Kleagles, Kash and the Klan: Maryland and the Decline of the Klan, 1922-1928

By Felix Alexander Richard Harcourt

B.A. June 2006, University of Warwick

A Thesis submitted to

The Faculty of

Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial satisfaction

of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

May 17, 2009

Thesis directed by Leo P. Ribuffo

Society of the Cincinnati George Washington Distinguished Professor of History

 

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Dedicated to my grandfather.

 

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Contents

Dedication ii

Glossary of Klan Titles and Terms iv

I. The Klan and Maryland 1

II. Illustrations 19

1. Frank H. Beall, Grand Dragon of Maryland. 19

2. Imperial Kleagle Louis A. Mueller. 19

3. Gathering at Forestville, MD, 1926. 19

4. Naturalization ceremony, Thomas Dixon Klan No. 1, 20

Baltimore, 1923.

5. Klan wedding, Cumberland, MD, 1925. 20

6. Maryland Klansmen march in National Parade, 1925. 21

7. Baltimore Sun’s view of the National Parade, 1925. 21

Cartoon by Edmund Duffy.

III. Why did the Klan decline in Maryland? 22

IV. Bibliography 53

 

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GLOSSARY OF KLAN TITLES AND TERMS

Domain : an administrative unit consisting of several combined states

Exalted Cyclops : chief officer of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one-year term.

Grand Dragon : the Klan leader of the state, appointed by the Imperial Wizard.

Grand Goblin : administrative officer in charge of a Domain

Imperial Kleagle : the commander of the Klan’s propagation department, responsible for appointment and supervision of traveling Kleagles.

Imperial Wizard : national leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Invisible Empire : alternative name applied to the Ku Klux Klan, its bureaucracy, and territory.

King Kleagle : the chief recruiter of a Realm, responsible for supervising Kleagles.

Klanishness : the practice, where feasible, of trading and associating only with other Klan members.

Klankraft : general term for the collective beliefs and rituals of the Klan, including all aspects of ritual, regalia, and “klanishness.”

Klansman : an individual member of the Klan. Also known as a Knight.

Klanton : a subdivision of a Province, under the control of a Klan, administered by an Exalted Cyclops and his twelve Terrors.

Klavern : Klan’s indoor meeting hall; also used to signify local Klan chapter.

Kleagle : recruiter or organizer.

Klecktoken : ten-dollar initiation fee.

Kluxing : Kleagle recruiting or organizing activities.

Province : administrative unit encompassing a group of counties.

Realm : a subdivision of the Invisible Empire equivalent to a state.

Terrors : the twelve-member executive board of a Klan or Klavern, appointed to advise the Exalted Cyclops.

 

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I. The Klan and Maryland

“Not a single solitary sound reason has yet been advanced for putting the Ku Klux Klan out of business. If the Klan is against the Jews, so are half of the good hotels of the

Republic and three-quarters of the good clubs. If the Klan is against the foreign-born or the hyphenated citizen, so is the National Institute of Arts and Letters. If the Klan is

against the Negro, so are all of the States south of the Mason-Dixon line. If the Klan is for damnation and persecution, so is the Methodist Church. If the Klan is bent upon political control, so are the American Legion and Tammany Hall. If the Klan wears

grotesque uniforms, so do the Knights of Pythias and the Mystic Shriners. If the Klan holds its meetings in the dead of night, so do the Elks. If the Klan conducts its business in secret, so do all college Greek letter fraternities and the Department of State. If the Klan

holds idiotic parades in the public streets, so do the police, the letter-carriers and firemen. If the Klan’s officers bear ridiculous names, so do the officers of the Lambs’ Club. If the

Klan uses the mails for shaking down suckers, so does the Red Cross. If the Klan constitutes itself a censor of private morals, so does the Congress of the United States. If

the Klan lynches a Moor for raping someone’s daughter, so would you or I.”

- H.L. Mencken

“The most dangerous weakness in a democracy is the uninformed and unthinking average man.”

- John Moffat Mecklin

“Motion made and duly carried that the Klansmen present thank Klansman Fyles for his generosity in treating the bunch to ice cream.”

- Mount Rainier Klan No. 57, August 11, 1923

In 1928, Time magazine pondered how future historians would view the Ku Klux

Klan of the 1920s. “A Carlyle,” it suggested, “will call it a peculiarly malignant form of

social indigestion, where avaricious scoundrels milked a large and ignorant public of

great sums in ‘membership fees,’ in return for inflaming mass prejudices.” On the other

hand, “a Voltaire will say that the Klan was a movement of child-minded men whose age

prevented them from sharing otherwise in the romantic spirit of the time and who dressed

themselves up with regalia, symbols and gibberish to play solemnly at an exciting game.”

 

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assertion that the Klan represe                                                       

Some eighty years later, it seems that most thinking on the Klan still falls into these two

camps. It has been more than twenty years since the study of the Invisible Empire began

to move beyond glib generalizations. Even now, however, it is difficult to find outside of

the small circle of Klan scholars those who acknowledge the integral part that the Ku

Klux Klan played in the political and cultural life of 1920s America. 1

By its very nature, the Ku Klux Klan is a controversial subject of study and was

for a considerable period largely overlooked by historians. A review of major works on

the Klan reveals that this controversy is more than evident in the differing approaches to

the group that have been taken by historians and the disparate conclusions that have been

reached. Although it seems that scholars are moving closer to a consensus on the most

basic of these questions, there remains considerable dispute over the more complex

issues. Historians of the second Klan have debated the socio-economic standing of its

members, areas of regional strength, whether it was a predominantly rural or urban

movement, the roles of religion and race, the motivations of members, reasons for its

growth and success, and whether the Klan represented something alien to American

society or was instead a fundamental expression of “Americanism.”

As one of the first in-depth, book-length studies of the Klan, John Moffat

Mecklin’s 1924 book The Ku Klux Klan: A Study of the American Mind has had a crucial

impact on the historiography of the subject. A contemporary sociological examination of

the Klan, the book’s conclusions were quickly accepted and have had considerable

influence over following generations of academics who have shared Mecklin’s prejudices

and preconceptions. The most influential of the arguments made by Mecklin was his

nted the reaction of the “well-meaning but more or less  

1 “Unmasked,” Time, March 5, 1928.

 

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school” so as not to overestim                                                       

ignorant and unthinking middle class” to the profound disturbances of World War I and

the post-war social conflicts. The Invisible Empire was “a refuge for mediocre men, if not

for weaklings,” and was marked by intellectual mediocrity, offering “effective

concealment for the small and spiteful spirit. It places a premium upon the bully and the

sneak.”

Richard Hofstadter, writing thirty years later, used Mecklin as one of only three

sources on the Klan in his seminal The Age of Reform. Hofstadter’s conclusion that the

Klan was an organization of “gullible nativists” who had been “awakened” to the

“threatened purity of race and ideals, a threatened Protestantism, even a threatened

integrity of national allegiance” by “the war and its aftermath” clearly owes an

intellectual debt to Mecklin. More recently, Nancy MacLean’s Behind the Mask is

undoubtedly one of Mecklin’s intellectual descendants, albeit one also heavily influenced

by Marxist and feminist theory to place greater emphasis on the role of class in the Klan’s

appeal.2

Despite considerable flaws in both argument and methodology, Mecklin’s Ku

Klux Klan arguably still holds sway over popular conceptions of the Klan. It was not until

the late 1980s and the rise of “the populist revision” or “civic activist school,” local area

studies that learned from the example of Kenneth Jackson’s Ku Klux Klan in the City and

used Klavern rosters and local sources, that a fundamental challenge was offered to the

“Mecklin thesis.” The first concrete expression of the “populist” school was Leonard J.

Moore’s Citizen Klansmen, but further refinements have come with the work of Shawn

Lay, who argued in his Hooded Knights on the Niagara for the label of “civic activist

ate the public acceptance of the Klan. At the heart of this  

2 Mecklin, Mind of the Klan, 37, 96, 103, 109, 233; Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 293-296.

 

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scholarship. Her research on th

                                                       

thesis is the assertion that the secret order “drew its membership from a broad cross

section of the white male Protestant population and generally functioned in the manner of

typical civic action group,” often forming an organized opposition to the perceived

injustices imposed by white elites. For Lay and similar historians, the Klan is no un-

American aberration of history. Rather, it forms part of the long history of locally

oriented political and social movements, albeit in unusual garb. 3

The “civic activist” interpretation of the Invisible Empire points to the belief

among contemporary reformers that the Klan had “taken admirable stands on key issues”

and was chiefly concerned with “the ongoing campaign to improve community

conditions.” Lay’s analysis of the Klan in Buffalo, New York notes that this civic

impulse found its chief outlet in the campaign to improve law enforcement, particularly

in supporting prohibition laws. Nor was this movement solely the work of the lower class

or “unthinking” citizenry. In Buffalo, Lay argues, Klan members constituted “a generally

prestigious group within a native-white male population that itself enjoyed relative

prestige and advantages.” Although certainly an organization that embraced religious and

racial bigotry, the sentiments of Klan members would have been routinely expressed “in

lodge halls, private clubs, executive board rooms, and around Protestant family dinner

tables.” This was no aberrant fringe group. The Klan was a fraternal organization that

attracted ordinary, law-abiding citizens, and aspired to a leading role in community

affairs. 4

Kathleen Blee’s Women of the Klan is a powerful addition to this “civic activist”

e Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), which she estimates

 3 Lay, Hooded Knights, 7. 4 Lay, Hooded Knights, 52, 82-89.

 

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to have constituted nearly half the Klan membership in many states and to have formed a

considerable minority in many others, challenges several key assumptions that historians

have held about the Klan. Focusing on the WKKK in Indiana, but also drawing on Klan

records from a number of other states, Blee agrees with Lay that it is more helpful to

understand the Klan within the ideas and values that shaped white Protestant life, rather

than as a socially marginal organization. It was the role of Klanswomen, who drew on

familial and community ties, that solidified the power of Klannish culture and integrated

it into everyday life.

