Populist empowerment and white supremacy by Dougherty
Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 12:17 pmPopulist empowerment and white supremacy: Historical scholarship and the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s
By John Dougherty
Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, suggested that his organization was a movement of the “plain people”, in which populist empowerment and social and moral cohesion were formative in the ideology of the Invisible Empire. The Klan to emerge in the 1920s was not a “lunatic fringe” movement of racist or nativist extremists, but rather a populist insurgence in American society. For many, the 1920s Klan represented a seemingly legitimate agent of social change, and the distinction between Klansmen and middle-class America is not so definitive. However, at the heart of Klan rhetoric in the 1920s, lay the inevitable feeling of contradiction, and an important question emerges: why did political empowerment and social improvement have to coincide with racism, nativism and white supremacy? The study of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s offers more than answers to American racist or nativist movements, but more importantly, it provides us with a unique response to the “progress” of American civilization.
This essay will examine the activities and ideologies expressed by the La Grande, Oregon klavern, discuss the national Klan rhetoric of Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans, place the 1920s Secret Order in the context of Jazz Age and American cultural studies, and conclude with an overview of the complex historiography regarding the Invisible Empire of the Jazz Age. This synthesis will comprise the examples presented in Behind the Mask of Chivalry by Nancy MacLean, Citizen Klansmen by Leonard Moore, Hooded Knights on the Niagra by Shawn Lay, Inside the Klavern by David A. Horowitz, Invisible Empire in the West edited by Shawn Lay, a series of handouts regarding Hiram Wesley Evans, and national publication from the Imperial Knighthawk..
The example of the La Grande Klan No. 14 provides a stunning center for analysis of a functioning 1920s Ku Klux Klan. The La Grande Klan formed in response to the changing social and economic climate of the city in the early 20th-century. Union County was composed of 93% native-born Protestants, but the region would experience a dramatic population increase of seven to eight thousand in the 1920s. This was a result of La Grande emerging as a commercial and industrial hub, and home to the administration center of the railroads. In the early 1920s, the city hosted the second highest payroll and the fourth largest public school district in the state. Essentially, the social and economic change supposedly threatened a formerly isolated community with the increased consumerism of Jazz Age America.
Not only was the national market seen as a potential threat to the community, but the increased economic development of the region caused an influx of laborers and workers. As a result, a diversity of ethnic groups began converging on La Grande. Among these groups were Chinese, Mexicans, eastern Europeans, Italian-Americans, and African-Americans. According to David A. Horowitz, the threats of the national market and increased immigration are a two-fold explanation for the emergence of the La Grande Klan: “Ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity served to heighten local tensions over changes in social value associated with the spread of early-twentieth-century consumerism”.
The La Grande Klan organized in early 1922. The primary instigating cause of the organizations formation was to help enforce Prohibition. Klansmen interpreted the illegal use of alcohol as an immorality, and saw immigrant as being the most obvious violators. According the klavern enrollment records, the La Grande chapter was composed primarily of working class and lower middle class males, and it seems the organization attracted individuals interested in social and moral reform, and but also attracted racist and nativists. The secret notes of the La Grande chapter meetings were generated by kligrapp Harold Fosner, who not only kept detailed notes of the klavern proceedings from October 1922 to September 1923, but also offered his own comments and observations of klavern dynamics.
La Grande Klan No. 14 engaged in a series of activities which suggests the organization was an institute of social reform and political empowerment. For instance, the supported of local politicians, became involved in Protestant churches, encouraged participation in public school issues, developed purity crusades, assisted in law enforcement, and provided support for other civic involvement organizations. A great deal of Klan effort was aimed at patronage. On June 12, 1923, the klavern discusses the success of getting a Klansmen elected to the State Board of Optometry. And on June 19, 1923, the Klan has a major patronage success when Klansmen compose a 3 out of 5 seat majority on the local school board. Klansmen referred to their fraternal cohesion as “klanishness”, and this also meant the spread of the organizations support to other members of the community. Economic solidarity of the members was at the center of “klanishness”.
David A. Horowitz, editor of Inside the Klavern, suggests that participation in the Secret Order was significant in marking ones own prestige and that the fraternal nature of the klavern was built upon ethnic solidarity and reactions to the hedonism associated with the Jazz Age. Therefore, the unity of Klansmen was based on valuecentric behavior. Klavern activity and rhetoric in La Grande follows a similar national trend, in that they are obviously concerned with making their organization an agent of social improvement and political involvement, but these more admirable agendas are rooted in the less admirable agenda of racial prejudice and ethnic or religious bigotry.
