by Jon Meacham
“IT IS TRUE THAT” The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link, (Princeton, N.J.) 33:86.
A SMALL GROUP OF MEN MET ON STONE MOUNTAIN Lorraine Boissoneault, “What Will Happen to Stone Mountain, America’s Largest Confederate Memorial?” Smithsonian.com, August 22, 2017. On the second Klan, see, for instance, Rory McVeigh, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics (Minneapolis, 2009); McVeigh, “Power Devaluation, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Democratic National Convention of 1924,” Sociological Forum 16, no. 1 (March 2001): 1–31; Arnold S. Rice, The Ku Klux Klan in American Politics (New York, 1972); Richard K. Tucker, The Dragon and the Cross: The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Middle America (Hamden, Conn., 1991); Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York, 2017); Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 28–438; Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York, 1994); William Rawlings, The Second Coming of the Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s (Macon, Ga., 2016).
WILLIAM J. SIMMONS, AN ALABAMA-BORN Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 28–29.
SIMMONS CLAIMED HIS FATHER Ibid., 28.
“ON HORSEBACK IN” Ibid.
SIMMONS’S CHOICE OF VENUE Ibid., 29–30.
WERE CAMPAIGNING FOR THE CREATION Boissoneault, “What Will Happen to Stone Mountain?” Smithsonian.com.
“THE BIRTH OF A NATION WILL GIVE US” Ibid.
(IN THE END, THE MEMORIAL) Ibid.
WHAT BEGAN ON Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 29–30.
FORTY-EIGHT STATES McVeigh, “Power Devaluation,” 1–3.
INDIANA WAS A STRONGHOLD Ibid., 2–3. For Indiana, see Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 162–74; for Oregon, see ibid., 85–91; for Colorado, see ibid., 126–34; for Kansas, see ibid., 143–48.
A COMBINATION OF FACTORS Gordon, Second Coming of the KKK, 2–7, offers a useful overview.
UNEASE ABOUT CRIME Jerry L. Wallace, “The Ku Klux Klan in Calvin Coolidge’s America,” July 14, 2014, Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/essays-papers-addresses-23/231.
WORRY ABOUT ANARCHISTS McVeigh, Rise of the Ku Klux Klan, 63; 104–6.
ANXIETY ABOUT COMMUNISM MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 25. See also Gordon, Second Coming of the KKK, 12.
DURING A KLAN MEETING Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 32–33.
“NOW LET THE” Ibid., 33.
SIMMONS HIRED A PAIR MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 5–6.
WAS FINANCED BY Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 33–35.
“KING KLEAGLES” Ibid., 33–34.
MONEY—INCLUDING REVENUE Ibid., 34–35.
“THE KLAN OFFERED STRUCTURE” Bennett, Party of Fear, 211.
KLANSMEN HELD GOVERNORSHIPS Gordon, Second Coming of the KKK, 164.
(THE KLAN ITSELF) MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 17–18.
IN ALABAMA, Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 313–16.
A YOUNG HARRY TRUMAN McCullough, Truman, 164–65.
THERE WAS LEGISLATION TO PROTECT Cooper, Woodrow Wilson, 397–401.
TO “UTTER, PRINT, WRITE” “The Sedition Act of 1918,” Digital History, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3903.
UNDER WILSON AND THROUGH THE DIRECT OFFICES Donald Johnson, “Wilson, Burleson, and Censorship in the First World War,” Journal of Southern History 28 (February 1962): 46–58. Burleson issued a wide-ranging directive to his department: Local postmasters were to be on the watch for “matter which is calculated…to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval service, or to obstruct the recruiting, draft or enlistment services…or otherwise to embarrass or hamper the Government in conducting the war.” Ibid., 48.
AS MANY AS FOUR HUNDRED PUBLICATIONS Anne Cipriano Venzon, ed., The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1999), 132–33.
“I SPENT THE WHOLE WINTER” Johnson, “Wilson, Burleson, and Censorship in the First World War,” 49.
AT NIMISILLA PARK Ernest Freeberg, Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 72–78. See also Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (New York, 1964), 23–26, and David L. Sterling, “In Defense of Debs: The Lawyers and the Espionage Act Case,” Indiana Magazine of History 83, no. 1 (March 1987): 17–42.
“AND HERE LET ME” Eugene V. Debs, Debs and the War: His Canton Speech and His Trial in the Federal Court at Cleveland, September, 1918 (Chicago, 1923), 19.
SENTENCED TO TEN YEARS Murray, Red Scare, 25.
“I HAVE BEEN” Ibid.