Blee’s study of the WKKK also challenges the way historians have understood

the nature and ideology of the Klan. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to local

variations and to the conflict for control of the national Klan between founder William J.

Simmons and his usurping successor, Hiram Evans. The Klan membership, however, has

been studied as if a homogenous movement. The frequent clashes between the KKK and

the WKKK act as a reminder that, for an organization that ostensibly promoted a stifling

conformity of opinion and national background, the Klan was remarkably heterogeneous

in nature.

The fact that these clashes were frequently ideological in nature further serves to

underline the complex nature of the hooded order. Historians like Lay have emphasized

the importance of local politics and civic activity for the Klan, undercutting the focus on

the group’s repressive and reactionary nature. Blee suggests that it was the competing

priorities of the Klan’s disparate membership that led it to balance bigotry and repression

with progressive reform and even (albeit somewhat grudgingly for many Klansmen) the

promotion of women’s rights. The consensus among scholars, then, seems to be moving

 

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of Normalcy,” which tended “                                                       

towards Lay’s idea of the “civic activist” Klan and an understanding that there is no

convincing single explanation for the rise and popularity of the Invisible Empire. 5

The abundance of local Klan studies produced in the past fifteen years has been

the basis for the rise of this “civic activist” model, but Maryland represents one of the

few sections of the country that has not received renewed scholarly consideration. The

story of the Klan in its Southern strongholds, particularly the Southwest, has been well

recounted by Charles Alexander and Glenn Feldman. The Klan in the West has been

represented by Robert Goldberg’s work on Colorado, Shawn Lay’s insightful analysis of

the situation in Texas and Larry Gerlach’s study of Utah, with considerable attention also

going to California and Oregon. The oft-told tale of the Klan in the stronghold of Indiana

finds its best expression in Leonard Moore’s writings, and neighboring Ohio is well

represented by William Jenkins. Even the urban northeast has seen a certain degree of

interest, thanks to Shawn Lay’s review of Klan activity in Buffalo, New York. The most

notable exception to this local scholarship has been the Mid-Atlantic States – Delaware,

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, lower New York State, the District of Columbia, and

Maryland. The Klans of these states have not been the subject of serious historical

inquiry since Emerson Loucks’ work on Pennsylvania in 1936.

Why has Maryland received so little attention? The evident answer is that scholars

of the Klan have generally regarded the organization’s strength in Maryland as negligible

at best. Arnold Rice’s comment that Maryland was regarded as “the most un-American

state in Dixie, as measured by the Klan standard” is typical. To an extent, this is a fair

characterization. H.L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, referred to Maryland as the “apex

to gravitate toward a safe middle place” in population,  

5 Blee, Women of the Klan, 2, 148-149.

 

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value of manufactures, percentage of native-born whites, ratio of Catholics among

Christians, first and last annual frosts. In national politics, Maryland, nicknamed the Free

State, sometimes joined with southern Democrats, sometimes with northern Republicans,

making for a “curious moderation” in politics. This tendency to seek the centre was not

one that necessarily lent itself to the building of the Invisible Empire. Also significant

was the powerful influence of Catholics in the state. Unsurprisingly for a state originally

settled as a Catholic colony, Maryland’s Catholic population was prominent and deeply

involved in public affairs, especially in Baltimore under the leadership of Archbishop

Michael Curley.6

More important, however, was Maryland’s association with alcohol. In 1923,

Governor Albert C. Ritchie made state history as the first governor to be elected to a

second term. Ritchie had made a national reputation for himself with his vituperative

opposition to the Volstead Act and his stand in favor of state’s rights, leaving Maryland

without state Prohibition enforcement. The Eastern Shore was a haven for smugglers, and

bootleggers received ships loaded with Cuban rum or German beer. Baltimore was

endowed with the United States Industrial Alcohol (USIA) Corporation at Curtis Bay,

which each year produced millions of gallons of a 185-proof product. Unsurprisingly, it

became one of the most abundant sources of alcohol in the country, with a gallon of

USIA spirits going for three dollars on the black market.7 By 1925, Collier’s magazine

judged Maryland to be the wettest state in the nation. 8

 6 Rice, Klan in Politics, 39; Argersinger, New Deal, 7; Mencken, “Apex of Normalcy,” 517-19. 7 As Maryland historian Robert Brugger describes it, “cut with about a gallon of water, flavored with a few drops of glycerine, bottled and rolled on the floor to mix it, and then aged for about half an hour, it made drinkable gin.” 8 Baltimore Sun, September 29, 1925; Brugger, Maryland, 450-457, 468-9.

 

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and in February 1922 Baltimo

                                                       

Nor was this the end of Maryland’s “un-American” behavior. Gambling,

especially on horse races, was increasingly popular in the state, with tracks at Havre de

Grace, Hagerstown, Bowie and Pimlico drawing large crowds. Elkton in Cecil County

built a national reputation as the “Marriage Capital of the East,” offering no-questions-

asked marriages thanks to the vagaries of Maryland law. Maryland was also no exception

to the wider social changes sweeping the nation, with young Marylanders dancing in

Charleston competitions (which picked up a particularly rebellious reputation after one

Baltimore resident died on the dance floor), using startlingly different slang

incomprehensible to their parents, and putting the motorcar to “immoral” purposes.

Young women bobbed their hair, changed their clothes, and smoked in public.9

Maryland, then, might not seem a natural fit for a haven of the Invisible Empire.

What must be remembered, however, is that these “un-American” activities were actually

the impetus for the growth of the Klan. The Ku Klux Klan in Maryland certainly never

achieved the power that it did in Indiana, Georgia, or Colorado. Nevertheless, the

organization established a sizeable presence in the state. Some estimates even suggest

that at its peak, Maryland’s Klan was larger than that of Virginia, and Baltimore’s Klan

membership more than twice that of Richmond.10

The Klan first came to Maryland in 1921 in the shape of King Kleagle H.P.

Moorehead, sent by Klan founder and Imperial Wizard William J. Simmons to open the

national organization’s first office in the state. A speech in Baltimore by Imperial Kleagle

Edward Young Clarke in November of that same year started the first recruitment drive,

re Klansmen received a local charter as Thomas Dixon

 9 Baltimore Sun, September 12, 1925; Brugger, Maryland, 467-8. 10 Jackson, Klan in the City, 237-239.

 

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Klan No.1. Frank H. Beall, head of the inspection division of Baltimore’s City Highways

Department and ninety-ninth man in Maryland to join the Klan, was elected the first

Exalted Cyclops. The Invisible Empire soon made its presence known in the state. In

1922, a philandering husband in Hagerstown was whipped and branded. A thousand

Klansmen paraded through Frederick, and held an open-air naturalization ceremony for

two hundred new members. The organization bought an old Presbyterian church in

Baltimore for conversion into a Klavern hall, and by December the move was complete.

To celebrate, Klansmen threw their doors open to the public for a fund-raising bazaar,

featuring game booths, lectures on “Americanism,” oyster suppers and a choral

presentation by daughters of Klansmen.11

The Klan also met staunch opposition from the start. When Imperial Wizard

Simmons visited Baltimore in December 1922, Governor Ritchie and Adjutant General

Reckord denied the Klan permission to use the Fifth Regiment Armory for a public

lecture. The same week saw four Klansmen sentenced for having tarred and feathered

two Western Maryland Railway employees. At the beginning of 1923, an attempt was

made to burn down the Thomas Dixon Klan’s headquarters. Baltimore passed an

ordinance requiring marchers to show their faces, and when Mrs. Helen Jackson, one of

the Klan’s “escaped nuns,” addressed a meeting at the First Baptist Church, Baltimore

residents started a riot.12

 11 Baltimore Sun, June 24, 1926; Jackson, Klan in the City, 181; Brugger, Maryland, 476; Newton, Ku Klux Klan, 57, 208. 12 “Escaped nuns” were women who claimed to have escaped from convents, where they had been forcibly imprisoned. They would typically lecture on the sexual and mental abuse they had allegedly suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church. Jackson, Klan in the City, 181; Brugger, Maryland, 476; Newton, Ku Klux Klan, 208; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 159; Washington Evening Star, June 28, 1922; New York Times, December 23, 1922; December 27, 1922; February 10, 1923.