In determining the social and political intentions of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, there is no greater of a center for analysis than the national Klan rhetoric of Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan. Evans had an unassuming sophistication in his social critiques, and seemed to encapsulate the conflicting ideologies of Klan motivation in his public addresses. He identified himself as the “most average man in America”, and he used this descriptive phrase as an indicator of his organizations seemingly populist social and political agenda. His rhetoric was based on views of commonality, the abolition of elitism, and serves as a staging ground in examining the Secret Order as a racist-nativist organization, or one aimed at populist empowerment. The great irony in the rhetoric of the Imperial Wizard is that he criticizes the intellectualization of American social and political life, yet he seems to over intellectualize the social significance of the Klan as an agent of cultural preservation to perhaps “cover up” the notions of racism and nativism that lay underneath.
Evans made the argument of the Secret Order as a populist movement based on the concerns of “ordinary Americans”, meaning white-Protestant Americans. A central component of this argument was his suggestion that the Klan was not entirely concerned with white-Protestant supremacy, but that they represented a national concern of the loss of American values. The heart of Evans populist rhetoric is evident when he calls for the “return of power into the hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualized, but entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanized, average citizen of the old stock”. Evans attempted to rally support for the Klan, and make them a socially embraced movement by suggesting that they were simply an organization concerned with empowering the “plain people”.
However, underneath the populist ideologies expressed by Evans, he suggested that the conservation of Americanism, and the empowerment of “plain people”, meant the oppression and subjugation of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. Evans spoke often of the threat of inassimilable Roman- Catholics, Jews, and African Americans, and suggested that nothing was immune from the “invasion of aliens and alien ideas”, in which he meant the threat of immigration. In his 1923 speech at Ashville, North Carolina, he suggested that Catholics were “subservient religious deveotees”, and immigrants from Europe are dependents to religious lords, and therefore they are not ready for American democracy. Evans didn’t care about immigrants, but the ideologies which immigrants brought with them. He argued that “national culture needs purity” and that a nation cannot be progressive with alien ideologies.
In 1926, as membership in the Invisible Empire began to decline significantly, the organization held a massive march on Washington DC. At the event, Evans delivered a speech on Pure Protestantism, in which he states that “we have many Protestant denominations, but we must all bind together as Americans”.
After the march, he moves the national headquarters to Washington DC for greater political presence. In Hiram Wesley Evans rhetoric, he speaks of the Klan as a populist movement of the “plain people”, but he cant escape the seemingly racist and nativist ideologies which permeate Klan ideology. Although engaging and unsuspectingly sophisticated, Evans seems to overstate the perceived threat which the “outsider” (Roman-Catholics, Jews, African-Americans, Eastern European immigrants) pose to American society. The pressure for these groups to assimilate and acculturate into American society would have been just as significant without the Ku Klux Klan.
Hiram Wesley Evans served as Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1922 to 1939, but by the end of 1925, the Secret Order had lost nearly 80% of its members, falling from around 5 million to only 1 million nationally. Much of this came when the Secret Order began to contradict their own professed ideals and social standards with bad behavior, and their presence on local and national social and political affairs becomes a nuisance. The decline of the Klan nationally was basically provoked by the decline of local chapters, each of which seemed to embody similar traits. Historian Mark Morris argued that the Klan cannot be describes by one-sided localism, and that is necessary in Klan studies to realize that local chapters were part of a national fraternal order. Therefore, in investigating the decline of localized Klans, it is apparent that they follow the similar fate of the national order.
The general trend for the decline of local Ku Klux Klan chapters has to do with two fundamental ideas: the first, the growing disillusionment of Klan leaders and dissension within the Klan, and the second, the social and political limitations of the Klan become evident. These are most eloquently demonstrated with the decline of the La Grande chapter. In August 1923, Klan organizer Ellis Willson was put on trial for the rape of his dental assistant. After being sentenced to three years in prison, it becomes apparent to the local community that Klansmen are betraying their own professed trust and ethics of the Secret Order. However, this was just the beginning of the decline of the La Grande Klan. In 1924, Oregon passed the School Bill was stated that the state cannot force citizens to send children to public schools in private schools abide by state standards. This was state legislation in favor the pluralism, and demonstrated a lack of Klan political influence. Around the same time, the relationship between the La Grande Klan and Governor Pierce begins to sour, as the Klan realizes Pierce will not fulfill many of their patronage requests. And finally, in 1925, Klan organizer Fred Gifford, as a result of his own elitism and agentification, causes mutiny within the Klan and he leaves in an attempt to form his own group. By the late 1920s, only small groups are left with little or no social impact.
