggressively denounced the Klan’s candidate, William Gibbs McAdoo, former secretary of the treasury. A darling of evangelicals because he was an uncompromising Prohibitionist, McAdoo even supported the ban on alcohol at the convention. But he also commanded the loyalty of many working-class and populist voters because earlier in his career he had supported workmen’s compensation for workplace accidents, unemployment insurance, the eight-hour workday, and a minimum wage. McAdoo’s stances on these efforts also point to the commonalities between the Klan and the Progressives of the pre–World War I era on social welfare issues. But anti-Catholic fervor dominated all other Klan motives at the 1924 convention. It contributed mightily to Al Smith’s defeat, not only then, but again in 1928 when he succeeded in winning the nomination but lost to Herbert Hoover.

  In its campaign against Al Smith, the Klan made sure not to rely only on its dependable convention delegates. It mobilized hundreds of Protestant pastors across the country to sermonize against him, exerting indirect pressure on the delegates. It peddled stories to newspapers across the country, smearing Al Smith by associating him with New York’s crime, political corruption, defiance of Prohibition, and general sinfulness. On Independence Day the Klan organized a mass rally for McAdoo, attended by twenty thousand, just across the Hudson River in Long Branch, New Jersey. There it burned not only crosses but also effigies of Smith. Attendees could contribute a nickel for the privilege of throwing baseballs at a portrait of Smith. Constructed as a typical Klan pageant, featuring several weddings and baptisms, it was also designed to pressure convention delegates. Because the convention continued for more than two weeks, this monster event featured prominently in newspapers; it provides a vivid example of joining social-movement with political strategies.

  The party had chosen New York City as the convention site—a site used by Democrats for the first time since 1868—because it was doing so well there: in 1922, thirteen incumbent Republican congressmen lost their seats to Democrats, who were on average more sympathetic to the Klan. This victory had encouraged the Klan to go all out for the popular McAdoo. As H. L. Mencken wrote, “There may not be enough kluxers in the convention to nominate McAdoo, but there are probably enough to beat any anti-klan candidate so far heard of, and they are all on their tiptoes today, their hands clutching their artillery nervously and their eyes apop for dynamite bombs and Jesuit spies. . . . One sits through long sessions wishing heartily that all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell—and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.”14 After Franklin Roosevelt, in one of his first appearances after contracting polio, nominated Smith, New York’s Tammany Hall political machine raised a ruckus, “armed with drums, tubas, trumpets and a bunch of ear-piercing electric fire sirens that were so loud that people scooted out of the hall with their fingers in their ears.”15

  If there was any doubt about the centrality of the Klan to convention deliberations and votes, that doubt was erased when a southern delegate introduced a resolution to add a condemnation of the Klan into the party platform. That delegate was Forney Johnston, a banker, former steel company head, and former governor of Alabama. This move demonstrated a strain of upper-class disapproval of the Klan, but it also reinforced the Klan’s claim to represent the “common people.” The resolution also demonstrated to any delegates who still considered the Klan a southern phenomenon that it commanded major northern support. (Nevertheless, even southern conservatives who despised the Klan could not bring themselves to vote for Al Smith; in all the many ballots he never received more than one vote from a southern delegation. The votes also showed that within the North, the Klan was strongest in the West: in all the many ballots, Smith never got more than twenty votes from states west of the Mississippi River.)

  Forney Johnston’s resolution took Klan delegates by surprise, and they reacted furiously. Not only was the convention divided about the amendment, but state delegations were also internally divided between pro- and anti-Klan members. Soon delegates were pushing and shoving on the floor of the convention. The governors of Kentucky and Colorado reportedly got into fistfights as they struggled to keep their state banners out of the hands of anti-Klan delegates. While those on the Klan’s side shouted, “Mac, Mac, McAdoo,” their adversaries shouted, “Ku, Ku, McAdoo.” The final vote on the anti-Klan resolution could hardly have been closer: 542.15 in favor, 546.15 against. (Some state delegations split their votes, hence the fractions.) The results suggested not only how many supported the Klan but also how many feared antagonizing it.

  Meanwhile, an impasse developed between the two major candidates, because nomination required a two-thirds majority. The deadlock continued ballot after ballot, and state delegations began deserting their original choice to support “favorite son” compromise candidates. None of these could bring together the required two-thirds. The convention continued through an absurd 103 ballots with sixty different candidates over sixteen days. Ultimately the episode was a Klan victory: it blocked Al Smith and grew its reputation as a national political force.16 The victor, John W. Davis—first a congressman from West Virginia, then solicitor general, then ambassador to the UK—was in many ways a typical southern Democrat: he had opposed woman suffrage, child labor laws, and anti-lynching legislation but also, opportunistically, opposed Prohibition. In this convention, however, his politics hardly mattered. He was a dark horse, his nomination the product of delegate exhaustion, convention stalemate, and the fact
that he did not evoke strong negatives.

  Still, although the convention made the Klan a national power, it was in states and cities that the Klan amassed its greatest dominance. American federalism created both challenges and opportunities for the Klan: obstacles to national power but also openings for state and municipal power. For a few years it wielded determining political influence in several states—electing governors in Indiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, Colorado, and Texas. Klan Republicans swept to victory in Nebraska in 1926.17 (Klan candidates ran mostly as Democrats but occasionally as Republicans.) For ten years, 1922 to 1932, the majority of all Oregon’s elected officials were Klansmen, and opposition was so weak that Klansmen sometimes ran against one another.18 Politicians elected with Klan support typically promised to appoint Klan-friendly men to office. An Indiana grand jury investigation of corruption revealed written evidence: the mayor of Indianapolis wrote that “in return for the support of D. C. Stephenson, in the event that I am elected . . . I promise not to appoint any personal [sic] . . . without they first have the endorsement of D. C. Stephenson.”19

  In contrast to contemporary claims that Klan strength lay in rural and small-town America, it racked up many victories in cities. In 1922 the Klan already controlled several city governments, including those in Dallas and Fort Worth. Both Portlands—Maine and Oregon—elected Klan mayors, as did many other cities large and small.20 In Colorado only one city—Colorado Springs—was not controlled by the Klan.21 In Muncie, Indiana, the mayor, the president of the Board of Education, and the secretary of the YMCA were Klansmen.22 In smaller towns Klansmen often ruled absolutely. Tillamook, Oregon, for example, between 1924 and 1928, gave Klansmen positions as county sheriff, state representative, superintendent of schools, schools director, city attorney, county clerk, chief clerks of the post offices, principals of both the elementary and high schools, and the majority of city councilmen.23