 

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Nevertheless, as violence abated and word spread, the Hooded Empire grew

quickly, and by late 1923 had a sufficiently large membership for the national office to

grant it an official charter, making it the twentieth Realm of the Ku Klux Klan. Frank

Beall, who had resigned his public office to be appointed Grand Dragon of Maryland,

announced that the state had seventy-two Klans, with an aggregate membership of thirty-

three thousand. In November 1923, the virulently anti-Klan Baltimore Sun launched an

investigation into the organization’s strength in Maryland, finding its main strength in the

counties on the Eastern Shore, Allegany County, and Prince George’s County, and

estimating state membership at somewhere closer to ten thousand. It seems likely that the

Sun’s estimate was closer to the truth, but the Klan continued to grow quickly. By May

1924, Beall could confidently announce the organization of a Maryland Women’s Ku

Klux Klan and of the Krusaders, an affiliate organization with foreign-born members.13

In August, the state gathering at Annapolis drew nearly six thousand Klansmen to

participate in the ceremonies and watch a fifty-foot wooden cross burn. Less than a week

after the state gathering, the Havre de Grace Klan dedicated the first, and only, Ku Klux

Klan church in the United States, the Webster Community Christian Church. A multi-

denominational church and community center, its steeple was mounted with a six-foot

electric cross, and Klan lecturer Reverend Milton W. Sutcliffe was appointed as pastor. In

attendance for the ceremony and the burning of three crosses were Grand Dragon Beall,

the Exalted Cyclopes of five local Klans, the popular state Klan lecturer Reverend

 13 One German-born member was so keen to display his loyalty that he had his daughter christened Katerine Karlotta Knickman.

 

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“Klan babies,” and Grand Dra

                                                       

Thomas “Dynamite Tom” Jones of Odenton, and George Pennington, mayor of Havre de

Grace. 14

The Klan reached its peak in Maryland in 1925. The Washington Post estimated

its strength at an oddly precise and likely overinflated 53, 190, while historian Kenneth

Jackson’s later estimation of 25,000 is almost certainly too low. It seems likely that the

Maryland Klan reached a high of about 35,000 members, not including the newly

organized Junior Klan, for boys twelve to eighteen, and the Tri-K Klub, for girls twelve

to eighteen. Its events peaked correspondingly, both in size and frequency. The state

gathering at Annapolis in June saw over ten thousand Klansmen attend, drawing

additional Knights from “as far south as North Carolina and west as Indiana.” Two

hundred and fifty recruits were naturalized in a ceremony below a huge electric cross at

the Cumberland Fair Grounds. A double wedding, with all participants in full Klan

regalia, was held as a skywriting pilot drew “KKK” among the clouds.15

The state gathering paled in comparison, however, to the Fourth of July

celebration organized by Hyattsville Klan No. 2 and Mount Rainier Klan No. 51. An all-

day event held just off the Washington-Baltimore Boulevard in Prince George’s County,

the Independence Day celebration drew between twenty and twenty-five thousand

attendees with its tent shows, athletic events, lectures, skywriting, bands, fireworks in the

form of Old Glory, and an airplane flying overhead, an electric fiery cross suspended

below it. Reverend Sutcliffe of the Havre de Grace church oversaw the baptism of thirty

gon Beall led the naturalization of five hundred recruits. At

 14 Jackson, Klan in the City, 181; Fuller, Maelstrom, 125-130; Newton, Ku Klux Klan, 208; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 159; Baltimore Sun, November 20-21, 1923; August 19, 1924; August 24-25, 1924; Washington Post, May 16, 1924; August 25, 1924; New York Times, August 18, 1924; August 25-26, 1924. 15 Washington Post, November 2, 1930; Jackson, Klan in the City, 237; Baltimore Sun, June 3, 1925; Washington Evening Star, June 24, 1925; Brugger, Maryland, p.477.

 

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the national parade on August 8th, thirty-five thousand Klansmen and another five

thousand members of the Women’s and Junior Klans marched proudly through the streets

of the nation’s capital. Pennsylvania provided the largest contingent, sending around five

thousand Knights to march, but Maryland provided an impressive contingent of nearly

two thousand, including the Ladies Aluminum Band (the only female band in the parade)

and the popular Hyattsville Klavaliers drill team. In September, the Hyattsville and

Mount Rainier Klans organized a statewide outing to Chesapeake Beach, attended by

more than five thousand Klansmen and their families. The naturalization ceremony saw

another first for Maryland, as a fifty-foot cross mounted on a twenty-six foot pole was lit

a mile from shore, the first ever aquatic fiery cross.16

The Sun continued to attack the Klan as “the most overadvertised,

overemphasized and overrated organization there ever has been in the State,” as “a

novelty” characterized by “bluff” and “bunk,” whose activities “are more or less furtive

and absurd.” The members were “mainly perfectly good, kindly people, generally

without anything to occupy their minds when they quit work, looking for novelties,

attracted by the idea of something mysterious.” The local leaders were “respectable,

decent men, but a little cranky. They are usually men of meager education and of thirst

for argument and controversy.” H.L. Mencken, writing for the Sun, viewed the Hooded

Empire with acerbic wit as “a device for organizing inferiorities into a mystical

superiority” and containing “the makings of every imbecility.” Describing the Klan’s

national parade through Washington, D.C. in 1925, Mencken wrote:

 16 Washington Post, July 4-5, 1925; August 9, 1925; September 13, 1925; October 18, 1925; Baltimore Sun, July 5, 1925; August 9, 1925; Washington Evening Star, July 3-5, 1925; August 31, 1925; September 7, 1925; September 12, 1925.

 

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“It is the tragedy of this great Republic, perhaps, that whenever its patriots get together they look like a gang of meat-cutters and curve greasers on a holiday…There was not, so far as I

could observe, an intelligent face or a comely one on a woman. They were common folk, and their commonness radiated from

them like heat from a stove.”17

How true was Mencken’s characterization? Given that Klan scholars have spent

over thirty years trying to pull the average Klan member’s reputation away from the

generalizations of Mecklin and the Invisible Empire’s opponents, it seems unlikely that

Mencken’s barbed analysis bears much historical weight. Thankfully, historical inquiry

into the nature of the Klan in Maryland is greatly enriched by the survival of the original

minutes of the meetings of Mount Rainier Klan No. 51. Although not as detailed or

extensive as the minutes of the La Grande Klan in Oregon that have been recovered, they

are nevertheless illuminating.18

Mount Rainier started as a streetcar suburb of Washington, D.C. in 1902, and

grew rapidly. In 1910, Mount Rainier was granted a state charter and incorporated as a

town with an area of approximately 1.7 square miles and a population of 1,242. Between

1920 and 1930, the town grew from a population of just over 2,500 to just under 5,000,

but remained under the shadow of its older and larger neighbor to the northeast,

Hyattsville, which had been incorporated in 1886. Both towns, and indeed the majority of

Prince George’s County, were marked by a close affiliation to the District of Columbia,

which provided the livelihoods of most residents. The population was split largely

 17 Baltimore Sun, November 20-21, 1923; May 17, 1924; May 6, 1925; August 9, 1925. 18 See Horowitz, Inside the Klavern.

 

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If that did not resolve the matt

                                                       

between employees of the federal government, skilled members of the “mechanical and

building crafts” and small-salaried white-collar workers.19

Hyattsville and Mount Rainier were also home to two of the most active Klans in

Maryland. The Hyattsville Klan was the second to be established in the state, after the

Thomas Dixon Klan in Baltimore, and Mount Rainier followed soon after – state officials

formally recognized Mount Rainier Klan No. 51 in early 1923. Numerically small, the

Mount Rainier Klan, like the Klan as a whole in Maryland, reached a peak in 1925 with

eighty-four members. Hyattsville, in comparison, had several hundred members, and the

two Klans often discussed amalgamating to save costs. Although they remained two

separate Klans throughout the 1920s, Hyattsville and Mount Rainier often worked

together to organize naturalizations and larger events, most notably the enormous annual

Independence Day celebrations and outings to Chesapeake Beach.20

The Klansmen of Mount Rainier had four primary concerns – local “immorality”

(including Prohibition), immigration, public schools and Catholics. Debates were often

held to discuss these issues at their fortnightly meetings, and they were the main focus of

Klan activities. The Klan was intermittently asked to intervene in local matters, usually

donating money to families in need and local churches. Occasionally the matter was more

serious, as when one Mr. Gass of neighboring Brentwood asked that the Klan aid his

daughter, who was allegedly being mistreated by her husband. In these cases, the Klan

would first organize a committee to determine whether the matter deserved its attention.

If it was found to be a worthy situation, then the first step was to send a threatening letter.

er, then the Klan would organize a committee to take more

 19 Baltimore Sun, October 5, 1928; Brugger, Maryland, 440-445; Fifty Years of Progress in the City of Mt. Rainier, 1-5, 15. 20 Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier.