In Indiana, the Secret Order faded away due to growing disillusionment of its leaders, especially the quick demise of Grand Dragon Stevenson. In 1924, Stevenson was convicted of murdering his secretary. After his imprisonment, he states that if the former Klan-supporting Governor Ed Jackson refuses to pardon his crime, then he will reveal the names of Klansmen working in local governmental offices. Governor Jackson refused to pardon Stevenson for the crime and the former Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan single-handedly brings down the prominence of the Klan by revealing the names of its members.
In Denver, the Secret Order suffered a similar breakdown and disillusionment in leadership as the Indiana chapter. The decline of the order in Indian was perpetuated by the downfall of its central leader, John Locke. After being arrested and imprisoned for not filing his income taxes, he could not look after the growing fractionalization of his group. In addition, his imprisonment, which was initiated by Governor Rice Means, caused many Klansmen to lose faith in their leader. The growing disintegration of Klansmen caused the organization to separate between original Klan members, and Locke’s new Minute Men. Despite the attempts by both groups to reinforce Pure Americanism and social involvement, by the end of 1926, the Denver Klan loses any social or political influence they had left.
Another example of the decline being caused by the disillusionment of its leaders is in Eugene, Oregon. The Oregon Klan No. 3 begins to dismantle by the end of 1924 as a result of the resignations of Lem Dever, the editor of the Klan newspaper, and the Fred Gifford, the Grand Dragon of Oregon Klans. This leaves the Klan without its central leadership. Luther Powell attempted to rally enthusiasm of the Klan and begin a new order, but is never occurred.
In El Paso, another explanation for the decline of localized orders and the national Klan becomes evident, and that is the political limitations of the Klan restrict the influence of the order. The decline of Frontier Klan No.1 coincided with the apparently insignificant influence they could have on local patronage and voting efforts. This was obvious when they could not get a Klan-supporting candidate to defeat democrat Dick Dudley in local elections, who “rode anti-Klan sentiment to victory”.
The lack of influence in local political elections and patronage efforts perpetuates the decline of the Anaheim Klan, as anti-Klan candidates were elected to local politics by easy victories in the mid-1920s. In addition a lack of political influence, a growing anti-Klan sentiment in Anaheim led to a series of community efforts aimed at reducing the Klan’s influence. Among these were local newspapers deciding not to print Klan-related articles, and the closure of the publishers of The Plain Dealer, a Klan-supporting publication. These factors, among others, force the Anaheim Klan to go underground by the end of 1925. Within a few months, top official, Leon Myers, leaves the Klan. However, although the Klan in Anaheim loses its significance, chapters in neighboring communities would remain relatively active throughout the 1920s.
The decline Salt Lake City Klan No. 1 became evident by the end of 1926. This was after many Klansmen became disillusioned with the national order, suggesting that they had ignored local chapters. As a result, the Klan seceded from the national Klan and affiliated themselves with John Locke’s Minute Men. But the Salt Lake City Klan was doomed even before their secession. The Klan had been torn apart in the preceding months by “internal dissension, negative local publicity, and the anti-mask laws”.
In the final analysis, the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s essentially declined as a result of their contradictory behavior, and the fact that social improvement could be accomplished by far less controversial organizations. The agentification of the Klan leaders, the disillusionment of its members, and the lack of political or social influence spelled the decline the 1920s Klan. But also, the decline was the 1920s Klan was a result of their hypocrisy, and misinterpretation of social issues. They denounced the increasing cosmopolitanism of American life, yet they failed to realize that corporate capitalism is not about the destruction of traditional American values, its about encouraging consumerism. The Klan demonstrated some acts of social compassion, yet it was overshadowed by their adolescent behavior. And finally, the Invisible Empire saw themselves as forces of social improvement and populist empowerment, but ended up being worse to people who had even less power than them.
It is essential in interpreting the motivations for Klan organization and activity in the 1920s to examine the state of American culture during that era. The culture clash of the Jazz Age was essentially a conflict between urbanites and ruralites, which seemed to ignite a larger clash between Protestant Fundamentalism and the forces of cultural cosmopolitanism and ethnic pluralism. The increased consumerism based on hedonistic ideals, and the sense of “packaging” oneself to gain more social prestige, were decaying the fabric of American life; the 30 million immigrants arriving in the United States from 1870 and 1920 and an increased emphasis on ethnic pluralism as a result; and the erosion of community in suburban and rural areas and increased populations in urban centers. Social status, family obligations, moral cohesions, and the decay of traditional American and protestant ethics all were supposedly threatened by the Jazz Age. Historian Kenneth Jackson, in Klan in the City, offered his own explanation as to why the Secret Order became so popular. Jackson argues that the organization emerged as a resolution to the lack of local cohesion caused by the increased growth of urban centers and immense European immigration.
