The Dallas Klan owned a meeting hall at 421 Harwood, across the street from the First Presbyterian Church and a block from the Scottish Rite Mason Hall, which Tommy attended. The Klan held fund-raising parties for the children’s home, Klan Haven. At Christmas, the group handed out food baskets and used clothing to needy families.38 While the Klan worked hard to give off the appearance of a charitable and honorable organization, internal schisms in 1924 began to break the invisible empire apart.
THE KLAN EMERGES IN MARLIN
Hatefulness is not an attractive quality, and most people share their deeply held bigotry only with those whom they know agree. Klan anonymity allowed people to hate in a safe environment. Keeping their numbers secret also led the general public to overestimate the Klan’s size, giving it more influence than it deserved. Therefore Klan membership was a closely guarded secret. Even in a small town like Marlin, most people did not know with certainty who was a Klan member until they went to a meeting. And even then, they wouldn’t learn the full scope of the local Klan’s operation until they underwent initiation.39 Klansmen used secret handshakes and coded language to identify one another. For instance, a man may say “a.y.a.k.” or “A-YAK” to inquire “Are you a Klansman?” The proper reply was “a.k.i.m.” or “A-KIM,” meaning “A Klansman I am.”40 Many of the most powerful men kept their membership secret from low-ranking members to avoid implications for their businesses or political careers. But even if someone did not publicly proclaim their membership, it could be inferred, and I have found evidence that R.E.L., my great-great-grandfather, was a Klansman.
When R.E.L. joined the Marlin school board in 1916, he took over a seat vacated by William Daniel Kyser, a prominent farmer and businessman who had moved from Alabama after the Civil War. Both men were active in the First Baptist Church and the Masonic Lodge. Kyser grew cotton and raised cattle, the same as R.E.L.’s family, and Kyser built the first cotton gin in Marlin. In 1892, he joined other Marlin businessmen to start the Marlin Cotton Oil Company Mill, which he managed for twenty-eight years. R.E.L. grew up with Kyser’s son, William Earnest Kyser. The two men lived ten blocks from each other and both speculated in oil and gas leases. R.E.L.’s peer and business colleague William Earnest Kyser established the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and became its cyclops.41
Marlin Klan No. 107 made its first public appearance on September 13, 1921. Using the group’s standard tactic, 206 men wearing head-to-toe white masks and robes marched behind an American flag and a burning cross from Rimes Park through Marlin’s downtown streets. Rumors of the Klan march had spread throughout Falls County, so large crowds lined Live Oak, Walker, and Coleman streets as the men silently passed. The Klansmen made a point of marching down Wood Street, Marlin’s black main street:
In the parade were a number of public officials, some from Marlin and some from other towns. On account of the lights being turned off our lynx-eyed reporter could not read all the signs on the banners, but they were of the usual strong character carried by the Klan in other towns, with an addition or two. One of these favored the freedom of speech and of the press.42
The Marlin Democrat reported that Klansmen from Waco, Mart, Rosebud, and Chilton joined the procession, with some apparently going to the wrong park and arriving late.43
Two weeks later, the Klan tried to announce their presence with a similar march in Lorena, a town twenty miles to the west. McLennan County’s sheriff, Bob Buchanan, asked to see the Klan leaders while they were putting on their robes to inform them that marching anonymously violated state law. They refused to see him and marched anyway. The sheriff confronted them:
A wild scene ensued. Ten or 15 pistol shots were fired in rapid succession. The sheriff and Deputy Burton, who with Deputy Wood had accompanied their chief to the scene, were seen dashing about the road.
Buchanan had been knocked down at the beginning of the trouble by one of the paraders, but arose knife in hand. He said someone took his gun away from him while he was down, Buchanan soon cleared a space about him with his knife. In a few minutes, however, he was seen to fall again and was carried to a nearby store for treatment.
All of the wounded men were immediately given first aid and ambulances rushed from Waco and bore those seriously hurt back to hospitals in that city.
