The Second Coming of the KKK

by Linda Gordon

  This passionate feminism likely arose, in part, from her own ambition and a bitterness about the obstacles and insults she had encountered. But her brand of feminism also supported her religious bigotry. The Catholic Church rested on the subjugation of women, she charged. This accounted for its opposition to Prohibition: liquor was for Catholic men a tool for keeping women subordinated. Convents were “paper prisons” that served to keep women uneducated, in ignorance of cultural and political affairs; they continued the “Old Roman law which made women the chattels or the slaves of men.” The church “hates any movement that tends to the uplifting and enlightenment of the tender sex.”33

  Each in her own way, Elizabeth Tyler, Daisy Barr, and Alma White rupture some commonsense expectations about the 1920s Klan and other conservative movements. Perhaps most striking was their entrepreneurship, which involved both ambition and skill, both principle and profit. In this respect, they probably differed from rank-and-file Klanswomen. Experienced at organizing large events, state-of-the-art in managing money, unafraid to attract publicity, they were thoroughly modern women. Nor did they disguise their work in sentimental, Victorian versions of femininity. Tyler’s life itself challenged the sexual double standard; Barr and White, while properly married, rejected female domesticity. But their outlook on the world may not have differed so much from that of their followers and of hundreds of thousands, at least, of other Klanswomen. In this movement, as in liberal and leftist movements, women found themselves enjoying not only the sociability and prestige of club membership but also the opportunity to weigh in on political matters. The clubby solidarity of the WKKK, like that of the Klan itself, grew more attractive, more interesting, when it involved collective action.

  Barr and White were also women’s rights advocates, as was Tyler, implicitly, through her achievements. Their activism requires a more capacious understanding of feminism. Their combination of feminism and bigotry may be disturbing to today’s feminists, but it is important to feminism’s history. There is nothing about a generic commitment to sex equality that inevitably includes commitment to equalities across racial, ethnic, religious, or class lines. In fact, espousing sex equality and enacting female leadership have often been easier for conservative women, because their whole ideological package does not threaten those who benefit from other inequalities. (Leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin may serve as illustrations.)

  Barr’s and White’s fusion of religion and politics also suggests another way that Klanswomen fit into the American political tradition. That tradition may have been weakening among urban elites, but it remained strong in the Midwest and West and in smaller cities. Bringing religious passion to politics was not only an instrumental combination, though it was that. The women’s mastery of public speaking, derived from church experience, not only benefited the Klan but also brought them personal rewards—fame, prosperity, and the pleasure of doing something so well and so highly valued. We should not assume that the late-twentieth-century rise of the Christian Right was unprecedented.

  WHETHER INFLUENCED BY THESE THREE spokeswomen or by local campaigners, women’s Klan groups sprang up across the nation. They often drew in women who were already members of other women’s organizations, particularly elite societies. Some preexisting patriotic groups, such as the Dixie Protestant Women’s Political League and the Grand League of Protestant Women, actually folded into the WKKK. The leader of the Colorado WKKK, Laurena Senter, was also the president of an array of Colorado women’s clubs.34 The first national WKKK leader, Lulu Markwell, was the former president of the Arkansas WCTU. An Indiana WKKK joined with the Colonial Dames to stage a pageant at which “Klanswomen dressed as Columbia, Uncle Sam, liberty and justice.”35

  There was particularly great overlap between the WKKK and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), but their difference in priorities was significant. While the DAR was intensely racist toward African Americans, it did not agitate against Catholics or Jews; in fact, it acknowledged that some of them were eligible for membership, because they had ancestors who contributed to the American Revolution. And unlike the Klan, the 1920s DAR concentrated on reviling “subversives”—that is, liberals and radicals—continuing the postwar anticommunist hysteria. It created a blacklist of “seditious” organizations, ranging from labor unions to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.36 It worked not only to protest “disloyal” speakers and deny them access to lecture halls but also threatened to expel any members who attended lectures by these “Liberals, Radicals, Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists,” as the committee wrote.37 True, the Klan was isolationist and opposed US membership in the League of Nations, expressing views that were strong precisely in the midwestern, plains, southern, and western states where it flourished. But it identified its enemies by race, religion and place of birth rather than ideology. For example, its anti-Semitism did not much identify Jews with radicalism. That the WKKK avoided ideological and foreign policy concerns may also reflect the dominant assumption that women should not be concerned with international relations, a sign that it accepted some and challenged other aspects of the conventional gender order.

  The first groups to appear called themselves Klan auxiliaries. They announced themselves boldly: Elizabeth Tyler announced that “we plan that all women who join us shall have equal rights with that of the men.”38 Many male leaders rejected this claim, because it implied a sex-integrated Klan. To admit women represented a major sacrifice to many Klansmen who valued their entitlement to a unique men’s club and the male camaraderie they so enjoyed. But the evidence suggests that Tyler’s claim was correct. In Maine, the Klan head explained, “women came to me in groups . . . and requested that a branch [my emphasis] for women be started.” They then worked out plans for “such an auxiliary.”39 The Oregon chapter, for example, began as the Ladies of the Invisible Empire (LOTIE), organized through an ad in the Klan newspaper, the Western American—a typical way to reach recruits. And LOTIE’s Supreme Grand Council included four male Klan leaders, who filed the articles of incorporation for the women’s group.