William Garson, in his 1977 article “Political Fundamentalism and Popular Democracy in the 1920s”, offered a dynamic explanation as to how American society of 1920s generated an interest among white-Protestant Americans to join or support the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. Garson argued that the culture war of the 1920s was a conflict between the growing professional elites and the tradition-oriented society, and that the Klan was at the forefront of this culture war. Garson also offers a three-fold explanation of Klan popularity: the first was among urbanites believing that the organization was preserving traditional American values in light of increasing cosmopolitanism; the second was among older residents in rural communities who feared the loss of status and breakdown of their communities; and the third was among rural members fearing outside influence of increasing immigration.
The historical scholarship of the Klan in the 1920s has had several approaches, each of which attempts to determine the nature of Klan activity. The debate that has arisen is essentially a conflict between the revisionist and re-revisionist scholars of Klan history. The revisionist historians place a significant focus on local group dynamics and activities rather than the rhetoric of Klan leaders, and this provides a “bottom up” historical approach to Klan history. This interpretation tends to suggest that the Klan was a populist movement, in which local Klan groups were aimed at instigating social and political change rather than manifesting racial or nativist agendas. On the other hand, the re-revisionist historians suggest that revisionist historians do not place enough emphasis on Klan racism and violence, because this is their motivating cause. This debate has originated in the Secret Order’s “repeated association with white supremacy, rural nativism, and vigilantism”, which more appropriately describes the original Reconstruction Era Knights, and the post-World War II Knights, but to be impossible to separate from the more civic-minded reformers of the 1920s.
The primary suggestion among scholars who see the 1920s Klan as a populist movement is that the Klan represented, to those who joined or supported its activities, is that the Klan offered viable responses to social problems, and the Klan was itself a vehicle for change. This argument was originally articulated by Charles Alexander, one of the original Klan historians. Robert Goldberg, author of Hooded Empire, was especially influenced by Jackson, emphasized that Klan historians examine how the Klan operated within their communities, and made the suggestion in his book that the Klan saw itself not as a racial supremacy organization, but as an “institute for social improvement”.
Nancy MacLean, author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry, offers a re-revisionist approach in her study of the emergence of the 1920s Klan. MacLean’s primary contention is that of the Klan as being a “violent, vigilante organization” rather than one aimed toward populist politics. In her analysis of the Klan in Athens, Georgia, she uses an economic perspective to understand Klan members, as well as intentions for Klan activity. According to MacLean, the Klan in Athens was composed of individuals who had lost economic status in the community, and were in opposition to the economic elites. Klan members positioned themselves as an alternative to economic elitism, and also being the disposed of local power. MacLean’s concluding argument about the Athens Klan is against the populist movement argument, but rather “reactionary populism”. MacLean suggests that white-Protestants felt as if they were “losing control”, and the increasing presence of “outsiders” provoked a racist-nativist organization. However, MacLean seems to overstate the perceived threat of immigrants. In a southern city like Athens, it would have been inconceivable for racial or ethnic minorities to pose a legitimate political or economic threat.
Other scholars, specifically Leonard Moore, William Jenkins, and Shawn Lay, suggest Klansmen in their researched localities were economically stable, civic-minded, mainstream Protestants with opposition to the local power elite. They continue their argument by suggesting that the Secret Order was not necessarily a far-right organization. Klan organizers portrayed themselves as social reformers, and populism empowerment among the Klan was more important than racism or nativism. Moore, in his research on Indiana, suggests that the Klan was revitalizing social and community life, and responding to the inability of the average citizen to participate in the political process. Jenkins had a similar conclusion in his study in Ohio, in which he argued that the Klan was “an agency of moral reform and social order”.
The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s sought, as described by Eckard Toy, to articulate standards of local community and national morality. The order believed that the modernization of American society created a loss of social control, and would inevitably lead to social disintegration. As a result, the order was based on the reassertion of personal discipline and community solidarity. The primary investigation of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s is move beyond mere stereotypes of a “lunatic fringe” racist militancy, and to understand how and why American society fostered the emergence of such an organization. This is the question that will not only answer the important questions as to what the Invisible Empire of the 1920s meant, but also what American society was like in the 1920s. The study of the Klan offers more than answers to American racist or nativist movements, but more importantly, it provides us with a unique response to the “progress” of American civilization.