 

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placing one of its own membe                                                       

direct action. In this case, the matter was quickly “solved without incident” and the

satisfied Mr. Gass joined the Klan a short time after. Mount Rainier also had an active

chapter of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization and the most hated enemy of

Klans throughout the north. The Knights, popularly known as KCs or “Caseys,” were the

target of most negative Klan activity in Mount Rainier, with crosses burned nearby and

petitions circulated against the election of its members.21

With regard to politics, the Klan of Mount Rainier strongly resembled that of

Maryland as a whole – quick to act in terms of local issues, but largely powerless in

national or even state politics. Although Maryland Klans were strongly arrayed against

Governor Ritchie, for example, this did not prevent his reelection in 1923, or again in

1927. In Mount Rainier, an active involvement in politics seemed like an afterthought,

and was largely the result of a suggestion made by one Klansman “to endorse their men

for public offices and have men stationed at the polls to talk them up…Most every one

thought this a good idea for us to find out the men we wanted in office and then endeavor

to put them there.” Nonetheless, the Klan soon moved into active involvement in local

politics. As early as May 1923, Mayor Rushe of Hyattsville was forced to issue a

statement in which he “emphatically denied the Ku Klux Klan has set up a

supergovernment over his town.” The local Klan petitioned energetically against the

election of Thomas H. Robinson, “a Fourth degree Casey,” for state attorney general.

After its failure to block the reappointment of Thomas H. Garrison to the position of

county sheriff, Garrison was bombarded with death threats. Klansmen worked for the

appointment of a “100% American” to the board of trustees of the Mt. Rainier school,

rs, and sent a committee to see the County Commissioner  

21 Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier.

 

16

 

                                                       

about the appointment of a school superintendent, suggesting another of their members

for the position. 22 In 1925, Klansman Kenneth B. Bovay ran for mayor of Mount

Rainier, although he lost to the popular incumbent, Mayor Fred Negus.23

Did the Klansmen of Mount Rainier, as Mencken would have it, radiate

commonness? In a word, no. The composition of the Klan reflected fairly accurately the

local community as a whole. As the chart below shows, the single largest category of

employment for Klansmen was government office worker, accounting for a fifth of total

employment. Nearly the same number worked in other white-collar trades, although a

significant minority of this number actually owned their own businesses. This category

was made up predominantly of merchants – grocers and butchers particularly – although

business proprietors also included the owner of a real estate brokerage and a flourishing

building contractor. The assorted “mechanical and building crafts” represented forty-four

percent of Klansmen’s livelihoods, with a significant proportion of them employed by the

local railroad company. Other occupations included mailman, chauffeur, and the county’s

superintendent of roads.24

 22 The County Commissioner was reported to be “very much surprised” when he saw the credentials presented by the visiting committee. 23 Mayor Negus was remarkably popular with the local Klan, and had been commended by them on several occasions for his stance on “law and order.” It is unclear as to why Klansman Bovay chose to run against him. Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier; Frederick Post, May 20, 1923; Marlboro Gazette, June 24, 1925; November 17, 1925; December 11, 1925. 24 Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier; Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920; Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Enumeration District 41.

 

17

 

NOTE: All percentages rounded to nearest whole number.

Mount Rainier Klansmen were far from the fringe cranks or common “boobs” that

the Invisible Empire’s opponents might suggest. They were prosperous members of

an affluent suburb of the nation’s capital. A large number of them belonged to Mount

Rainier Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with a significant proportion sitting on

various church committees. Three sat on the board of the church alongside Mayor

Negus. Two held public positions. They were, in Shawn Lay’s phrase, civic activists,

who were deeply concerned with issues of law and order, Prohibition enforcement,

and the state of public schools.25

                                                        25 History of Mount Rainier Church; Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier.

 

18

 

                                                       

Mount Rainier Klan No. 51, like the Klan in Maryland as a whole, peaked in early

1925. In February 1926, the New York Times reported that the Klan “shows signs of

dissolution.” By March, Time magazine reported that “there is a striking unanimity in

the opinion that the Klan is declining.” In June, Grand Dragon Frank Beall resigned

his position and left the Hooded Empire. Three months later, Maryland’s largest

Klan, Fort Cumberland Klan No. 37, seceded to start its own independent

organization, and the state charter was returned to a provisional basis. By the

beginning of 1927, membership in Maryland had fallen by at least ten thousand. The

Invisible Empire was in serious decline in the Free State. Klan activities in 1927

consisted of little more than a series of charitable baseball games and threatening

letters to public officials. 26

A similar decline was occurring across the country. National membership in the

Ku Klux Klan peaked in 1925 at nearly four and a half million Knights, not including

those in the Women’s Klan, the Junior Klan, the Tri-K Klub, and the Krusaders. In

1927, membership was little more than half a million, and by 1928 “no more than

several hundred thousand” were thought to still belong to the organization. While the

Invisible Empire did see a flurry of activity in late 1928 in opposition to the

presidential candidacy of the Catholic Governor of New York, Al Smith, it did little

more than to temporarily postpone its rapid fall. By the end of the decade, there were

less than ninety thousand Knights nationally.27

 26 Baltimore Sun, June 24-29, 1926; September 5, 1926; February 1, 1927; March 8, 1927; Frederick Post, June 24, 1926; September 5, 1926; Marlboro Gazette, June 24, 1926; September 5, 1926; New York Times, February 18, 1926; June 24, 1926; “Decline,” Time, March 1, 1926. 27 Washington Post, November 2, 1930; Jackson, Klan in the City, 252; Blee, Women’s Klan, 175; Rice, Klan in Politics, 91; Cash, Mind of the South, 340-342; Newton, Ku Klux Klan, 17.

 

19

 

II. Illustrations

 

1. Frank H. Beall, Grand Dragon 2. Imperial Kleagle Louis A. Mueller. of Maryland.

3. Gathering at Forestville, Maryland, 1926.

 

20

 

4. Naturalization ceremony, Thomas Dixon Klan No. 1, Baltimore, 1923.

5. Klan wedding, Cumberland, Maryland, 1925.

 

21

 

6. Maryland Klansmen march in National Parade, 1925.

7. Baltimore Sun’s view of the National Parade, 1925. Cartoon by Edmund Duffy.

 

22

 

a

time to reexamine the America

                                                       

III. Why did the Klan decline in Maryland?

The decline of organizations is something that in general has not received the

attention it is due. In large part, this may be due to the fact that it is a remarkably difficult

question to answer to any degree of certainty. Organizations, even supposedly secret ones

like the Ku Klux Klan, tend to advertise their benefits, giving considerable insight into

why an individual might wish to join. Organizations tend not, however, to advertise why

their members are leaving, or even that members are leaving at all. Sadly for historians,

there has as yet been no compulsory exit poll instituted.

Moreover, while historians of the Left have made great strides in reaching beyond

organizational histories and rediscovering the rank and file members of the organization

themselves, historians of the Right have not been so enterprising. Studies of conservatism

have been mired in what one historian refers to as the “gee whiz” phase.28 Rather than

the probing historical scholarship that might be hoped for, the field has been marked by

tendency for self-congratulation for having broken with the mainstream of historical

inquiry and an ever-renewing amazement that Rightists are not entirely the irrational

oddities that vital center historians like Daniel Bell and Richard Hofstadter made them

out to be.

Bell and Hofstadter were wrong about conservatives “in ways that have been

documented for twenty-five years.”29 There is no need to yet again go over the ways in

which the Right was mischaracterized by the consensus history of the 1950s. Rather, it is

n conservative him-, or her-, self. Explanations of the

 28 Ribuffo, “Rediscovering American Conservatism Again,” http://hnn.us/articles/38415.html. 29 Ribuffo, “Why is There so Much Conservatism in the United States,” 439.

 

23

 

supposedly characterize Amer

                                                       

collapse of the Invisible Empire have generally focused on the organization itself. Little

to no consideration has been paid as to why it was that Klansmen would have chosen to

abandon the Invisible Empire just as it reached new heights of success, and it is here that

I focus my attention.

The most difficult idea to shake has been that the Klan’s decline was somehow

inevitable. In 1924, Mecklin argued that the Klan had two options for future development

– “discarding the mask and perishing through the loss of the one thing that gives it

significance” or keeping the mask and thereby giving rise to “vigorous moral

condemnation that must in time prove to be the Klan’s undoing.”30 One way or another,

the Invisible Empire was doomed. Journalist Stanley Frost largely agreed with Mecklin,

arguing that “the Klan can hardly live long in anything much like its present form” and

“has, indeed, within itself the elements of sure decay.”31 Kenneth Jackson’s analysis in

the late 1960s was hardly more rigorous. After having considered throughout his work

the numerous challenges that the Klan faced, it is somewhat dispiriting to find Jackson

conclude simply that the ultimate weakness of the Invisible Empire was its lack of a

positive program. Wyn Craig Wade and Larry Gerlach similarly agree that it was the

“hypocrisy and negativism” of the Klan that weakened it more than anything else.

Leonard Moore is a little more hesitant in his evaluation, but still concludes that “it may

also have been inevitable that the Klan would begin to lose momentum.” Even David

Chalmers’ masterly survey of Klan history, Hooded Americanism, has difficulty in

explaining the organization’s decline. Chalmers argues that the “forces of change” that

ican society were “too powerful to be held back.”

 30 Mecklin, Mind of the Klan, 239. 31 Frost, Challenge of the Klan, 255.

 

24

 

for the Klan, established the P

                                                       

American society is simply “too heterogeneous and too optimistic” for the Invisible

Empire to find a lasting place.32

These arguments are little more than assumptions built on a wishful, wistful

conception of America and its history, and quickly lose credence in the face of

overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As historians have spent forty years showing, the

Klan was not an inherently “un-American” organization, but did in fact share values with

the mainstream of American thought in the 1920s. Moreover, if the Klan had been

defeated by its own negativism, then it is remarkable that so many Klan members

displayed a lack of contrition, even years later.33

The most damning point against the idea that it was the very nature of the Klan

that doomed it, however, is the fact that those who left the Invisible Empire – both in

Maryland and nationwide - tended to form new organizations that were fundamentally the

same, even down to feuding with the parent body over the right to use the name “Klan.”

