Ku Klux Kulture

by Felix Harcourt

  The national organization had little to do with these entertainments, and would never engage with the stage and screen in any systematic way. These productions were overwhelmingly local and regional creations. At the forefront of amateur theatrical efforts were not national leaders, but individual members of the Women’s Klan, who staged short plays and skits so frequently that many local Klaverns would have their own “play committee.” These wholesome and often comic playlets, including such titles as Foolish Frolic, Mrs. Sullivan in Politics, and The Comical Country Cousins, emphasized Klan beliefs but rarely mentioned the organization itself. Similarly, Klans across the country took the lead in exhibiting films for the local community, often offering free matinees for children. Some Klans even went so far as to buy their own projectors. As the Wisconsin Kourier noted, movies were “the regular thing” and “greatly enjoyed by the entire membership.”19

  A particular favorite was the 1920 film The Face at Your Window, produced as part of the government-sponsored Americanism Committee’s efforts to promote patriotic values. Distributed by the Fox Film Corporation, the picture was a parable of compassionate capitalism. The story of a Bolshevik agent’s attempts to stir up trouble among Russian immigrant factory workers, the film showed that the genially paternalistic factory owner faced little difficulty in quashing employee concerns. When his less amiable counterpart dismissed their demands entirely, he started a riot. The Face at Your Window’s climax saw the American Legion called in to establish the peace and find a reasonable (and patriotic) solution to the Bolshevik’s troublemaking.20

  Klan members around the country embraced the film and repeated screenings quickly turned it into a highly successful propaganda tool. Although the heroes of the picture were members of the American Legion, they were dressed in Klan-like uniforms and Klan recruiters were quick to claim that the film actually showed the Invisible Empire saving the day. Often pairing showings with a talk by a Klan lecturer, Kleagles would force membership applications on attendees at the end of the film. As the King Kleagle of Tennessee noted, The Face at Your Window was a “wonderful picture” and of “wonderful value to us” in trying to convert movement enthusiasm into organizational membership.21

  Even more than the Fox film, screenings of The Birth of a Nation played a central role in the organization’s propaganda efforts. The unmatched spectacle of the picture remained incredibly popular with both Klan members and the general public. A 1924 run of the nine-year-old film in Chicago, for example, saw record attendance. A showing in Richmond drew the entire two-thousand-strong local Klan. Recruitment drives were often launched with a Klan-sponsored exhibition of the film. Outside the theater, Klansmen distributed pamphlets and membership applications. Proceedings from the film showing were ostentatiously donated to local charities or churches. The tactic proved spectacularly successful. It was no coincidence that Klaverns often saw the largest increase in local membership following a showing of The Birth of a Nation. As Klan advertisements for the film noted, “It will make a better American of you.”22

  Unsurprisingly, the stage production of The Clansman, which had been adapted by Thomas Dixon for a very successful touring production in 1905, was also a popular choice. In Maryland, in an early effort at cross-promotion, a revival of the melodrama was directed by the wife of James S. Vance, editor of the Fellowship Forum. An Arkansas Klan, meanwhile, cannily combined the play with an initiation ceremony, swearing new members into the organization as part of the drama. Nor was The Clansman the only literary adaptation to find favor. For those wanting to see the modern Klan on stage, The Martyred Klansman, a widely redistributed pro-Klan pamphlet about the death of a Klansman during a riot in Pennsylvania, formed the basis of a three-act drama praised for “giving non Klan members a better idea of the order.” Similarly, a five-act adaptation of the popular 1923 novel Harold the Klansman quickly proved itself another Klannish favorite.23

  These productions were not a structured effort, nor a reflection of an organized drive toward recruiting members for the Invisible Empire. The relationship of Klan members to popular entertainment often had little to do with the organization’s leaders. Klannish entertainment was fundamentally localized. Yet the productions promulgated a Klan identity—an imagined community—that was largely uniform on a national level. With minor variations, these theatrical and filmic endeavors recycled the same tropes present in Klan fiction. The organization, these entertainments argued, was a misunderstood guardian of Americanism and an upholder of law. Allegations of criminality were the result only of wrongful accusation—often of foreign elements pretending to be Klan members to discredit the organization. The most popular narrative was that of conversion, as the audience’s surrogate in the production shed their opposition to the Invisible Empire to espouse the virtues of the movement.