By John Dougherty
Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, suggested that his organization was a movement of the “plain people”, in which populist empowerment and social and moral cohesion were formative in the ideology of the Invisible Empire. The Klan to emerge in the 1920s was not a “lunatic fringe” movement of racist or nativist extremists, but rather a populist insurgence in American society. For many, the 1920s Klan represented a seemingly legitimate agent of social change, and the distinction between Klansmen and middle-class America is not so definitive. However, at the heart of Klan rhetoric in the 1920s, lay the inevitable feeling of contradiction, and an important question emerges: why did political empowerment and social improvement have to coincide with racism, nativism and white supremacy? The study of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s offers more than answers to American racist or nativist movements, but more importantly, it provides us with a unique response to the “progress” of American civilization.
This essay will examine the activities and ideologies expressed by the La Grande, Oregon klavern, discuss the national Klan rhetoric of Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans, place the 1920s Secret Order in the context of Jazz Age and American cultural studies, and conclude with an overview of the complex historiography regarding the Invisible Empire of the Jazz Age. This synthesis will comprise the examples presented in Behind the Mask of Chivalry by Nancy MacLean, Citizen Klansmen by Leonard Moore, Hooded Knights on the Niagra by Shawn Lay, Inside the Klavern by David A. Horowitz, Invisible Empire in the West edited by Shawn Lay, a series of handouts regarding Hiram Wesley Evans, and national publication from the Imperial Knighthawk..
The example of the La Grande Klan No. 14 provides a stunning center for analysis of a functioning 1920s Ku Klux Klan. The La Grande Klan formed in response to the changing social and economic climate of the city in the early 20th-century. Union County was composed of 93% native-born Protestants, but the region would experience a dramatic population increase of seven to eight thousand in the 1920s. This was a result of La Grande emerging as a commercial and industrial hub, and home to the administration center of the railroads. In the early 1920s, the city hosted the second highest payroll and the fourth largest public school district in the state. Essentially, the social and economic change supposedly threatened a formerly isolated community with the increased consumerism of Jazz Age America.
Not only was the national market seen as a potential threat to the community, but the increased economic development of the region caused an influx of laborers and workers. As a result, a diversity of ethnic groups began converging on La Grande. Among these groups were Chinese, Mexicans, eastern Europeans, Italian-Americans, and African-Americans. According to David A. Horowitz, the threats of the national market and increased immigration are a two-fold explanation for the emergence of the La Grande Klan: “Ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity served to heighten local tensions over changes in social value associated with the spread of early-twentieth-century consumerism”.
The La Grande Klan organized in early 1922. The primary instigating cause of the organizations formation was to help enforce Prohibition. Klansmen interpreted the illegal use of alcohol as an immorality, and saw immigrant as being the most obvious violators. According the klavern enrollment records, the La Grande chapter was composed primarily of working class and lower middle class males, and it seems the organization attracted individuals interested in social and moral reform, and but also attracted racist and nativists. The secret notes of the La Grande chapter meetings were generated by kligrapp Harold Fosner, who not only kept detailed notes of the klavern proceedings from October 1922 to September 1923, but also offered his own comments and observations of klavern dynamics.
La Grande Klan No. 14 engaged in a series of activities which suggests the organization was an institute of social reform and political empowerment. For instance, the supported of local politicians, became involved in Protestant churches, encouraged participation in public school issues, developed purity crusades, assisted in law enforcement, and provided support for other civic involvement organizations. A great deal of Klan effort was aimed at patronage. On June 12, 1923, the klavern discusses the success of getting a Klansmen elected to the State Board of Optometry. And on June 19, 1923, the Klan has a major patronage success when Klansmen compose a 3 out of 5 seat majority on the local school board. Klansmen referred to their fraternal cohesion as “klanishness”, and this also meant the spread of the organizations support to other members of the community. Economic solidarity of the members was at the center of “klanishness”.
David A. Horowitz, editor of Inside the Klavern, suggests that participation in the Secret Order was significant in marking ones own prestige and that the fraternal nature of the klavern was built upon ethnic solidarity and reactions to the hedonism associated with the Jazz Age. Therefore, the unity of Klansmen was based on valuecentric behavior. Klavern activity and rhetoric in La Grande follows a similar national trend, in that they are obviously concerned with making their organization an agent of social improvement and political involvement, but these more admirable agendas are rooted in the less admirable agenda of racial prejudice and ethnic or religious bigotry.