When one of the largest Klans in Maryland seceded in late 1926, it immediately became

Local No. 1, Sons of the Stars and Stripes, with an identical set of aims and organization.

It was even headed by its old Exalted Cyclops, and met in the same meeting hall as

before. In 1924, former Imperial Kleagle Edward Young Clarke (who had been banished

from the Klan following Hiram Evans’ rise to Imperial Wizard in 1923) established a

splinter group, the Knights of the Mystic Clan. The Mystic Clan was alleged to have

offices in twelve states, including Maryland, and stood for “the original principles” of the

Klan. In January 1925, Captain Thomas Lexington Avant, previously a national speaker

rotestant Knights of America in seven states east of the

 32 Jackson, Klan in the City, 255; Wade, Fiery Cross, 254; Moore, Citizen Klansmen, 186; Gerlach, Blazing Crosses, 153; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 296. 33 MacLean, Behind the Mask, 178.

 

25

 

                                                       

Mississippi, with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Protestant Knights was an

avowedly anti-Catholic organization, whose aim was to preserve white Protestant

supremacy.

In late 1925, seceding Arkansas Klansmen formed the new Grand Clan of

America. Seceding Knights in Colorado formed the Minute Men of America, seizing

Klan estate and property. Allied Minute Men organizations sprang up, spreading

westward to Salt Lake City and eastward to Madison, Wisconsin. Membership enquiries

were received from Alabama, California, Indiana and Kentucky. In January 1926, the Ku

Klux Klan, Inc. began a lawsuit in Indiana against the Independent Klan of America over

rights to the use of the Klan name. In February of the same year, more seceding Indiana

Klansmen formed another independent organization. The Associated Klans of Oregon

was established as a breakaway organization that remained in all important respects

identical to the Ku Klux Klan. In July 1927, the Ku Klux Klan once again brought suit

against another organization for using the Klan name, this time in western Pennsylvania.

It is evident that the decline of the Klan was not caused by a reaction against its “inherent

negativism,” nor by a popular repudiation of Klan principles or values by its members. 34

Those historians of the Klan who have looked beyond the “inevitable” downfall

have often concluded that it was organized opposition to the Invisible Empire that

brought it down. The analysis of this opposition has ranged from the simplistic to the

well-considered. Jackson’s declaration that “the genuine American sense of decency

finally asserted itself and consigned the once mighty Klan to obscurity,” for example, lies

 34 Baltimore Sun, February 27, 1924; January 22, 1926; February 15, 1926; September 6, 1926; September 15, 1926; July 14, 1927; Washington Evening Star, January 6, 1925; November 6, 1925; Washington Post, February 27, 1924; Horowitz, Inside the Klavern, 44; Jackson, Klan in the City, 231; Goldberg, Hooded Empire, 106-110.

 

26

 

western Pennsylvania in 1923

                                                       

definitively at the simplistic end of the scale. Lay’s arguments concerning opposition in

Buffalo, on the other hand, are more convincing. Buffalo’s relatively powerful African-

American community, unsurprisingly, was a source of forceful opposition, and Jewish

and Catholic members of the community, including Mayor Schwab, formed a

considerable bloc of resistance.35

The arguments concerning opposition to the Klan all, however, tend to rely on the

same basic thesis – that the exposure, in one way or another, of the membership and the

end of secrecy was what spelled the end for the Invisible Empire. As Jackson writes, “the

fear of exposure felt by men who had taken the oath of allegiance to the Imperial Wizard

could not then and cannot now be measured, but it was doubtlessly sufficient to cause

thousands of local men to rue the day they first donned a white robe.”36 This exposure

was, in general, the result of the various anti-mask laws passed around the country and

the work of organizations like the American Unity League to obtain membership rosters

and make them public.

There are two key reasons to suspect that, although it may have been a

contributing factor, a loss of secrecy was not the primary cause of the downfall of the

Klan. First, anti-masking laws were being passed and membership rosters were being

published years before the membership of the Klan actually peaked, meaning that

individuals continued to join even with the possibility of recognition. As early as 1921,

the FBI noted the creation of the “Iron Ring” anti-Klan group in Washington DC. The

Knights of the Flaming Circle, one of the largest anti-Klan groups, was established in

and spread to Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland. The

 35 Jackson, Klan in the City, 255; Lay, Hooded Knights, 49-51. 36 Jackson, Klan in the City, 125.

 

27

 

                                                       

Tolerance Publishing Company, the printing arm of the American Unity League (AUL),

published a booklet containing a partial list of names in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley in early

1924, but this didn’t prove sufficient to dissuade the majority of Klan members and

membership peaked in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, as in most states outside of the

deep South, in early 1925. The American Unity League (AUL) published large numbers

of the names of Knights in Chicago in 1923, but growth in Chicago continued to be

“steady and satisfactory” through at least 1924 and 1925. In late 1923, the National

Vigilance Committee was established in Washington DC with the aim of “seeking the

disintegration of the Ku Klux Klan and kindred organizations” by working for the

passage of anti-mask statutes in every state. The Walker Law, New York’s celebrated

anti-masking bill, passed in 1923, with a similar statute passing the Michigan State

Legislature later that year. Yet neither of those states saw a noticeable drop in

membership until at least 1925. In other states, including Texas, Virginia, and Georgia,

anti-masking statutes weren’t passed until the Klan was already in decline. It is difficult

to see, therefore, any kind of direct causal link between attempts at public exposure and

an actual decline in Klan membership.37

Second, the loss of secrecy seems to have had little actual effect on the day-to-day

activity of the Klan. The vast majority of Klansmen seemed unfazed by the necessity of a

public unmasking. Maryland’s Invisible Empire had never been particularly invisible.

Outside of the violent Klans of the Deep South, there was little actual need on an

everyday basis for the hood other than for ceremonial purposes. In Maryland, therefore,

 37 Some of the ineffectiveness of anti-masking laws may have been that, as Frost noted in 1924, “they are not being enforced.” Frost, Challenge of the Klan, 9; Newton, Ku Klux Klan, 372; Fiery Cross, April 12, 1923; Wade, Fiery Cross, 201; Baltimore Sun, November 12, 1923; Jackson, Klan in the City, 79, 130; Lay, Hooded Knights, 55; Jenkins, Steel Valley Klan, 77; New York Times, September 9, 1923.

 

28

 

                                                       

where instances of violence were few and far between, the fact that public officials

usually required public demonstrations to be unmasked seems to have had little effect on

the popularity of such events. Parades in any of the major towns were unmasked, and

large naturalization ceremonies often attracted thousands of local spectators. At the state

gathering at Annapolis in 1924, for example, Grand Dragon Beall led a parade of over a

thousand unmasked members through town to light a fifty foot high cross in a clearing

where several thousand other Klansmen waited for them. These waiting Knights had not

been afraid to march unmasked – they had been prohibited from participating by traffic

regulations restricting the number of marchers. In fact, the only sizeable celebrations in

which local authorities allowed men and women of the Klan to remain masked were the

annual trips to Chesapeake Beach, where local spectators were few and far between

anyway. While membership in the Klan may have drawn a level of opprobrium from the

community, it never reached levels sufficient to dissuade thousands of Maryland

Klansmen from participating in public events. Exposure did not hold sufficient threat to

explain the precipitous decline in membership.

It must also be remembered that for an organization such as the Ku Klux Klan,

opposition represented proof of the lack of true Americanism and the pernicious and

cunning influence of alien forces. Klansmen never forgot that, outside of the Catholics,

Jews, and African Americans, the enemies of the Klan were “the bootlegger, the thief, the

robber, the wife-beater, the vagabond, the ‘jelly-bean,’38 the murderer and the rapist.” It

was these problems that had called the Klan into being, not that forced it from power. As

Imperial Wizard Evans declared to the Second Klonvokation in 1924, “the Ku Klux Klan

 38 A slang term for a pimp.

 

29

 

                                                       

is too big, too loyal, too consecrated, to be very badly hurt by…attacks from its alien

foes.” 39

Historians who argue that opposition is key to understanding the decline of the

Klan raise a far greater problem. If opposition from the press, local elites and anti-Klan

organizations spurred decline in some areas, why did a corresponding decline take place

in areas without such indigenous opposition? The answer, according to a significant

number of scholars of the Klan, is D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson, Grand Dragon of Indiana, has become the symbol of Klan corruption,

hypocrisy, violence and sexual deviance for historians. His involvement in the death of

Madge Oberholtzer, and the ensuing scandal as the salacious details of the affair were

slowly revealed, have been cited as the single greatest contributing factor in turning

people away from the Klan. From his indictment in April 1926 until his conviction for

second-degree murder in November of the same year, newspapers across the country

were filled with front-page headlines detailing Stephenson’s crimes. Nor were these

limited to Oberholtzer’s death. As more details came to light, the corruption that had

marked Stephenson’s regime, and the remarkable influence he held in Indiana state

politics, shocked readers. Many accounts have agreed with Richard Tucker’s assessment

that “the D.C. Stephenson scandal killed the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana” and sounded the

“death knell” for the Klan’s other northern realms. Wyn Craig Wade has gone so far as to

argue that “Madge’s death finished the Protestant Ku Klux Klan crusade of the 1920s

 39 Great Titan, Realm of Texas, “The Officers of a Klan and Their Responsibility to Law Enforcement,” Papers Read at the Meeting of Grand Dragons, 57; Fuller, Maelstrom, 123.

