Ku Klux Kulture

by Felix Harcourt

  The idea that it was often the Klan’s presence—contemporary and historical—in these books that attracted most interest from readers is underlined by the explosion of purportedly academic Klan analysis that appeared in print in the 1920s. These works explicitly appealed to a desire to learn as much about the workings of the organization of the Invisible Empire as possible. At the same time, much as many newspapers had done, they attempted to present a “balanced” view of the movement and its ideals. The Reference Shelf series, for instance, was created in 1923 to provide information on “timely subjects for public discussion.” Its seventy-five-cent issue on the Klan collected twenty-eight articles, speeches, and excerpts from both books and official Klan documents, split roughly evenly between pro- and anti-Klan opinion.15

  Similarly, Nutshell Publishing’s Catholic, Jew, Ku Klux Klan: What They Believe, Where They Conflict came to the unusual conclusion that Judaism, Catholicism, and Ku Kluxism all had beneficial aspects. The booklet—either boundlessly optimistic or desperately wary of antagonizing readers of any faith—hoped that all three would be merged into “one glowing, 100-per-cent ideal for which we can all stand, without conflict and without prejudice.” The highly popular Little Blue Book series, published by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (at one time, H. L. Mencken’s copyboy), offered multiple perspectives on the organization. KKK: The Kreed of the Klansmen condemned the Klan’s “black wave of bigotry and reaction,” while the far more positive Is the Ku Klux Klan Constructive or Destructive? included powerful defenses of the “law-loving, justice-loving, peace-loving” organization. An education in the issues of the day seemingly was not complete without a consideration of the Ku Klux Klan—both positive and negative.16

  Longer works attempted to place the Klan within a wider context. In doing so, these books demonstrated the prominent but ambiguous place the Invisible Empire held within American popular consciousness. Published in 1924, Five Present-Day Controversies by Charles Jefferson, pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle in New York, considered the conflict between the Klan and Catholicism one of the major religious topics of the day, alongside the debates over evolution, the virgin birth, and biblical literalism. Jefferson sympathized with the Klan in its support for public education and its opposition toward the Catholic Church’s “mistaken and mischievous” push for parochial schooling. He also understood the Klan’s antipathy toward the “autocratic spirit” of Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, he advised his readers to stay out of the Invisible Empire—a “dangerous movement” that “stirs up the very worst passions” and was, in the end, “futile.” This analysis was so popular that Jefferson’s chapter on the Ku Klux Klan was reprinted in expanded form the next year as a booklet.17

  Charles Wright Ferguson’s The Confusion of Tongues, published in 1928, considered the Ku Klux Klan as part of “the whole pageant of religious oddity in America.” A Methodist pastor from Texas turned religious editor at Doubleday books, Ferguson concluded that the Klan was “a religion of the savage mind” best understood as “a malignant religious kult.” What is notable about Confusion of Tongues is the company in which Ferguson placed the Klan. Readers could find the chapter “Ku Kluxism” nestled snugly between chapters on the Baha’i faith and liberal Catholicism. Other subjects included Christian Science (“The most that can be said . . . is that it has invested drugless healing with blue lights and incense”), Mormonism (a “menace” that flourished “without historical truth of any sort”), and atheism (“the most fervent and evangelical cult in the United States today”).18

  Many critics met Ferguson’s comparison of the Klan to other popular religious movements with approval. Gilbert Seldes, one of the country’s most influential cultural commentators, gave Ferguson’s “cool, but not sneering, appraisal” of the Klan a highly favorable review in The Bookman. The book itself was popular enough that it was reprinted the next year under the title The New Books of Revelations: The Inside Story of America’s Astounding Religious Cults. Doubleday, recognizing the book’s main selling points, stressed in its advertising that the book gave “the complete lowdown on American messiahs, from the Mormons to the Ku Klux Klan.”19