  In original productions on both stage and screen, it was local Klaverns and individual Klan members and sympathizers who took the lead. The Mysterious Way, a “Comedy-Drama” written by Missouri Kleagle Floyd P. Lee, was staged in towns throughout the Midwest in 1923. Lauded as “a powerful lesson in Klankraft,” the play gave audiences the opportunity to watch an idealized Klavern meeting, portrayed by Klansmen in full regalia. J. Lamb Perry’s The Flaming Cross met with sufficient success touring in Kansas and Texas in 1924 to be revived as The Light for a Midwest tour the following year. Outdoing Griffith’s rewriting of history by reinterpreting well-known historical events to trace the Klan’s roots to the Boston Tea Party, Perry’s play delivered on its title by closing with an on-stage cross burning.24

  By far the most striking of these theatrical endeavors was The Invisible Empire by New York playwrights Edward E. Rose and Charles F. Park. A murder mystery set in the “evil stronghold” of a treacherous Bolshevik, somewhere in the Georgia mountains, Invisible Empire was billed as an unofficial sequel to The Birth of a Nation. Although details of the plot are scarce, the Chicago Tribune noted that the production contained all the expected “persiflage and laughter and comedy relief, and shrieks in the dark,” with additional “dissertations on patriotism and the Klan.” After the Invisible Empire was framed for murder, the heroic Klansman saved his sweetheart from the clutches of the racialized villain, who was posing as a Japanese prince. The secret Bolshevik was killed by his own trick cane. The organization’s good name was cleared, proving that the Klan waged only “honorable warfare” and could not be held responsible for “unauthorized crimes.”25

  A moderate success in its short time touring in Alabama and Georgia, the play began to garner wider attention when the Central Amusement Company production arrived in Chicago for a run sponsored by the local Klan. Dawn breathlessly promised “the most talked of play” in America. A series of articles and advertisements lauded the “strictly all New York cast”—heroine Renita Randolph and villain Bennett Southard were indeed familiar, albeit minor, Broadway stock actors. The “scenic production of unusual beauty” and the music from members of the Chicago Symphony were also featured heavily in promotional materials. The box office was promptly “swamped with mail order requests for tickets,” according to Dawn, which advised its readers to buy their tickets soon. The anti-Klan American Unity League (AUL), meanwhile, somewhat predictably campaigned to have the show banned from the city.26

  Despite the AUL’s efforts, the play opened on December 30, 1922, in a theater surrounded with uniformed policemen, with additional plainclothes detectives in the audience. The AUL’s protests had not been entirely in vain, however. The overwhelmingly pro-Klan audience found to its chagrin that the final scene of the last act—the play culminating in a Klan gathering at the foot of Stone Mountain—had been censored. The audience, according to one theatergoer, left the theater muttering darkly. Dawn’s review of The Invisible Empire reflected this mood of discontent, complaining that “Protestants have been double crossed” by an alien element.27

  The production itself was met with unsurprising acclaim by the Klan publication, which found that “the p
lay in its entirety is to be praised from every standpoint.” For the next several issues, the newspaper ran select reviews from readers who agreed on the “dandy” nature of the “superb” show, and called on every “100% American” in Chicago to attend and extend the play’s run for a year. Despite Dawn’s best efforts, though, The Invisible Empire ran only for the three weeks it was scheduled, and does not seem to have been revived—perhaps because, as the Chicago Tribune’s review noted, “it is a pretty bad play.”28

  Klan members and sympathizers also launched enthusiastically into filmmaking. Requiring greater organization and expenditure than most theatrical endeavors, many of the Invisible Empire’s forays into motion-picture production never came to fruition. This was particularly evident whenever the national leadership attempted to exert its influence. The existence of a planned “elaborate and costly . . . screen spectacle,” Yesterday, Today and Forever, was revealed by the New York World in 1921. Although producer Clifford Slater Wheeler (a New York Kleagle) apparently had the backing of Imperial Wizard Simmons and Imperial Kleagle Edward Young Clarke, with a proposed budget of four hundred thousand dollars, negotiations over the film ultimately came to nothing.29