 

30

 

who, as a regular subscriber to

                                                       

more than any single factor.” Clearly, these scandals did have a major role in the decline

of the Indiana Klan.40

As Jackson points out, however, even in Indianapolis the Klan survived and

remained active and growing, albeit at a far slower rate, until 1926, when a more

debilitating decline set in. As late as 1927, the Klan’s political influence in Indiana

remained surprisingly strong, with seventeen state legislators attending a Klan banquet.

Thirty-one other legislators were alleged to be secret Klansmen. Most commentators also

seem to forget that by the time of the Oberholtzer scandal, Stephenson was no longer a

member of the national Klan. He had been banished in 1924 by the Evansville Klan for

“gross dereliction,” including charges that he had tried to seduce a young Evansville

woman and had committed “numerous other immoralities in Columbus, Ohio; Columbus,

Indiana; in Atlanta, Georgia; and on boats and trains.” A few months later, just as so

many other seceding Knights tried to do, Stephenson established an independent Indiana

Klan, now answerable only to him. Although historians seem to have overlooked this,

contemporary news reports did not. 41

The question becomes, then, to what extent did the Stephenson scandal affect the

Klan outside of Indiana? The slew of local studies that have dominated the field in recent

years seem to have argued for local exceptionalism on almost every front but this. While

it is impossible to quantify, it is certain that the downfall of Stephenson had far less of an

impact upon a Klansman in Hagerstown than in Indianapolis – especially a Klansman

Klan periodicals like Fellowship Forum or The Fiery

 40 Wade, Fiery Cross, 247-251; Moore, Citizen Klansmen, 185; Blee, Women of the Klan, 96; Jackson, Klan in the City, 160; Baltimore Sun, April 4 - November 21, 1925; Marlboro Gazette, April 4 - November 21 1925; Washington Post, April 4 - November 21, 1925; New York Times, April 4 - November 21, 1925. For the best account of the Stephenson scandal, see Tucker, Dragon and the Cross. 41 Jackson, Klan in the City, 160; Tucker, Dragon and the Cross, 98; Blee, Women’s Klan, 210.

 

31

 

                                                       

Cross, was well aware that Stephenson had not been a member of the national Klan for

some time. Stephenson’s downfall was without doubt influential, but it has also acted as a

blind for deeper causes of decline within the Invisible Empire. In fact, it has wider

negative repercussions, as the exaggerated emphasis on Stephenson draws attention away

from the rank and file of the Klan. By implication this suggests than the Klan’s existence

had relied solely on the strength of its leaders. The Hooded Empire is once again returned

to the status of an anomaly of American history. The truth, as Leonard Moore has

suggested, was closer to the idea that the Klan survived despite, not because of, its

leaders. Stephenson’s fall was, without doubt, a blow to the Klan. It was not, however,

the primary reason for its decline. There were other factors in play.42

Some historians have attributed the decline of the Klan to the end of general

postwar reactions, the fading of fears and a diminution of social tensions. Arguing that

the Klan had embodied the societal dissensions and struggles of postwar America, the

Klan died away when the “flag-waving frenzy” and fear of modernity abated. These

theories are contradicted, however, by the reality of when the Klan declined. If the Klan

withered with postwar reactionism, why did it continue to grow until 1925, well after the

end of the first Red Scare in 1920? This approach also has the unfortunate tendency to

once again imply that the Ku Klux Klan represented a singular and anomalous event,

rather than one indication of an ongoing conservative culture in America. If the Klan did

decline with the fading of fears of immigrants, or socialists, or a modern secular culture,

 42 Moore, Citizen Klansmen, 9, 93.

 

32

 

                                                       

then it begs the question as to when these fears did fade? It would seem that we would

still be waiting for the decline of the Klan today.43

Interlinked with these ideas of changing social conditions is the theory that

individuals chose to leave, viewing membership as too great a burden given the appeal of

modern life, as epitomized by Arthur Schlesinger, Sr.’s Biography of a Nation of Joiners.

As Schlesinger pointed out, relying on the research of sociologist Noel P. Gist, all secret

fraternal orders began to decline after the mid-1920s, with the cheap motorcar, cinema,

radio, sports organizations and the growth of international Rotary and similar

businessmen’s luncheon clubs providing more attractive alternative leisure time pursuits.

Although this may have been true of many secret fraternal orders in the 1920s (and there

were, indeed, many), it is not true of the Klan. The Invisible Empire, first of all, had a

scope that reached far beyond that of other fraternal orders. Its trappings were similar,

and the fraternal aspect of the organization (or “Klankraft”) was essential to its appeal,

but the underlying nature of the Klan was fundamentally different from its brethren.

Second, it must be remembered that the “attractive” alternative leisure time pursuits were

often part of what had pushed members to join the Hooded Empire in the first place. The

Ku Kluxers had taken a stand vehemently in opposition to “immoral” modern life and

“un-American” pursuits, promoting an alternative culture founded in the values of

Klankraft. As Time reported in late 1924, the Klan far preferred the films of D.W.

Griffith (director of Birth of a Nation) and novels of Thomas Dixon (author of The

Clansman) to opera, “a distinctly foreign, alien expression, with a far reaching influence

 43 Blee, Women of the Klan, 175; Tucker, Dragon and the Cross, 182; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 292; Goldberg, Hooded Empire, 179.

 

33

 

elections. Rather, it supported

                                                       

for evil.” Disenchantment with their leisure time opportunities was hardly a significant

cause of the Klan’s decline.44

Nancy MacLean is one of the very few historians who has advanced a cogently

argued theory as to the decline of the Klan, rather than offering opinions or assumptions.

MacLean makes the argument that the Invisible Empire shared considerably more

common ground with European fascist movements than historians have realized,

particularly with regard to its economic and class-based motivations. In both cases, she

writes, it was the postwar recession that fueled the growth of these movements. Given

these similarities, MacLean argues that if economic circumstances in the United States

had reached the same nadir in the United States as they did in Germany, then it is

possible that the Klan might have achieved some of the same success as European

fascists. As she writes, “had the Depression not hit Germany as hard as it subsequently

did, National Socialism might today be dismissed as the Klan sometimes is: a historical

curiosity whose doom was foreordained.” Instead, the United States saw an economic

boom in the mid-1920s that put an end to the postwar recession and brought to a

conclusion the turbulent social conditions that had fostered the growth of the Klan. 45

There are, however, several evident problems with MacLean’s argument. First is

that the Klan does not resemble the European fascist movements anywhere near as

closely as she argues. Most importantly, the Ku Klux Klan was not a political party in the

same way that the Italian Fascisti or the National Socialists in Germany were. The Klan

did, of course, attempt to gain political power, but it did not run Klan candidates in

Democratic or Republican candidates depending on the

 44 Schlesinger, “Nation of Joiners,” 20; Gist, Secret Societies, 40-43; “KKK,” Time, November 24, 1924. 45 MacLean, Behind the Mask, 178-186.

 

34

 

local political situation. Its strength was in swinging its votes behind a preexisting party,

not in starting its own. While many of the candidates that it supported may have been

Klansmen, they ran as members of the mainstream parties, not on a Kluxer ticket. The

disparate and generally decentralized nature of the Klan would have spelt disaster for any

attempt to build a national electoral program. Like the Know Nothings in the 1850s, the

national coalition would fall apart when presented with anything other than its core

issues.

MacLean’s argument is also flatly contradicted by the timeline she presents. If it

was the economic boom of the 1920s, which she situates as being in full swing by 1923,

that spelled the end for the Klan, then why would it be that Klan membership did not

peak until 1925? Klan membership kept growing into and through the bull markets of the

1920s. Similarly, if it was the economic recession that fostered the growth of the Klan,

then why didn’t the Great Depression see a notable resurgence in Klan power? Instead, it

saw the few Knights left to the Invisible Empire by 1929 become even fewer, as members

struggled to pay their dues.

We can see, then, what arguments have been made as to the reasons for the

decline of the Klan: the very nature of the Invisible Empire; sustained opposition and the

loss of secrecy; the scandalous downfall of D.C. Stephenson; changing social and

economic conditions; the appeal of modern life. None of these, however, are overly

convincing, nor do they explain the rapid collapse of the Klan in Maryland.

A more useful approach comes from Michael Lienesch. Although not a scholar of

the Klan, his study of the anti-evolution movement in the 1920s, In the Beginning, draws

judiciously on recent sociological research on social movements, particularly Sidney

 

35

 

                                                       

Tarrow’s “social movement theory.” Tarrow makes the argument that social movements,

including the Klan, should be defined as “collective challenges,” based on common

purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents,

authorities, rather than as unthinking reactions to deprivation and simple expressions of

extremism and violence. Drawing on an inherited collective ideal – in this case, the

Reconstruction Klan and the white Protestant American – these movements shape a new

collective identity to bind the movement. At the same time, this collective identity clearly

delineates the enemies of their constituencies as being outside of this identity, i.e.