WITH OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR., WRITING Ibid., 25–26.
DISMISSED THE JUSTICES AS “BEGOWNED” Ibid., 26.
PRESIDENT WILSON REFUSED Ibid., 201. “No,” Wilson said, “I will not release him.” Attorney General Palmer supported the president’s decision. Ibid.
IT FELL TO PRESIDENT WARREN G. HARDING Ibid., 273. Harding issued the pardon on Christmas Day 1921. Ibid.
AN ANARCHIST’S BOMB Ibid., 78–79. In the wake of the armistice in November 1918, a series of debilitating 1919 labor strikes from Seattle to Gary, Indiana, to Boston and beyond, as well as bombings and bomb threats, roiled the country. Bennett, Party of Fear, 188–89.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, A NEIGHBOR OF PALMER’S Ward, First-Class Temperament, 455–56.
“AS WE WALKED ACROSS” Ibid.
“NOW WE ARE ROPED” Ibid., 456.
PALMER LAUNCHED AN ORGANIZED CAMPAIGN Murray, Red Scare, 80; 194–238.
SEVEN OTHER BOMBINGS Ward, First-Class Temperament, 457.
“MY INFORMATION SHOWED” Bennett, Party of Fear, 193.
“THE BLAZE OF REVOLUTION” Ward, First-Class Temperament, 457.
HIS ACTION OFFICER Murray, Red Scare, 193. See also Kenneth D. Ackerman, Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919–1920 (New York, 2011).
“THERE IS NO TIME” Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (New York, 1990), 44.
THE IDEA OF “100 PERCENT AMERICANISM” Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s (New York, 2010), 51. Allen’s book—he edited Harper’s magazine—was originally published in 1931. See also Murray, Red Scare, 82–104.
“INNUMERABLE PATRIOTIC SOCIETIES” Allen, Only Yesterday, 58.
“INNUMERABLE OTHER GENTLEMEN” Ibid., 58–59.
“AMERICA IS NO LONGER” Ibid., 53–54.
PALMER, WHO CRAVED THE PRESIDENCY Murray, Red Scare, 260.
HIS RAIDS WERE NUMEROUS Ibid., 196–238.
WILSON SUFFERED A DEBILITATING STROKE Berg, Wilson, 626–52, charts Wilson’s exhaustion during a tour in support of the League of Nations and the stroke itself, which felled the president in the White House on the morning of Thursday, October 2, 1919. Ibid., 640–42.
(“HE LOOKED AS IF”) Ibid., 642. “For days his life hung in the balance,” Edith Wilson, his second wife, recalled. Ibid.
THE PRESIDENT FAILED TO REIN Cooper, Woodrow Wilson, 546–47.
AFTER THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE Murray, Red Scare, 236–38. See also “Albany’s Ousted Socialists,” Literary Digest, January 24, 1920.
“ABSOLUTELY INIMICAL TO” Murrary, Red Scare, 236.
“SUGGESTED THEY OUGHT” Ibid., 237.
“AMERICANS ARE SAVAGES” Literary Digest, January 24, 1920, 19.
“EVEN THE CZAR OF RUSSIA” Ibid.
WRITING ON BEHALF Murray, Red Scare, 243–44.
“IS IT NOT CLEAR” Literary Digest, January 24, 1920.
“AND WHERE WILL IT” Ibid. See also Murray, Red Scare, 242–43.
“THE AC
TION OF” Murray, Red Scare, 244.
SIGNED BY FUTURE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE FELIX FRANKFURTER Bennett, Party of Fear, 195.
“TALK ABOUT AMERICANIZATION!” Ibid.
“I HATE” Walker, In Defense of American Liberties, 53.
“IN 1918…WE HAD TO” Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 679.
RUDYARD KIPLING’S 1897 IMPERIAL POEM Rudyard Kipling, “Recessional,” 1897, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46780/recessional. See also Gilmour, Long Recessional.
“SOME…SEEM TO SEE” Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 679.
A 1920 BOOK BY LOTHROP STODDARD Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color.
IN 1925’S The Great Gatsby Hua Hsu, “The End of White America?” The Atlantic, January-February 2009. See also Lewis A. Turlish, “The Rising Tide of Color: A Note on the Historicism of The Great Gatsby,” American Literature 43, no. 3 (November 1971): 442–44.
“WELL, IT’S A FINE BOOK” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York, 1992), 17.
AN 1892 POEM Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Unguarded Gates,” Bartleby.com, http://www.bartleby.com/248/689.html.
EMMA LAZARUS HAD WRITTEN A SONNET Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus.