  Similarly, Armageddon, announced in 1923, proved little more than an ambitious pipe dream. The “stupendous spectacle dealing with the modern-day Klan,” which its producers had hoped would be directed by D. W. Griffith, never materialized. The same was true of the 1927 announcement of The Trail of the Serpent, an “epoch-making” film adaptation of the serialized story run in Fellowship Forum. The Klan newspaper’s efforts ultimately amounted to little more than an advertisement calling for “fine Protestant women” to audition for roles. Edward Young Clarke created the Twentieth Century Motion Picture Corporation in 1925—beating Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck to the name by seven years—but his new company was largely moribund.30

  More successful were local filmmaking efforts to promote the movement, like The Fifth Horseman, a seven-reel melodrama released in 1924. Written and directed by Texas Klansman E. M. McMahon, who also found success composing Klan sheet music, The Fifth Horseman told the story of an idealized Klan fighting the insidious influence of a gang of bootlegging radicals. Shorn of any racial or religious ideological baggage, the group was never identified directly as Klansmen in the picture, although the inference was clear, and the organization was named explicitly in advertising materials. This flattering portrayal was a minor success, and the film toured extensively with private showings throughout the country—even making it as far north as Maine. Despite the organization’s localized and federalized structure, the national Klan movement united within the imagined community of stoic white heroism presented by the film.31

  A similar picture was presented to Klan members and sympathizers in the 1923 film The Toll of Justice, written and directed by Corey G. Cook and made in Columbus, Ohio, with the help of local Klansmen. The Toll of Justice told a familiar story of a good Protestant wrongly accused of a crime in which the Klan is falsely implicated (in this case, framed for murder by a gang of bootleggers and dope fiends). Once again, the Invisible Empire heroically rides out to clear its name, save the girl, and bring the real criminals to justice. The massing of the Klan was given particular dramatic heft by filming some scenes at an actual Klonklave, at which some estimated two thousand members were present (although later publicity materials tried to pass it off as twenty thousand). Extra spectacle came from some early special effects—a villainous master of mesmerism who could shoot lightning from his fingertips—and from a number of impressively staged aerial stunts, complete with wing-walkers and plane crashes. The Toll of Justice was not some bargain-basement propaganda play.32

  Although it is impossible to say precisely how successful the film was, The Toll of Justice garnered wide publicity and continued to be exhibited around the Midwest until at least 1925. Though it dealt with the Klan, its producers attempted to sell it as “not strictly a Klan picture” but “merely as a photoplay” for public entertainment. Movie Weekly had ballyhooed the “patriotic” film after it was first announced. Writer T. Howard Kelly took to the popular magazine’s pages to declare that “all the screens of this country” should show the film “in an effort to enlighten Americans with regard to their least understood secret organization.” Variety ran several pieces on the film, presenting news on the Klan production alongside pieces on Robert Benchley and Lillian Gish. The Fiery Cross hailed it as “one of the most spectacular screen dramas ever produced.”33

  As with The Fifth Horseman, the film’s financial success was limited by the venues in which it could be exhibited. As Kathryn Fuller-Seeley has noted, there were distinct regional variations in 1920s moviegoing, most noticeable outside urban areas. The rural South, in particular, saw “the lowest density of movie theaters of any other region.” The well-connected network of small towns in the Midwest, conversely, hosted a thriving community of avid filmgoers. Distribution of The Fifth Horseman reflected that fact. Though the film was originally announced to be booked in over twenty states, screenings outside the Midwest were rare.34

  These regional distribution issues were further exacerbated by the increasing control of vertically integrated major studios over the majority of movie theaters. Although community screenings and “church shows” remained a viable market, both were—like most independent exhibitors—rapidly losing ground to increasingly powerful producer-distributors. Wary of the effects on their profit margin, Hollywood studios were both hostile to independent distribution and careful not to take too strong a stance on the Invisible Empire. The widely varying standards and often capricious nature of local and state censorship boards also made it difficult to guarantee that a film could be shown. Without studio support, screenings in theaters tended to be private affairs orchestrated by the local Klan rather than part of a wider distribution network. In many cases, The Toll of Justice was exhibited primarily at large Klan gatherings or through existing church and community screening networks.35