“I begged, and I pleaded, and I begged and I pleaded with them to halt,” [Buchanan] said wearily, “but they wouldn’t hear me.”44
Buchanan and eight other people suffered gunshot and knife wounds. Buchanan took two rounds in his chest and thigh, but he remained conscious until he reached the hospital in Waco.45 The following day, eight hundred Lorena citizens signed a letter denouncing Buchanan. They said they did not believe the Klansmen had violated any laws and had implored Buchanan not to interfere.46
In an editorial, Kennedy explained that the Klan parade violated the Texas penal code, which makes it a crime to threaten or intimidate someone anonymously. The Klan also violated federal law, he added, which bans two or more persons from oppressing, threatening, or intimidating someone from the free exercise of their rights under the Constitution. Kennedy warned that the Marlin Klan members who had participated in the Lorena march could face prosecution.
Two days later, Waco businessman Louis Crow died from wounds he had suffered after taking his family to see the parade. The riot and murder of a bystander made front-page headlines across the state. Governor Pat Neff offered to send Texas Rangers and asked the attorney general to issue an opinion on whether the Klan had broken the law. Lt. Gov. Lynch Davidson called on the Klan to dissolve.47
Texas attorney general Calvin Cureton concluded that if Klansmen used threats, intimidation, or violence—even for a moral reason—the entire chapter could face prosecution for conspiracy. Cureton said the anonymous threatening letters and flyers carrying the Klan’s name clearly violated the state’s penal code and that Klansmen also faced prosecution if they violated a person’s civil rights. Governor Neff forwarded the opinion to sheriffs across the state, urging them to prosecute Klan members who made threats or used violence.48
BLACKFACE AND WHITE ROBES
Racial awareness was a fundamental part of life in rural Texas, where entertainment during this era often revolved around stereotypes. African-Americans routinely performed as jesters or musicians, and these minstrels inspired white actors to put on black makeup and mimic them. During the 1920s, seniors at all-white Marlin High School put on “negro minstrel shows,” calling themselves the “Marlin High Burnt-Cork Artists,” a reference to how they blackened their faces. The songs they performed included “Massas in de Cold, Cold Ground,” “Polly-Wolly-Doodle,” “Jim Crack Corn,” and “Old Kentucky Home.” In 1922, R. E. L.’s nephew smeared blackened cork on his face to play in a show the Marlin Democrat pronounced “a big hit.”49 That same year, the high school seniors hosted a Kriss Kross Karnival to raise money.50
Poll taxes and the all-white Democratic primary meant that African-Americans had no political power. When Falls County officials announced how many people had paid the poll tax in 1922, the Marlin Democrat ran the headline POLL TAX RECORDS BROKEN—ONE THOUSAND QUALIFIED IN THE CITY OF MARLIN—NINE-TENTHS ARE WHITE. Of those who paid the tax, 821 were white men, 576 were white women, 66 were black men, and 62 were black women.51
After marching through Marlin, the Klan moved to smaller Falls County towns. The Dallas Morning News, of March 8, 1922, reported a parade near Tomlinson Hill:
It was estimated that 2,000 people were on the streets when the lights were turned out before the parade started. Many people came from Marlin, Rosebud, Chilton, Travis and other Falls County towns to witness the parade. No demonstration was made and scarcely a sound was heard during the parade.
About thirty automobiles parked outside the city limits earlier in the evening and the occupants were seen to clothe themselves in white robes in a grove of trees.
Klan chapters also formed in Chilton and Rosebud, aggressively recruiting members and threatenin
g those who opposed them. In an open letter, the Klan ordered one critic “to improve his conduct and cut out your activities.”52
Dozens of citizens wrote open letters, asking political candidates to state their views on the organization, with the authors providing their names and registering their opposition to the invisible empire. Many prominent Marlinites issued statements in the Marlin Democrat, promising that they had never joined the Klan and held no alliance to the group. No Tomlinson or Stallworth made such pledges.
George Carter, a local Democratic party leader, attended public meetings across Falls County for two years, explaining why the Klan was dangerous. In Marlin, he was usually welcome, but in Chilton and other villages, the Democrat’s reporter called the meetings “cordial.” Carter wanted voters to minimize the influence of known Klan members at precinct meetings, hoping to keep them from becoming delegates to the Democratic party’s county convention.