  Ferguson’s work demonstrates the odd kind of legitimacy that many of these educational and academic publications tacitly bestowed on the Klan movement. Horace M. Kallen’s Culture and Democracy in the United States, in contrast, was an overt attempt to delegitimize the Invisible Empire’s beliefs by presenting a compelling argument for the United States as an inclusive society. A German immigrant who had studied under William James and taught at the New School for Social Research, Kallen had for years criticized the concept of the “melting pot.” He posited instead that true democracy involved “not the elimination of differences, but the perfection and conservation of differences”—a view that many Klan members would have agreed with. Where the two parted was that Kallen sought an America welcoming of those differences, while the Klan sought the exclusion of the different.20

  The most significant section of the 1924 book, predominantly composed of reprints of Kallen’s earlier work, was the new postscript (which the author advised be read first), “Culture and the Ku Klux Klan.” Kallen warned against a popular “Kultur Klux Klan” as a singular illustration of the kind of antiheterogeneous thinking against which he had been railing for years. Thus, the postscript allowed Kallen to offer the most cogent explanation of his theory of societal inclusivity to date by defining it in direct opposition to Klannish philosophies—and, in the process, coining the phrase (although the idea predated it) of “cultural pluralism.”21

  The impact of Culture and Democracy was initially limited. Nicholas Roosevelt in the New York Times dismissed Kallen’s book as offering “nothing new” and implicitly endorsed the wider Klannish movement, criticizing Kallen for advocating a position that would create a country in which “the hyphen is to be crowned king.” By the end of the 1920s, though, the concept of cultural pluralism had already gained some traction. It would have long-term implications for America’s post–World War II struggle with definitions of national identity. The Ku Klux Klan’s cultural prominence had inspired the sharpening of an argument that struck at the heart of its beliefs, and would have an impact that far outlasted the organization’s brief life cycle.22

  While Kallen’s work may have had a greater enduring influence, it was not the most popular work that emerged from the cottage industry of academic Klan analysis in the short term. That honor belonged to two books that heavily influenced early histories of the second Klan. Both John Moffat Mecklin’s The Ku Klux Klan: A Study of the American Mind and Stanley Frost’s The Challenge of the Klan were published at the apex of the organization’s power in 1924, but provided widely diverging analyses of the Invisible Empire. The two studies—and the ways in which they differ—provide important insight into the heterogeneity and ambiguity of responses to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the fluid conflicts within American print culture.

  Mecklin, a professor of sociology at Dartmouth, began gathering material for his book in early 1923 by “spending between three and four months in the South and Southwest, interviewing [Klan] leaders and members.” The sociologist’s study shrewdly questioned the fractured nature of the organization to consider whether the “real Klan” was represented by its hierarchical structures or its grassroots organization. For Mecklin, the Invisible Empire was at heart a “local organization.” Its appeal lay in “moral idealism” more than in “hates and prejudices,” which could “never account for the spread of the Klan.” He criticized denunciations of the Invisible Empire for not providing “unbiased and critical” analysis of the organization and emphasized the wider influence of the Klannish movement, stressing that Klan members were “conventional Americans, thoroughly human.”23

  At the same time, many of Mecklin’s arguments (which may also have been colored by the sectional nature of his research) owed a clear debt to the H. L. Mencken school of thought, in which “conventional Americans” were largely prov
incial “boobs.” He considered the “strength” of the Klan to lie in the “more or less ignorant and unthinking middle class” found outside the cosmopolitan cities. The Ku Klux Klan was, at its heart, an expression of “the tyranny of the conventionally patriotic, often well-meaning but small-minded, mediocre man.” Mecklin agreed with Klan members that the organization was an expression of true Americanism—but, for the sociologist, this Americanism was nothing to be admired.24

  Publisher Harcourt, Brace emphasized in advertising that the study was “reliable” and written “clearly and calmly.” Newspaper reviews echoed this idea, one critic greeting The Ku Klux Klan (in a review that sat next to a large advertisement for an upcoming Klan “Barbecue Wedding”) as “practically the first reliable account . . . the first outstanding book on the subject published since the rise of the Klan.” Similar appraisals appeared around the country, hailing the book’s reasoned consideration of the Klan. William MacDonald in the New York Times went even further, praising Mecklin’s work as “one of the most notable contributions to an understanding of the psychology and pathology of the American mind that has appeared for many a day.” Before long, The Ku Klux Klan had become the standard text to consult on the Invisible Empire.25