“MILLIONS OF AMERICANS” Hiram Wesley Evans, “The Klan of Yesterday and of Today,” Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvokation Held at Kansas City, Missouri, 55. For more on Evans, see “Ku Klux Klan: Kleveland Konvention,” Time, June 23, 1924; Evans appeared on the magazine’s cover that week.
“THE KLAN, ALONE” Evans, “Klan,” 55–56.
118–19 “WE ARE A MOVEMENT” Bennett, Party of Fear, 221. Such language made the Klan’s meaning clear. “In its essence the thing was an authentic folk movement—at least as fully such as the Nazi movement in Germany, to which it was not without kinship,” W. J. Cash wrote in his landmark 1941 study The Mind of the South (New York, 1941), 335. “It was, as is well known, at once anti-Negro, anti-Alien, anti-Red, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Darwin, anti-Modern, anti-Liberal, Fundamentalist, vastly Moral, militantly Protestant.” Ibid., 336–37.
RELIABLE NUMBERS ARE HARD TO COME BY Bennett, Party of Fear, 222–23; McVeigh, “Power Devaluation,” 1; Gordon, Second Coming of the KKK, 2–3.
“IF I AM” McVeigh, “Power Devaluation,” 11.
THE ZANGWILL-TR “MELTING POT” Evans, “Klan,” 67.
“THE KLAN BELIEVES” Ibid., 69.
(“JESUS WAS A PROTESTANT”) Bennett, Party of Fear, 215.
IN A SPEECH ENTITLED “AMERICANISM APPLIED,” Walker, “Americanism Applied,” 20–29.
A PHI BETA KAPPA GRADUATE “Clifford Walker (1877–1954),” New Georgia Encyclopedia, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/clifford-walker-1877-1954.
LEARNING HIS LESSON Ibid.
SPEAKING IN KANSAS CITY Walker, “Americanism Applied,” 20–29.
“WHAT GOOD WILL IT DO” Ibid., 25.
“I WOULD BUILD” Ibid., 27.
THE “KLANBAKE” Matthew Wills, “A Really Contested Convention: The 1924 Democratic Klanbake,” JSTOR Daily, May 11, 2016, https://daily.jstor.org/contested-convention/. For an overview of the convention, see Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 202–12. The fullest treatment is Robert K. Murray, The 103rd Ballot: The Legendary 1924 Democratic Convention That Forever Changed Politics (New York, 2016).
THE DELEGATES INCLUDED McVeigh, “Power Devaluation,” 5.
DEFEAT OF THE Ibid. See also Bennett, Party of Fear, 233.
WITH THE IMPERIAL WIZARD Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 205.
“OUTNUMBERING THE ANTI-KLAN” McVeigh, “Power Devaluation,” 8.
WE CONDEMN POLITICAL SECRET SOCIETIES Ibid., 6.
“IF YOU ARE OPPOSED” Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 208.
“THIS UN-AMERICAN” Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Held at Madison Square Garden…Resulting in the Nomination of John W. Davis of West Virginia for President and Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska for Vice-President (Indianapolis, 1924), 289–90.
“IF 343 MEMBERS” Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 208.
“I SAY TO YOU” Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention, 285.
“WHAT WOULD YOU” Ibid.
“IF THE MEN” Ibid., 286.
“ARE WE, WITHOUT TRIAL” Ibid., 287–88.
“WILL MAKE HALF A MILLION” Ibid., 288.
“AND REMEMBER ONE THING” Ibid., 299.
TO NAME THE KLAN Ibid., 303–9.
“I CALL YOU BACK” Ibid., 308.
IN A VICTORY FOR THE KLAN McVeigh, “Power Devaluation,” 6.
AND WHILE THE KLAN HELPED DENY Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 203–4. Many in the Klan truly favored Senator Samuel Ralston of Indiana, but, as Chalmers wrote, he proved “no more than a dark-horse contender. McAdoo…was no bigot. His chief strategist, Bernard Baruch, was a Jew; his floor manager, Senator James Phelan, was an Irish Catholic, but if McAdoo did not personally favor the Klan, he felt that he could not afford to alienate its support. His representatives solicited the Klan vote and he tacitly gave it shelter.” Ibid., 204.
THE CRY OF “KU, KU, MCADOO!” Ibid., 206.
“BOOZE! BOOZE! BOOZE!” Ibid.
THE CONVENTION WAS LEFT Murray, 103rd Ballot, 258–65.
AFTER THE 103RD BALLOT Ibid., 265.