Voters in Marlin’s northern precinct elected three Klansmen to serve as Democratic party delegates in 1922. A newspaper report did not name who the Klan members were, only who were not:
On the matter of selecting delegates a motion was made by W. E. Hodges that a committee composed of S. J. Stallworth, L. J. Davis and B. J. Miller be elected to recommend a list of delegates to the county convention. J. W. Spivey offered an amendment that Frank Oltorf and N. J. Llewellyn, who are not members of the Klan, be added to the committee. This amendment was promptly voted down.53
W. E. Hodges, the author of the Klan list, was an officer in the Old Settlers and Confederate Veterans Association. Sanford J. Stallworth was Churchill Jones’s grandson and R.E.L.’s second cousin. The report clearly implies that at least Sanford was a Klansman. In Marlin’s South Precinct, the chairman named the delegates to the convention “without regard to Klan membership” and placed R.E.L. on the list.54 But it was clear that the paper believed that the majority of the city’s delegates were Klansmen, and R.E.L.’s appointment and his relationships with known Klansmen makes his membership pretty clear. The Klan’s success in Falls County was not unusual:
In the counties in which are located Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Dallas, Waco, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls and others the Klan ticket swept nearly everything before it. The visible membership strength of the Klan appears to be almost entirely in the cities, and the invisible methods used are such that non-members do not know who the members are, or who the Klan candidates are for the reason that the Klan candidates in nearly every instance deny that they are members, the law of the Klan suspending them automatically the moment they are asked the question.55
The 1922 election was a wake-up call for Democrats, who witnessed a racist club take control of their party. Klan members saw nothing wrong with endorsing candidates or in Klansmen running for office. Critics, though, refused to believe Klansmen when they denied using violence and intimidation, and they worried about a secret society wielding so much hidden influence. Those opposing the Klan did not necessarily denounce white supremacy; most supported segregation and the ban on African-Americans voting. They worried only about their power and privileges.
The Marlin Democrat of the early 1920s did not report any of the signature attacks the Klan carried out in larger cities. No stories exist about masked men lynching anyone, or tarring and feathering people for alleged immorality. Considering his anti-Klan editorials and his extremely thorough coverage of the Klan elsewhere in Texas, Kennedy is unlikely to have looked the other way. In fact, the Democrat took a slightly mocking tone toward the KKK:
The Ku Klux Klan entertained a large crowd on the Falls County courthouse lawn Thursday evening regaling the audience with several speeches before treating them to a watermelon feast that had been prepared.
The melons, which had been in cold storage for several days, proved delicious and the supply was abundantly sufficient for all.
A number of out-of-town Klansmen were on the speaker’s platform. Also in the audience.
The meeting was called to order by W. E. Kyser, Cyclops of the Marlin Klan.
“We are gathered here for three purposes,” Mr. Kyser said:
“First, that we might mix and mingle together in friendship for the cause of high citizenship and Americanism, and we hope that we shall not in any way offend any race or nationality; second, we are here to hear some addresses, and third, for the watermelon feast.”
“The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a patriotic, fraternal, benevolent organization. It has been accused of fighting the Jews and the Catholics. That, we deny. If I had to belong to an organization that would bar me from association or business with my Jewish friends, that organization would be without me.”56
Kyser then handed the dais over to the Reverend T. J. Slaughter, a Baptist minister from Killeen, who gave a speech that strikes twenty-first-century notes. He accused northern liberals of imposing their values on the South, declaring Baptist marriages void and their children bastards. He mixed traditionally conservative values with his bigotry to make the latter more palatable:
When I went into the Klan, I thought there was a strong probability of it being a whipping bee, or a tar and feather party. But soon afterwards, I learned differently. That is not the purpose of the organization at all.
The men who started the Klan on Stone Mountain in Georgia have since aroused many hatreds unintentionally and have assumed responsibilities of which they never dreamed.