In determining the social and political intentions of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, there is no greater of a center for analysis than the national Klan rhetoric of Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan. Evans had an unassuming sophistication in his social critiques, and seemed to encapsulate the conflicting ideologies of Klan motivation in his public addresses. He identified himself as the “most average man in America”, and he used this descriptive phrase as an indicator of his organizations seemingly populist social and political agenda. His rhetoric was based on views of commonality, the abolition of elitism, and serves as a staging ground in examining the Secret Order as a racist-nativist organization, or one aimed at populist empowerment. The great irony in the rhetoric of the Imperial Wizard is that he criticizes the intellectualization of American social and political life, yet he seems to over intellectualize the social significance of the Klan as an agent of cultural preservation to perhaps “cover up” the notions of racism and nativism that lay underneath.
Evans made the argument of the Secret Order as a populist movement based on the concerns of “ordinary Americans”, meaning white-Protestant Americans. A central component of this argument was his suggestion that the Klan was not entirely concerned with white-Protestant supremacy, but that they represented a national concern of the loss of American values. The heart of Evans populist rhetoric is evident when he calls for the “return of power into the hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualized, but entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanized, average citizen of the old stock”. Evans attempted to rally support for the Klan, and make them a socially embraced movement by suggesting that they were simply an organization concerned with empowering the “plain people”.
However, underneath the populist ideologies expressed by Evans, he suggested that the conservation of Americanism, and the empowerment of “plain people”, meant the oppression and subjugation of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. Evans spoke often of the threat of inassimilable Roman- Catholics, Jews, and African Americans, and suggested that nothing was immune from the “invasion of aliens and alien ideas”, in which he meant the threat of immigration. In his 1923 speech at Ashville, North Carolina, he suggested that Catholics were “subservient religious deveotees”, and immigrants from Europe are dependents to religious lords, and therefore they are not ready for American democracy. Evans didn’t care about immigrants, but the ideologies which immigrants brought with them. He argued that “national culture needs purity” and that a nation cannot be progressive with alien ideologies.
In 1926, as membership in the Invisible Empire began to decline significantly, the organization held a massive march on Washington DC. At the event, Evans delivered a speech on Pure Protestantism, in which he states that “we have many Protestant denominations, but we must all bind together as Americans”.
After the march, he moves the national headquarters to Washington DC for greater political presence. In Hiram Wesley Evans rhetoric, he speaks of the Klan as a populist movement of the “plain people”, but he cant escape the seemingly racist and nativist ideologies which permeate Klan ideology. Although engaging and unsuspectingly sophisticated, Evans seems to overstate the perceived threat which the “outsider” (Roman-Catholics, Jews, African-Americans, Eastern European immigrants) pose to American society. The pressure for these groups to assimilate and acculturate into American society would have been just as significant without the Ku Klux Klan.
Hiram Wesley Evans served as Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1922 to 1939, but by the end of 1925, the Secret Order had lost nearly 80% of its members, falling from around 5 million to only 1 million nationally. Much of this came when the Secret Order began to contradict their own professed ideals and social standards with bad behavior, and their presence on local and national social and political affairs becomes a nuisance. The decline of the Klan nationally was basically provoked by the decline of local chapters, each of which seemed to embody similar traits. Historian Mark Morris argued that the Klan cannot be describes by one-sided localism, and that is necessary in Klan studies to realize that local chapters were part of a national fraternal order. Therefore, in investigating the decline of localized Klans, it is apparent that they follow the similar fate of the national order.
The general trend for the decline of local Ku Klux Klan chapters has to do with two fundamental ideas: the first, the growing disillusionment of Klan leaders and dissension within the Klan, and the second, the social and political limitations of the Klan become evident. These are most eloquently demonstrated with the decline of the La Grande chapter. In August 1923, Klan organizer Ellis Willson was put on trial for the rape of his dental assistant. After being sentenced to three years in prison, it becomes apparent to the local community that Klansmen are betraying their own professed trust and ethics of the Secret Order. However, this was just the beginning of the decline of the La Grande Klan. In 1924, Oregon passed the School Bill was stated that the state cannot force citizens to send children to public schools in private schools abide by state standards. This was state legislation in favor the pluralism, and demonstrated a lack of Klan political influence. Around the same time, the relationship between the La Grande Klan and Governor Pierce begins to sour, as the Klan realizes Pierce will not fulfill many of their patronage requests. And finally, in 1925, Klan organizer Fred Gifford, as a result of his own elitism and agentification, causes mutiny within the Klan and he leaves in an attempt to form his own group. By the late 1920s, only small groups are left with little or no social impact.