  While Mecklin attempted to offer a nuanced criticism of the Invisible Empire, Stanley Frost, a journalist, presented a cautious endorsement of the organization. Despite rumors that he was a friend of Milton Elrod, head of the Klan’s newspaper bureau, Frost’s Challenge of the Klan—published by Bobbs-Merrill—was not simply a propagandistic enterprise. The author, drawing an implicit line between the Klan movement and the organization, acknowledged the fear of many that “the mask, in its very nature, is a threat.” He noted that the organization was inherently “irresponsible, uncontrollable, autocratic, and terroristic in form.” He criticized the Invisible Empire’s secrecy as “dangerous, destructive, creative of disunity and hatred.” Yet, overall, he concluded that the movement was ultimately beneficial. The Klan had the potential to be “a great power for good or evil in every phase of life,” and its “useful actions” seemed “on the whole to outnumber the harmful.” To Frost, the organization may have been a bitter pill to swallow, but one that America needed to take.26

  This hesitant backing of the Ku Klux Klan was the result, at least in part, of an attempt at “judicial reporting.” The Challenge of the Klan was the expansion and elucidation of a series of articles that Frost had initially written for well-respected weekly The Outlook.27 Instead of obtaining material from Klansmen at the local level, Frost relied heavily on information from the Klan’s national leadership, primarily Imperial Wizard Evans. Indeed, large sections of Frost’s book resemble nothing more than an extended interview with Evans. Taking the Klan leader at his word, Frost fell to some extent into the trap of confusing rhetoric with reality. Many of the journalist’s conclusions echoed the Evans regime’s positions—blaming the “violence and graft” of the organization on the Simmons administration, claiming that the Klan had fundamentally changed since Evans’s rise to Imperial Wizard, overemphasizing the importance of the national leadership to determining the direction, success, and attitudes of the membership. Yet Frost, like Mecklin, found that the ultimate strength of the Klan organization resided in its wider movement appeal to the “ideals and aspirations” of the “most average man in America.” Unlike Mecklin, Frost made clear his admiration for the kind of country that these average Americans had built. In the journalist’s estimation, these ideals were not the product of the “ignorant and unthinking,” but a reflection of the anxieties “which are distressing all thoughtful men.”28

  In shying away from Mecklin’s psychosocial ideas about the reactionary “booboisie,” Frost presaged the arguments of current historians of the Klan. The Invisible Empire was presented by Frost as a considered and almost utilitarian response to many of the issues that the “average” American faced in the 1920s: it represented an effort to offer a solution to “grave national problems” that were of “deep concern to all thinking Americans.” In an indication of the Invisible Empire’s status in modern culture, both Klan and non-Klan publications deemed Frost’s argument “fair,” “unbiased,” and “instructive,” although perhaps dealing “too generously” with “certain claims.”29

  The disparate analyses of Mecklin and Frost provide clear confirmation of the tensions present in the nonfiction of the 1920s, but also underline the heterogeneity and ambiguity of opinion that was present. Neither man was a polarized polemicist. There were no clear sides in these cultural struggles. And both suggested that—for both good and evil—the Ku Klux Klan was a significant factor in contemporary American life.

  Not all work on the issue was as concerned with nuance, or with claiming legitimacy as academic study. The 1920s saw the creation of a minor cottage industry in the publication of anti- and pro-Klan books, often closely connected to newspapers. The Klan was not only subject, but actor in this ongoing literary discussion, as both Klan members and opponents became authors in an effort to shape the movement’s cultural identity. Although there is no record of who purchased these literary efforts, the fact that there was enough of a market to support continued publication of these books is suggestive of the Klan’s cultural relevance in the 1920s.