  But even the Klansmen most resistant to allowing women the use of the KKK name reversed themselves when they recognized their material interest: by making the women’s organization official, the Klan could seize a significant share of women’s Klecktokens (priced initially at five dollars but later raised to ten) and other payments. At least one Indiana WKKK Klavern had to send 66 percent of its revenue to Klan headquarters.40 In Pennsylvania another dollar per woman member went to the state Klan, and this practice may also have prevailed elsewhere. Anti-Klan journalists pointed out that women’s groups were “profitable enterprises” for the Klan.41 Unsurprisingly, there was rebellion. For example, the Maine WKKK no sooner formed than it challenged the Maine King Kleagle’s demand for half of its dues; the challenge contributed to a coup that forced his resignation.42 Because the women’s Klaverns were often quite flush—the Arkansas WKKK took in $322,000 in 1925, for example—conflicts over money soon weakened male-female unity in the Klan.43

  Official Klan publications typically communicated conservative, even Victorian messages about what women should do: “God intended that every man should possess insofar as possible, his own home and rule his own household”; or “We pity the man who permits the loss of manhood through fear of wife.”44 The most important female virtue was chastity, and it was men’s duty to protect and enforce that virtue. Klansmen imagined “their” women as supporting the men, who would monopolize the serious work. Typical of male expectations was a comment that the women “are going to play an important role in regard to upholding the morals of our young women. Let us give them our full support . . . and see that they grow in grace and numbers.”45 A Klan newspaper assigned women to conventional, traditional domesticity:

  The charm of the home depends upon the woman, because the Woman is the Home. It matters not so much about the size of the roof nor the elegance nor plainness of the furni
shings beneath, as about the woman who dwells therein. If . . . each night sees her a better housekeeper, a better seamstress, a better cook, a better wife, a better mother, a better woman—which means a better citizen.46

  WKKKers not only rejected that definition of their work but soon rejected even the label “auxiliary” and began to identify as full-fledged Klanspeople, full partners in the Invisible Empire.

  Many of these new Klanswomen, already a part of the world of sororal orders, joined in search of female bonding. Writer Rebecca McClanahan recalled that her grandmother, envious that her husband had been admitted to the Improved Order of Red Men—which, of course, did not admit American Indians—yearned to be accepted by its little sister, the Order of Pocahontas, as she was “tired of being a paleface.” She longed for connections to other women. Though Klanswomen did not typically engage in physical violence, the psychological violence of being excluded from a prestigious group could be painful indeed. Those admitted, McClanahan’s grandmother knew, indulged in titillating rituals: initiates were “tied to a stake and then rescued by a warrior or warrioress, were given access to secret signs and passwords. . . . A complicated right-hand gesture signified, ‘Who are you?’ A left-hand response signified, ‘A friend.’ ”47 It was not only men who enjoyed these performances.

  So the WKKK unified its many locals through rituals similar to men’s, but just different enough to exhibit some creativity. (See figure 22.) It used the Klan’s secret symbols, acronyms, gestures, and new names for days of the week and months, but created its own constitution, ritual books, and manifestos, including a women’s Kloran. New initiates received congratulations for their womanly sacrifice and their decision to join the “delectable” Invisible Empire. They established their own internal judicial system, arguing that women could discipline and punish each other more effectively than men could. Crimes subject to WKKK discipline included disrespecting or disgracing women’s honor, miscegenation, profanity, and failure to follow the rules of the constitution. The women’s ritual used water differently than the men’s: replicating a christening, they wet their fingers, then touched shoulders, foreheads, and the air, signifying body, mind, and spirit. The women’s Kloran explained that the copper penny, used in many of their rituals, served as a reminder to keep church and state separate. The hourglass, another WKKK ritual object, symbolized women’s patriotism: “So long as the sands of time run through the American hourglass, whenever Patriotism calls, we Women of the Ku Klux Klan will respond.”48

  The women’s robes were similar, but they offered a discriminatory choice: an ordinary “Klan cloth” robe was five dollars, but you could order a satin robe for twenty-five. Men, of course, did not wear satin, a feminine fabric, but the availability of upscale regalia may have signaled something more: that women’s interest in attractive clothing led to greater class differentiation within the movement, in contrast to the much-touted simulation of leveling among the men.