In Indiana, the Secret Order faded away due to growing disillusionment of its leaders, especially the quick demise of Grand Dragon Stevenson. In 1924, Stevenson was convicted of murdering his secretary. After his imprisonment, he states that if the former Klan-supporting Governor Ed Jackson refuses to pardon his crime, then he will reveal the names of Klansmen working in local governmental offices. Governor Jackson refused to pardon Stevenson for the crime and the former Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan single-handedly brings down the prominence of the Klan by revealing the names of its members.
In Denver, the Secret Order suffered a similar breakdown and disillusionment in leadership as the Indiana chapter. The decline of the order in Indian was perpetuated by the downfall of its central leader, John Locke. After being arrested and imprisoned for not filing his income taxes, he could not look after the growing fractionalization of his group. In addition, his imprisonment, which was initiated by Governor Rice Means, caused many Klansmen to lose faith in their leader. The growing disintegration of Klansmen caused the organization to separate between original Klan members, and Locke’s new Minute Men. Despite the attempts by both groups to reinforce Pure Americanism and social involvement, by the end of 1926, the Denver Klan loses any social or political influence they had left.
Another example of the decline being caused by the disillusionment of its leaders is in Eugene, Oregon. The Oregon Klan No. 3 begins to dismantle by the end of 1924 as a result of the resignations of Lem Dever, the editor of the Klan newspaper, and the Fred Gifford, the Grand Dragon of Oregon Klans. This leaves the Klan without its central leadership. Luther Powell attempted to rally enthusiasm of the Klan and begin a new order, but is never occurred.
In El Paso, another explanation for the decline of localized orders and the national Klan becomes evident, and that is the political limitations of the Klan restrict the influence of the order. The decline of Frontier Klan No.1 coincided with the apparently insignificant influence they could have on local patronage and voting efforts. This was obvious when they could not get a Klan-supporting candidate to defeat democrat Dick Dudley in local elections, who “rode anti-Klan sentiment to victory”.
The lack of influence in local political elections and patronage efforts perpetuates the decline of the Anaheim Klan, as anti-Klan candidates were elected to local politics by easy victories in the mid-1920s. In addition a lack of political influence, a growing anti-Klan sentiment in Anaheim led to a series of community efforts aimed at reducing the Klan’s influence. Among these were local newspapers deciding not to print Klan-related articles, and the closure of the publishers of The Plain Dealer, a Klan-supporting publication. These factors, among others, force the Anaheim Klan to go underground by the end of 1925. Within a few months, top official, Leon Myers, leaves the Klan. However, although the Klan in Anaheim loses its significance, chapters in neighboring communities would remain relatively active throughout the 1920s.
The decline Salt Lake City Klan No. 1 became evident by the end of 1926. This was after many Klansmen became disillusioned with the national order, suggesting that they had ignored local chapters. As a result, the Klan seceded from the national Klan and affiliated themselves with John Locke’s Minute Men. But the Salt Lake City Klan was doomed even before their secession. The Klan had been torn apart in the preceding months by “internal dissension, negative local publicity, and the anti-mask laws”.
In the final analysis, the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s essentially declined as a result of their contradictory behavior, and the fact that social improvement could be accomplished by far less controversial organizations. The agentification of the Klan leaders, the disillusionment of its members, and the lack of political or social influence spelled the decline the 1920s Klan. But also, the decline was the 1920s Klan was a result of their hypocrisy, and misinterpretation of social issues. They denounced the increasing cosmopolitanism of American life, yet they failed to realize that corporate capitalism is not about the destruction of traditional American values, its about encouraging consumerism. The Klan demonstrated some acts of social compassion, yet it was overshadowed by their adolescent behavior. And finally, the Invisible Empire saw themselves as forces of social improvement and populist empowerment, but ended up being worse to people who had even less power than them.
It is essential in interpreting the motivations for Klan organization and activity in the 1920s to examine the state of American culture during that era. The culture clash of the Jazz Age was essentially a conflict between urbanites and ruralites, which seemed to ignite a larger clash between Protestant Fundamentalism and the forces of cultural cosmopolitanism and ethnic pluralism. The increased consumerism based on hedonistic ideals, and the sense of “packaging” oneself to gain more social prestige, were decaying the fabric of American life; the 30 million immigrants arriving in the United States from 1870 and 1920 and an increased emphasis on ethnic pluralism as a result; and the erosion of community in suburban and rural areas and increased populations in urban centers. Social status, family obligations, moral cohesions, and the decay of traditional American and protestant ethics all were supposedly threatened by the Jazz Age. Historian Kenneth Jackson, in Klan in the City, offered his own explanation as to why the Secret Order became so popular. Jackson argues that the organization emerged as a resolution to the lack of local cohesion caused by the increased growth of urban centers and immense European immigration.