Today, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is the most misunderstood, the most abused institution in the country, but in spite of this, it has grown, thanks to the men who met on Stone Mountain and dedicated their lives to Christian ideals and everything for which our country stands.
There are people in this country who declare your children were born out of wedlock because they did not sanction your marriage. Our homes would be declared violators of the law, if we did not stand up in our own defense.
Every Klansman believes in the tenets of Christianity as taught in America. I love to preach Klan principles, just as I love to preach the gospel. The time must never come when we cannot talk out plainly about our ideals. God forbid that you and I shall ever see such a time in America. Religious liberty is a gracious thing.57
The next speaker was Garland Adair, editor of the Mexia Daily News in neighboring Limestone County. He was publicly coming out as a Klansman and compared the group to the American Legion. He said the Klan’s disguises followed the tradition of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when antitax protesters dressed as Native Americans: “There are many members of the Klan who do not believe in the robe, but if you condemn this in principle, you condemn the men who conducted the Boston Tea Party as the first act of the American revolution, and you condemn the [Klansmen] of the 1860s.”58
That fall, the Klan began advertising its meetings in the Marlin Democrat. They met every other Tuesday “at the usual place.”
Twenty-four years later, members of the Old Settlers and Veterans Association still struggled to explain the Klan. In its official 1947 history, the authors briefly mention the group:
What the modern Ku Klux Klan signified, its objectives and what its “inner” activities were, only members knew. Those on the “outside” came to understand that the Klan stood for a self-defined Americanism, excluding certain races and setting up a code in variance with tolerance, religious freedom, and moral ethics, not adjusted by legal processes. They thought of the Klan members as people wearing long white robes, concealing their identities on parade, or at, or going to, meeting places. They saw fiery red crosses, marking and dramatizing assemblies in some exclusive and guarded place.
The Klan stirred differences in opinion in many sections of the nation, resulting in hatreds, even outbursts of violence. In the county the Klan was short lived and in 1946 references to memberships in it were in lighter vein.59
The decision to allow those on the inside to believe what they wanted, and simply to describe what outsiders perceived, is a curious editorial decision. The Klan played a trem
endous role in Texas politics between 1921 and 1926, and it certainly dominated headlines in the Marlin Democrat. In 1976, the all-white Bicentennial Committee of the Marlin Chamber of Commerce, led by a member of the Oltorf clan, compiled another history of Marlin and Falls County, still struggling with whether to condemn the Klan in full:
In Marlin, the Klan had three different meeting places. The first was upstairs above the building on the northwest corner of Commerce and Wood Streets. J. M. Kennedy, editor of the Democrat, strongly opposed the Klan and published the names of those attending the meetings in his paper. The Klansmen thought it was an inside job of reporting and planned to “tar and feather” the traitor if he was discovered. Mr. Kennedy’s employees did not attend another meeting, but the names continued to be published. Years later it was learned that Skeeter Levy [grandson of Jewish merchant Marx Levy] sat in an unlighted office behind Bill Bowdon’s garage and listed each Klansman as he attended the meeting.
The Klan also met at the barn on Anders Street behind E. E. (Bud) Kyser’s home. The governing body of the Klan was the Klo Kouncil, which met at Conyer’s Barn at the foot of Bean Hill.
One night in August of 1924, the Klan announced they were going to parade down Main Street and then have a mass meeting on the front lawn of the Kyser home on Anders.
The streets were lined with spectators, as row after row of white-robed figures with white-robed horses rode silently through the down town section of Marlin. The Klansmen at each side of the column carried huge burning torches.
As soon as the last rank of Klansmen had passed, the townspeople got in their cars and drove over to the Kyser’s to see the assemblage. Three huge crosses on the law were lighted from the torches and these burned furiously throughout the meeting.60
I was unable to find either the lists of members or any report of the Klan marching to Kyser’s home, but the Democrat archives are incomplete. Kennedy did take a hard line against the Klan and denounced any organization that relied on anonymity. He believed a healthy democracy relied on people who put their names to their opinions and participated in public debate. He refused to run any anonymous submissions in his paper.61
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