  The first major contribution to this literature appeared in response to the attacks leveled against the organization by the New York World in 1921. Rushed to publication by the American Newspaper Syndicate, Story of the Ku Klux Klan by Colonel Winfield Jones claimed not to be a defense of the organization, but “an accurate description.” This assertion was quickly undermined by the publisher’s foreword, which falsely claimed that Jones was neither a Southerner nor a Klansman, in its attempt to portray him solely as a “trained and impartial writer.” Jones, for his part, claimed to have persuaded a reluctant Imperial Wizard Simmons to allow him access to all Klan records, rituals, correspondence, and accounts.30

  Given the contents of Jones’s book, it is difficult to credit the idea that Simmons was all that reluctant. A little under half the volume was dedicated to lauding the Klan of the Reconstruction era for having “kept the negro quiet” and stopping the “tyrants” of the Freedmen’s Bureau—an interpretation firmly within the popular Dunning school of opinion. The remainder of Jones’s work consisted of fawning descriptions of Simmons, “the valiant leader of that band of forward looking patriots,” and lengthy paeans to the reborn Invisible Empire as a worthy successor to the original Klan. These plaudits included an explicit attack on the New York World’s series, suggesting that the newspaper’s coverage was masterminded by a vindictive Jewish cabal.31

  Despite the dubious merits of Jones’s work, it opened the floodgates to a veritable deluge of publications boasting of the movement’s virtues and consolidating an imagined community of Klannishness. In 1922, C. Lewis Fowler, a Baptist minister from Atlanta and president of the city’s Lanier University, published his semiofficial The Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Meaning, and Scope of Operation. Fowler was a close ally of Imperial Wizard Simmons, and his book parroted the Invisible Empire’s official line, depicting the Klan as a positive force that fought to uphold law and order and defended American values. Similar notes were struck in short books by many of the Klan’s traveling recruiters, including J. T. Renfro, a Baptist pastor and Klan lecturer from Texas; Reuben H. Sawyer, the Klan’s “Grand Lecturer of the Pacific Northwest Domain”; and C. P. Roney, a Louisiana evangelist. The best-received of these was “Imperial Lecturer” Lester A. Brown’s Facts Concerning Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, published in early 1923 and heavily promoted in Klan newspapers as “the most complete book of facts about this most wonderful of all American Organizations ever published.”32

  The Invisible Empire’s newspapermen were no slower than the organization’s lecturers in taking advantage of the reading public’s apparent hunger for information on the Ku Klux Klan. By the middle of 1923, most of the major Klan newspapers had at least one affiliated b
ook that extolled the positive nature of the organization’s Americanism and detailed the insidious dangers of Catholicism. J. O. Wood of the Searchlight led the way with his Are You A Citizen? A Handbook for Americans. Ernest Reichard of the Fiery Cross published the remarkably similar Americanism Plus. Grady Rutledge collected his articles from Dawn in The Flag-Draped Skeleton, which, as the Badger American memorably described it, “rips the cloak of hypocrisy from Romanism, and shows the grinning, leering Harlot, with blood-dripping bony hands, feverishly pawing at everything that is American.” Like the compilations of the lecturers, there was little in these short books that had not already appeared elsewhere, and they seem to have been rushed into print in the hope of a quick profit and increased circulation for their parent publications.33

  Far more ambitious was an attempt in 1923 by Imperial Wizard Simmons himself to lay out the “truth” of the Invisible Empire in an almost three-hundred-page work entitled The Klan Unmasked. Attempting to counter criticism by the “uninformed,” Simmons defensively denied that the Klan was an “anti” organization responsible for “fanning the flames of hatred” against any race or religious creed. Like other Klan authors, the Imperial Wizard focused on defining the group as a pro-white Protestant American fraternal organization that was “worthy” of the mantle of the original Klan. Simmons then promptly undermined his depiction of the Klan as a purely “pro” group, launching attacks on urban living, “hyphenated” Americans, immigration, parochial schooling, and unrestricted suffrage. Remarkably for a supposedly secret organization, two whole chapters were also devoted to explaining the terminology and symbolism of the Ku Klux Klan.34