William Garson, in his 1977 article “Political Fundamentalism and Popular Democracy in the 1920s”, offered a dynamic explanation as to how American society of 1920s generated an interest among white-Protestant Americans to join or support the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. Garson argued that the culture war of the 1920s was a conflict between the growing professional elites and the tradition-oriented society, and that the Klan was at the forefront of this culture war. Garson also offers a three-fold explanation of Klan popularity: the first was among urbanites believing that the organization was preserving traditional American values in light of increasing cosmopolitanism; the second was among older residents in rural communities who feared the loss of status and breakdown of their communities; and the third was among rural members fearing outside influence of increasing immigration.
The historical scholarship of the Klan in the 1920s has had several approaches, each of which attempts to determine the nature of Klan activity. The debate that has arisen is essentially a conflict between the revisionist and re-revisionist scholars of Klan history. The revisionist historians place a significant focus on local group dynamics and activities rather than the rhetoric of Klan leaders, and this provides a “bottom up” historical approach to Klan history. This interpretation tends to suggest that the Klan was a populist movement, in which local Klan groups were aimed at instigating social and political change rather than manifesting racial or nativist agendas. On the other hand, the re-revisionist historians suggest that revisionist historians do not place enough emphasis on Klan racism and violence, because this is their motivating cause. This debate has originated in the Secret Order’s “repeated association with white supremacy, rural nativism, and vigilantism”, which more appropriately describes the original Reconstruction Era Knights, and the post-World War II Knights, but to be impossible to separate from the more civic-minded reformers of the 1920s.
The primary suggestion among scholars who see the 1920s Klan as a populist movement is that the Klan represented, to those who joined or supported its activities, is that the Klan offered viable responses to social problems, and the Klan was itself a vehicle for change. This argument was originally articulated by Charles Alexander, one of the original Klan historians. Robert Goldberg, author of Hooded Empire, was especially influenced by Jackson, emphasized that Klan historians examine how the Klan operated within their communities, and made the suggestion in his book that the Klan saw itself not as a racial supremacy organization, but as an “institute for social improvement”.
Nancy MacLean, author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry, offers a re-revisionist approach in her study of the emergence of the 1920s Klan. MacLean’s primary contention is that of the Klan as being a “violent, vigilante organization” rather than one aimed toward populist politics. In her analysis of the Klan in Athens, Georgia, she uses an economic perspective to understand Klan members, as well as intentions for Klan activity. According to MacLean, the Klan in Athens was composed of individuals who had lost economic status in the community, and were in opposition to the economic elites. Klan members positioned themselves as an alternative to economic elitism, and also being the disposed of local power. MacLean’s concluding argument about the Athens Klan is against the populist movement argument, but rather “reactionary populism”. MacLean suggests that white-Protestants felt as if they were “losing control”, and the increasing presence of “outsiders” provoked a racist-nativist organization. However, MacLean seems to overstate the perceived threat of immigrants. In a southern city like Athens, it would have been inconceivable for racial or ethnic minorities to pose a legitimate political or economic threat.
Other scholars, specifically Leonard Moore, William Jenkins, and Shawn Lay, suggest Klansmen in their researched localities were economically stable, civic-minded, mainstream Protestants with opposition to the local power elite. They continue their argument by suggesting that the Secret Order was not necessarily a far-right organization. Klan organizers portrayed themselves as social reformers, and populism empowerment among the Klan was more important than racism or nativism. Moore, in his research on Indiana, suggests that the Klan was revitalizing social and community life, and responding to the inability of the average citizen to participate in the political process. Jenkins had a similar conclusion in his study in Ohio, in which he argued that the Klan was “an agency of moral reform and social order”.
The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s sought, as described by Eckard Toy, to articulate standards of local community and national morality. The order believed that the modernization of American society created a loss of social control, and would inevitably lead to social disintegration. As a result, the order was based on the reassertion of personal discipline and community solidarity. The primary investigation of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s is move beyond mere stereotypes of a “lunatic fringe” racist militancy, and to understand how and why American society fostered the emergence of such an organization. This is the question that will not only answer the important questions as to what the Invisible Empire of the 1920s meant, but also what American society was like in the 1920s. The study of the Klan offers more than answers to American racist or nativist movements, but more importantly, it provides us with a unique response to the “progress” of American civilization.