  Anti-Klan pictures faced a similar problem. Studios were as wary of criticizing the Klan as they were of celebrating it, leaving these pictures sparsely exhibited without a major distributor. The 1922 film The Hooded Mob (also released as After Dark, Men in Masks, and Law and Order), which “pans the entire Klan,” made little impact. The melodrama depicted the abduction and whipping of an innocent Catholic by masked men. Fear of angering the Klan (and of controversy in general) left “no-one . . . anxious to handle the picture.” The film’s divisive subject matter also meant it faced issues of censorship, often failing to garner a license to exhibit. Knight of the Eucharist (later retitled The Mask of the Ku Klux Klan) faced similar issues that same year. A creation of Creston Feature Pictures, an avowedly Catholic production company, Knight of the Eucharist was twice refused a license to exhibit in New York because of the likelihood “it would arouse antagonism against a certain class of people.” Where it could be exhibited, the picture was screened in seminaries and Catholic school auditoriums.36

  More popular was the work of prominent African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, whose pictures owed their success to the fact that their ideological tendencies took a backseat to a compelling narrative. The 1920 eight-reel drama The Symbol of the Unconquered generated publicity with the story of Van Allen, an African American man in the Northwest, and Eve Mason, a recently arrived heiress, whom Allen protects from white swindlers. When those same swindlers, the Knights of the Black Cross (a thinly veiled Klan analogue), attempt to run Allen off his oil-rich land, he rallies the local community to fight back. “The biggest moments of the photo-play,” the New York Age noted approvingly, “are when the night riders are annihilated, a colored man with bricks being a big factor.”37

  Glowingly reviewed by the Chicago Defender, The Symbol of the Unconquered created “a wonderful amount of comment all over the East.” In late 1921, the film was re-released to capitalize on the soaring public interest in the “haggard splendor” of the orga
nization. Micheaux’s brother told newspapers that the “new demand” for the film could not be estimated. The prolific filmmaker returned to the Klan theme in his 1924 film, A Son of Satan, described by advertising materials as “a hair-raising, side-splitting story of a haunted house with a colored man locked in while the Ku Klux Klan are holding conclave.” Micheaux’s search to increase both “political awareness and his box office receipts” represented a remarkable achievement, but one that was often crippled by censor boards that objected to the “realism” of the “race hatred” shown. “Every scene or subtitle calculated to produce friction between the races,” the Virginia censor board warned, would be “eliminated.”38

  Censorship was not the only problem. Klan films like The Toll of Justice were also hobbled by the same kind of backroom squabbles that plagued the Klan organization more generally. The original production company for The Toll of Justice, C. & S. Pictures, was financially struggling and had to be bought out by the Ohio Klan before the film was finished. The Klan members then distributed The Toll of Justice as the Miafa Pictures Company—a popular Klan acronym meaning “My Interests Are For America.”39 Miafa, in turn, went into receivership in 1924 and sold the rights to a group of Columbus businessmen, who formed Arthur C. Bromberg Attractions. The film may have been reaching sizeable audiences, but, without a major distributor to back it, did not seem to be a financial success.40

  The Traitor Within, released in 1924, fared somewhat better with its financing. In April 1923, the Cavalier Motion Picture Company was incorporated in Delaware with a capital stock of one million dollars. The president of the company was C. Lewis Fowler, a leading Klan lecturer and writer and longtime ally of Imperial Wizard Simmons. Vice president J. E. D. Smith was the Kleagle of Buffalo, while the Reverend Oscar Haywood, a popular traveling lecturer for the Klan, served as treasurer. Doing the majority of the work as the secretary of Cavalier was Roscoe Carpenter, reportedly “the high muck-a-muck” of the Invisible Empire in Lyons County, Indiana. This pedigree notwithstanding, Carpenter told reporters that the Klan was “in no-wise interested” in Cavalier Pictures, “either officially or otherwise.”41