ON A DAY OF OCCASIONAL RAIN SHOWERS “White-Robed Klan Cheered on March in Nation’s Capital,” The Washington Post, August 9, 1925.
“THE PARADE WAS GRANDER” “The Klan Walks in Washington,” Literary Digest, August 22, 1925.
“WHEN I GOT BACK” Ibid.
THE SCOPES TRIAL IN DAYTON, TENNESSEE See, for instance, Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (New York, 1997).
A SIGN HUNG OUTSIDE “In Dayton Evolution Is a Dead Issue,” NYT, August 14, 1927.
“I DO NOT THINK” “The Scopes Trial: Examination of William Jennings Bryan by Clarence Darrow,” Digital History, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1160.
“DO YOU THINK” Ibid.
(IN THE VIEWS) The question of Mencken and anti-Semitism (and of racism) is a subject of great literary and scholarly debates. See, for instance: Fred Hobson, Mencken: A Life (New York, 1994), x, xv–xvi, 26, 168–69, 224, 225, 275, 350, 404–414, 416–419, 424–425, 453–455, 457, 471, 477, 538–39 544–46; H. L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor, ed. Jonathan Yardley (New York, 1993), 20–23; Terry Teachout, “Mencken Unsealed,” NYT, January 31, 1993; “Mencken Was Pro-Nazi, His Diary Shows,” Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1989.
“SUCH OBSCENITIES AS” “Coverage of the Scopes Trial by H. L. Mencken from The Baltimore Evening Sun, June–September 1925,” Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/CoverageOfTheScopesTrialByH.l.Mencken/ScopesTrialMencken.txt.
“SAT TIGHT-LIPPED” Ibid.
THE JURY SIDED “State of Tennessee v. Scopes,” ACLU, https://www.aclu.org/other/state-tennessee-v-scopes.
“I THINK THIS CASE” Larson, Summer for the Gods, 193.
“NO ARGUMENTS YOU MAY USE” Bennett, Party of Fear, 230.
A KLAN WITH SUBSTANTIAL STRENGTH MacLean, Behind the Mask, 178–88. MacLean’s book is largely about assessing the Klan in a global context with particular reference to the European fascist movements. She quoted Thomas Mann: “This story should convince us of one thing: that there are not two Germanys, a good one and a bad one, but only one….Wicked Germany is merely good Germany gone astray, good Germany in misfortune, in guilt, and ruin. For that reason it is quite impossible for one born there simply to renounce the wicked, guilty Germany and to d
eclare, ‘I am the good, the noble, the just Germany in the white robe; I leave it to you to exterminate the wicked one.” Ibid., 177. See also James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton, N.J., 2017), for a provocative and thoughtful examination of what the Third Reich learned from the American example.
“THE KU KLUX KLAN” MacLean, Behind the Mask, 179–80.
IN 1928, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT UPHELD The case was People of the State of New York ex rel. Bryant v. Zimmerman et al., FindLaw, http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/278/63.html. See also Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 199.
“IT IS A MATTER” People of the State of New York ex rel. Bryant v. Zimmerman et al.
“WAS CONDUCTING A CRUSADE” Ibid.
IN 1925, A UNANIMOUS SUPREME COURT Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), Justia, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/268/510/case.html.
THE NEW YORK WORLD Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 35–36.
HOSTILITY FROM THE JOURNALISTS Ibid., 38. “E. H. Loucks, in his seminal study of the Klan in Pennsylvania,” Chalmers wrote, “suggested that what New York attacked, rural America, with its belligerent inferiority complex, would stubbornly support.” Ibid. See also E. H. Loucks, The Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, Pa., 1936), 23.
“IT WASN’T UNTIL” Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 38.
WHEN THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE Ibid., 36–38.
“CERTAIN NEWSPAPERS ALSO” Ibid., 38.
“WEARING MASKS” Rawlings, Second Coming of the Invisible Empire, 246–47.
IN OCTOBER 1921, PRESIDENT HARDING “Harding Says Negro Must Have Equality in Political Life,” NYT, October 27, 1921. See also Greg Bailey, “This Presidential Race Speech Shocked the Nation—in 1921,” Narratively, October 26, 2016, http://narrative.ly/this-presidential-speech-on-race-shocked-the-nation-in-1921/. For W.E.B. Du Bois’s incisive critique of the speech, see Du Bois, “President Harding and Social Equality,” December 1921, TeachingAmericanHistory.org, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/president-harding-and-social-equality/.
SUPPORTED ANTI-LYNCHING LAWS Bailey, “This Presidential Race Speech.” See also Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration (Minneapolis, 1969), 401–2.