Catholics, Jews, blacks, and “immoral” whites, and thus drawing deeper distinctions

between ideas of “us” and “them.”

These social movements operate within “cycles of contention,” in which they rise

and fall, proceeding through a series of stages from mobilization to demobilization. These

cycles vary in configuration, but are defined by the “acceleration and diffusion of

conflict” across the social system; the creation of “new frames and repertoires” of protest;

the development of new organizations, leading to competition with old ones; and the

“intensification of interaction” between activists within the movement and state power.

The formal hierarchical organization of the social movement coalesces as social and

political opportunities present themselves, and then disintegrates as opportunities close,

constraints appear and place stress upon the organization. Disintegration of the formal

hierarchy does not, however, spell the end of the social movement. The movement itself

continues at the root level, leaving behind a politically and socially connected network of

activists.46

 46 See Tarrow, Power in Movement; Kolb, Protest and Opportunities; Lienesch, In the Beginning.

 

36

 

Social movement theory provides historians of the Klan with a cogent framework

within which to understand the rise and fall of the Invisible Empire. Tarrow’s idea of

contentious cycles offers a theoretical structure that allows scholars to understand the

Klan as part of an ongoing and continually developing process rather than a historical

aberration. The decline in membership of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. did not spell the end of

the organization, and more importantly it did not mean a collapse of the social networks

upon which it was built. The men and women of the Klan did not suddenly come to a

realization that their belief systems were somehow contrary to the progressive thrust of

American history. They were not simply “gullible nativists,” deceived by fraudulent

leaders and suddenly shocked back into rational thinking. They were not acting out of an

irrational “status anxiety” or thoughtlessly reacting to postwar fears and patriotic fervor.

They were not simple manifestations of economic depression. They were rational

individuals who made a conscious manifestation to join a fraternal reform organization

that reflected their deeply held political and religious beliefs. Their decision to leave the

Ku Klux Klan reflected this status as lucid individuals, capable of coherent decision-

making.

The question remains, however, as to what the reason was for the precipitous

decline of the Klan in Maryland. As already discussed, it did not represent a repudiation

of Klan values. The clearest indicator we have of the motives of Knights for leaving the

Invisible Empire is to observe their following actions. Their propensity to establish vast

numbers of Klan-like organizations would seem to suggest that they had not abandoned

the principles that had led them to join the Klan in the first place. In Maryland alone, ex-

Klansmen founded at least two sizeable breakaway organizations, and Marylanders

 

37

 

organization, and when they d

                                                       

would have encountered at least two more nearby. The Knights of the Flaming Circle,

established in 1923, opened a branch the same year in Maryland, and was promptly

denounced by a Baltimore bishop for its anti-Catholic propensities. 1925 saw the

establishment of the Protestant Knights of America in Washington, D.C. by the

Maryland-born Captain Thomas Lexington Avant. In early 1926, the Washington County

Law and Order League was founded in Hagerstown by R.J. Funkhouser, and soon

claimed a membership upward of 2,200. In late 1926, ex-Klansmen in Cumberland

formed the Sons of the Stars and Stripes, with more than 1,400 ex-Klansmen and an

additional 800 ex-Klanswomen. Ex-Klansmen also joined similar organizations that were

already well established in Maryland. The Patriotic Order Sons of America organized a

series of rallies in 1927 and 1928, and the Junior Order of United American Mechanics

was active in Maryland fraternal life.

Although some historians have argued that these local splinter organizations are

not due extensive attention due to their generally short-lived nature, they certainly did not

go unnoticed by their contemporaries. Only days after the local newspaper announced the

existence of the Protestant Knights of America in January 1925, for example, the Mount

Rainier Klan invited Captain Avant for an open debate on the merits of the two

organizations. Avant never responded to the invitation, but he was arrested in August that

year for circulating “inflammatory handbills” protesting the national Klan parade in

Washington, D.C.47

Ex-Klansmen rarely expounded at any length on their reasons for leaving the

id, their accounts were usually remarkably self-

 47 Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier; New York Times, September 9, 1923; Washington Evening Star, January 6, 1925; Marlboro Gazette, January 6, 1925; Frederick Post, January 6, 1925; Baltimore Sun, March 29, 1926; April 26, 1926; September 5, 1926; September 15, 1926; September 30, 1928.

 

38

 

by the time he was sixteen.” In                                                       

aggrandizing. Nevertheless, it is clear that they too did not repudiate the values of the

Klan. Lem Dever, editor of the Klan newspaper in Oregon, dedicated his tell-all,

Confessions of an Imperial Klansman, to the “honor and good faith of the average

Klansman” and exalted the “earnest, patriotic citizens” who kept true to their “proclaimed

fears and principles, which are ideal enough.” Dever concluded his accounting with a

somewhat confused and self-contradictory plea for “the revival of the spirit of true

Americanism, that of Lincoln, Davis, Grant, Lee, Jackson, Hamilton, Jefferson and

Washington.” Similarly, Edgar Fuller, former secretary to former Imperial Kleagle E.Y.

Clarke, praised the “thoughtful and patriotic men” who desired “the preservation of

American institutions and ideals, and the conservation of the forces and resources of

Protestant Christianity.” The Klan, properly directed, was a “vast organization of worthy,

upright patriotic citizens.” The members and the values of the Klan drew only praise. 48

The ire of ex-Klansmen was instead usually directed at the national leadership of

the Invisible Empire. Significantly, the complaints made public either by published

accounts of high officials or by the statements made by seceding Klansmen all across the

country, including in Maryland, focused on two issues, the first of which was autocratic

interference by the national leadership. Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans was generally

regarded as an excellent organizer, promoter, and administrator, albeit one that was not

strongly original or imaginative. The proclamations of ex-Knights, however, tended

towards the hyperbolic. At the extreme end of the scale was Fuller, who characterized

Evans as a “striking case of arrested development” who had “ceased to grow, except in

corpulency, at the age of adolescence, and apparently suffered atrophy inside the cranium

terestingly, the rhetoric that ex-Klansmen employed  

48 Dever, Confessions, 5, 22, 44, 46; Fuller, Klan Inside Out, 5, 18; Fuller, The Maelstrom, 10.

 

39

 

                                                       

against the Invisible Empire bore a strong resemblance to the language of longtime

opponents of the organization. Fuller described “the littleness of men on the inside who

aspire to leadership and yet are held down by the poverty of their own intellectual

resources.” John Owens, political columnist for the Baltimore Sun, repeatedly referred to

the national leadership as “second-raters.” The crucial difference between the two was

that the Sun also characterized the rank and file of the Hooded Empire as “silly third,

fourth and fifth raters.”49

The phrase that appeared over and over, though, was “self-constituted Klan

autocrats.” Dever charged that the national officers had assumed autocratic powers over

the membership and affairs of the Invisible Empire at every level, “violating in scorn and

reckless daring the basic principles of righteousness.” The national leadership was

referred to as “mean and petty Kaisers” who were “incompetent and uncultured,” or

“profane and uncouth and unfitted by every token for leadership in a great fraternal

organization.” In Maryland, Fort Cumberland Klan No. 37 issued a public statement

attacking the autocratic actions of the national officers. Ex-Klansmen in Connecticut

called the Imperial hierarchy a “slimy serpent,” while seceding Klansmen in Arkansas

cited “a general loss of confidence in imperial officers” as their reason for leaving.

Eighty-eight seceding Klans in North Carolina in 1927 denounced “the policies of the

national klan organization.” When Grand Dragon of Maryland Frank Beall left the order

in June 1926, he attacked the national officers for going over the heads of local grand

dragons all over the country. By 1930, the Washington Post could confidently look back

 49 Fuller, Klan Inside Out, 21, 27; Baltimore Sun, May 6, 1925.

 

40

 

kept $4 of this for himself, and

                                                       

and pronounce that “the Klan began slipping first on the heels of a manifest autocratic

rule.”50

The second reason that ex-Klansmen repeatedly pointed to for their secession

from the national organization was money. Captain Avant split with the Klan and formed

the Protestant Knights “because of its financial management,” having found that “of the

millions of dollars collected by the Klan, none of the funds ever came back to benefit the

Klan members.” In the same way, the Cumberland Klan bemoaned that fact that “the

national Klan has taken thousands of dollars from Cumberland and more from the State

without ever offering anything tangible to the local Klan in return” and attacked the

“fraudulent and dishonest” financial practices of the national leadership. The head of the

Indianapolis-based Independent Klan of America, S.H. Bemenderfer, claimed its

members had left the Klan due to the “commercialized” nature of the organization. Fights

for control of the Klan in Oregon in 1925 were reportedly over “the profits made through

the business features of the klan organization.” Seceding Klansmen in Arkansas stressed

their new organization’s “utter banishment of the spirit of monetary gain.” Ex-Klansmen

claimed that the national organization had “degenerated into nothing less than an

organization of greed.”51

The Ku Klux Klan, Inc. was, indeed, a moneymaking organization.52 All new

members paid a “Klecktoken” fee of $10 to the Kleagle who recruited them. The Kleagle

remitted $6 to the King Kleagle. The King Kleagle

 50 Dever, Confessions, 3, 6, 22, 44; Fuller, Klan Inside Out, 27, 32; Baltimore Sun, January 5, 1926; September 5, 1926; February 15, 1926; June 29, 1926; February 23, 1927; Washington Evening Star, November 6, 1925; Washington Post, November 2, 1930. 51 Baltimore Sun, June 9, 1925; January 5, 1926; January 22, 1926; September 5, 1926; Washington Evening Star, January 6, 1925; November 6, 1925. 52 The best consideration of the Klan as a commercial organization is Charles Alexander’s “Kleagles and Cash.”