  The WKKK adopted a heroine first exalted by an earlier Klan women’s group, the Kamelia: Joan of Arc—yes, that Catholic heroine—as “Joan, the Militant Kamelia.”49 It did not seem to bother Klanswomen that they apparently could not find a Protestant heroine to honor in the same way, but the appropriation of Joan signals their desire to identify with someone powerful; her warlike militance did not seem to them unladylike. They identified with St. Joan because they, like her, were responding to the voice of God and defending their country against “foreign” invaders. There is a long tradition of ambitious and eloquent women defending their right to public leadership on the grounds that God called upon them. American feminists Maria Stewart and Angelina Grimké, leading spokeswomen for the campaign against slavery, used that justification for their public speaking. Its continued use in the 1920s suggests that some Klanswomen felt some anxiety about women’s public activism. But they would not surrender. A Kamelia pamphlet about Joan of Arc insisted that Klanswomen’s voices must “challenge and command.”50 Oregon Klanswomen created their own Joan image and used it on their publications: a woman dressed in Klan robes, riding a charging horse similarly robed, carrying a sword, the initials LOTIE (Ladies of the Invisible Empire) emblazoned on her headscarf.51

  For the majority of Klanswomen, organizing social events and pageants was their biggest contribution to the cause. These events required massive amounts of labor, much of it done by women: finding a site, generating publicity, arranging for parking, preparing or ordering food and drink, designing and executing decorations, advertising, mimeographing programs, keeping children occupied and well behaved, ushering visiting dignitaries in and out, collecting items for tag sales and bake sales, handling the inevitable logistical breakdowns. Like churchwomen and clubwomen everywhere, they were party planners. This work was doubly traditional: an extension of their personal domestic labor and a service to Klansmen. (Indeed, one of the WKKK’s most prominent lecturers was pressed into service as a secretary for a male Klan speaker.52) Without these hours of labor the Klan could not have become such a mass movement. At the same time, this work brought women together, and that togetherness both strengthened the Klan and, at times, challenged its male hierarchy.

  Still, some Klanswomen enunciated ideas that did not comport with conventional domesticity. It may be an indication of women’s influence that once the suffrage amendment passed, the whole northern Klan supported it enthusiastically—though, of course, only for white women. Support for woman suffrage also reflected the Klan’s opportunism in their desire for white women’s votes to counteract “alien” votes. Whatever the motives, WKKK members strenuously encouraged women’s political participation, and understood that maintaining that right required vigilance. One recruitment leaflet declared that men should no longer hold “exclusive dominion” in the world of politics and chastised women for their political passivity.53

  Klanswomen similarly supported women’s employment and even called for women’s economic independence. “Women’s economic freedom, which has slumbered for ages, awakes.”54 Oregon Klanswomen urged members to patronize female proprietors.55 Local studies report that about 20 percent of WKKK members were employed, and Kathleen Blee thought this an underestimate.56 In one Klavern, 25 percent of the members were schoolteachers and one-third held middle-class jobs.57 Surprisingly, and rather opportunistically, Oregon Klanswomen condemned the Meier & Frank department store for paying “slave wages” to the women and girls it employed; they knew, of course, that Meier & Frank was Jewish-owned.58 The WKKK Imperial Commander’s insistence that wives should be called “helpmeets” rather than “helpmates” suggests that many husbands could not single-handedly support their families.59 Major Kleagle Leah H. Bell of Indiana told an audience of eight thousand that “the mothers of America” should “begin campaigning for an eight-hour workday.”60 Larger groups paid salaries to their staffers: Denver’s WKKK Kligrapp (secretary) earned $150 per year ($4,387 in 2016), and at least one Indiana Klavern also paid salaries61—indicating that not enough volunteer labor was available, that some members needed the money, that women expected to be paid, or all of the above.

  To a lesser extent the WKKK expressed opinions about national issues, supporting child welfare provisions. A 1926 Klonvocation called for uniform marriage statutes across the states so as to regularize domestic law in women’s favor. As Blee pointed out, Klanswomen saw anti-miscegenation laws differently from Klansmen, as defense against white men who betrayed white women by consorting with women of color.62 Oregon Klanswomen expressed outrage that you could, they claimed, get a divorce by mail in that state, and demanded that men be made to pay child support.63

  In one small but much-cited indication of WKKK feminism, in 1926 the Silver Lake, New Jersey, Klavern invited Margaret Sanger to speak about birth control. A former Socialist Party member and feminist, and a nurse who had seen firsthand the economic and health costs of large families, she was the most prominent national leader in the campaign to legalize contraception. Sanger’s background, anathem
a to Klan values, included cosmopolitanism, avant-garde arts, radical politics, even free love. Conservatives vilified her. Moreover, she had defied laws against obscenity—birth control was still legally obscene at the time—served some time in jail, and fled to Europe to escape further prosecutions. But by the mid-1920s she had brought the birth control movement into alliance with eugenics. She announced that her Birth Control League “was ready to unite with the eugenics movement whenever the eugenists were able to present a definite program of standards for parenthood on a eugenic basis,” according to the New York Times.64 Sanger was by no means a bigot. She accepted some eugenical categories, such as “feeble-minded,” but never the Klan’s racial and religious hierarchy. (She herself was of Catholic descent, although her father was a freethinker.) She did, however, see eugenists as allies in her campaign for reproduction control, and in that connection her interests coincided with those of the Klan. Sanger agreed to speak to the Klanswomen, although with considerable unease because she disliked the Klan’s racism. They received her enthusiastically, and she reported receiving a dozen further speaking invitations from the WKKK.65