 

41

 

                                                       

retained $1, and sent $5 to the Grand Goblin of his Domain. The Grand Goblin took 50¢,

and sent on $4.50 to the Imperial coffers. After joining, a Klansman was expected to pay

$6.50 for official regalia, sewn in the Klan-owned factory in Atlanta. A Knight would

then be expected to pay an Imperial tax of $1.80 per year, plus an additional 10¢ per

month to the state organization. In Maryland, he would then have to make annual

payments of $8 in membership fees to their local Klan. In other states, these membership

fees ranged between $6 and $10. Of course, this was only for the men’s organization.

Members of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan paid a $5 Klecktoken, while members of the

Junior Klan would pay a Klecktoken of $3, pay another $3.25 for junior robes, and a

four-dollar annual membership fee.53

These membership fees wouldn’t always cover the rental of a meeting hall or the

construction of the chapter’s own Klavern, the purchase of ritual equipment, the payment

of accountants’ and lawyers’ fees, the traveling expenses of the local officers, and the

myriad other expenses that the Klan had to meet. The Mount Rainier Klan, for example,

spent a considerable amount of its income on refreshments at the fortnightly meetings, on

materials for crosses to burn, and a surprisingly large amount on stamps.54 When chapter

funds fell low, Klansmen were expected to make “voluntary” contributions. If a member

fell behind in his payments, he would be suspended from the Klan and only reinstated

after having paid his past dues in full. In Mount Rainier, members were first warned of

nonpayment by letter, and would be visited by a “delinquent member committee” if dues

continued to be unforthcoming. Only one member between 1923 and 1926 was banished

 53 Rice, Klan in Politics, 7; Jackson, Klan in the City, 36; Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier. 54 Due to the high proportion of members in the building trades, the Mount Rainier Klan seems to have been able to lay its hands on scrap lumber for crosses relatively easily. The average cost of a burning cross was ninety-eight cents – seventy-five cents for coal oil, and another twenty-three cents for gasoline.

 

42

 

                                                       

for nonpayment of dues, although this was mainly due to his also having deserted his

family.

The Exalted Cyclops of Cumberland Klan No. 37, James W. Webster, explained:

“We were charged $10 to get in. Then we were charged $6.50 for regalia. And other

charges for the constitution, for this, that, and the other thing.” A Klansman could

surprise his wife, for example, with a zircon-studded Fiery Cross brooch for only $2.25.

A fourteen-karat gold-filled ring with a ten-karat solid gold Klan emblem on a fiery red

stone cost $5. To protect their official regalia, Knights might purchase a robe bag for only

$1. For an additional 50¢, their robe bag could be emblazoned with their name, to prevent

confusion in the cloakroom. Klansmen might be expected to contribute to local

politicians backed by the Klan, to buy Klan life insurance, or subscribe to various

publications of the order. Knights in Mount Rainier were frequently urged to make sure

that they received their subscription to the D.C.-published Fellowship Forum. Most

importantly, members were expected to give money for the maintenance of the local

Klan’s church work and its charity program. In Mount Rainier, charitable funds were

raised by having a hat placed on the altar and turning all the lights out, so that each

member could donate according to their ability. The local Klan also acted to an extent as

a mutual aid society, with money raised to aid members who had been struck ill or, more

often, for widows and orphans of Klansmen. After one member lost his child, for

example, $22.40 was raised by the Klan to pay for funeral expenses and allow for time

off work.55

 55 Rice, Klan in Politics, 7, 19; Alexander, Klan in the Southwest, 251; Baltimore Sun, September 5, 1926; Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier.

 

43

 

                                                       

Membership in the Invisible Empire was an expensive proposition. The “greed”

of the Klan has, however, been somewhat blown out of proportion. In 1924, the

Washington Post reported, revenue from new membership was $1,878,681.77. With other

revenues, the Ku Klux Klan Inc. had a total income of $2,208,809.44. Officers of the

Klan nationally were paid $480,026.93, with another $288,239.66 for traveling expenses

and $110,000 in “additional expenses.” While corruption was without doubt a common

occurrence given the vast sums involved, the majority of this revenue was funneled back

into the national organization. The Imperial Government would supply “high-grade”

speakers across the country, paying both their salaries and their traveling expenses. As

the Klan grew, an increasingly expensive Klan bureaucracy grew with it, bringing the

expense of offices and office workers. Nearly $50,000 was funneled into building a radio

transmission plant in the hope of establishing a Ku Klux Klan radio station. The Klan

funded the making of at least one motion picture, The Face At Your Window. A vast

quantity of Klan literature was printed and distributed nationally. Expensive national

Klonvokations had to be organized. Airplanes with electric fiery crosses attached did not

pay for themselves. The purpose of the Klan’s fundraising was not, for the most part, the

enrichment of the Imperial hierarchy. It was to continue to expand the Klan.56

Why, then, was the national leadership so heavily criticized for its handling of

funds, and why did it drive members to abandon the Invisible Empire in droves?

Considering that the Klan had been a moneymaking organization from the very

beginning, why was it only after 1925 that the national membership saw a precipitous

decline? It is here that the collapse of the Klan in Maryland provides a particularly useful

 56 Washington Post, June 16, 1924; Frost, Challenge of the Klan, 121; Baltimore Sun, June 29, 1927.

 

44

 

Klan and the national leadersh                                                       

insight. The solution lies in the combination of the two major complaints of seceding

Klansmen – autocratic leadership and money.

Historians of the Klan have understood the technicalities of the organization of

the Klan, but not the way in which the organizational structure reflected the republican

nature of the Invisible Empire. Recent years have seen the field of Klan history

concentrated within local studies. These have been invaluable in unearthing new

information, and in overturning misconceptions that had been promulgated by early Klan

histories that dealt mainly in national generalizations. The problem, however, is that it

has led scholarship on the Klan to become too parochial. By concentrating on a single

Klan, or on a single state Realm, we risk missing the fact that the Ku Klux Klan formed

an interconnected network, in which the local organization acted not only within the

context of its relationship with the national leadership, but also within the context of its

relationships with other local organizations. The Mount Rainier Klan often attended

events – church visits, naturalization ceremonies, picnics – that had been organized by

other Maryland Klans, including Laurel, Hyattsville, Capitol Heights, Takoma Park and

Baltimore. An examination of Klan activities in Maryland shows that most large events

were attended not only by Marylanders, but also by Klansmen from Virginia, from

Washington, D.C., from Delaware and Pennsylvania, and sometimes from New York and

New Jersey. Similarly, Maryland’s Klansmen travelled to take part in events in other

states on a regular basis.57

As Tarrow’s social movement theory suggests, both the grass roots activists and

the formal hierarchy must be considered as each informs the other – in this case, the local

ip. The Klan was essentially local by nature. The basic  

57 Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier.

 

45

 

Stephenson, one of the nationa                                                       

organizational unit of the Ku Klux Klan was the Realm (state) and its subordinate

Klantons (chapters). While the Hooded Empire was in theory directed by national

policies set by a national hierarchy, the Klan was in reality a confederation of quasi-

independent Klans. The Invisible Empire was an outgrowth of local concerns, community

problems, and regional demographics. As historians like Leonard Moore and William

Jenkins have shown, this accounted for much of its success. However, it also placed the

local Klan in tension with the national organization. This tension was brought to a head in

late 1925 and early 1926, and the issue was money. More specifically, the issue was the

national leadership overruling local Klansmen in order to raise money. 58

In 1924, journalist Stanley Frost had estimated that the Klan was recruiting nearly

one hundred thousand members a week. Although this estimate is too steep, it does

reflect the fact that within the first seven months of Imperial Wizard Evans’

administration, more new members joined the Klan that in the entirety of William

Simmons’ eight year directorship. By 1925, however, recruitment had begun to slow.

Opposition had grown in response to the heavy handed and often violent activities of the

Southern Klans, whose presence and power was far more evident than that of the

northern and western Realms. This power had not abated, nor had the growing opposition

reduced membership by any significant amount. In late 1924, for example, the town of

Staunton, Virginia had seen the election of Klansmen to eighty percent of the town’s

pubic offices. The growing opposition, however, had had deleterious effects on

recruitment efforts, and membership in the South had effectively reached a plateau. At

the same time, recruitment in the north had been struck a blow by the banishment of D.C.

l organization’s most effective recruiters. With the  

58 Moore, Citizen Klansman, 94; Jenkins, Steel Valley Klan, 16; Goldberg, Hooded Empire, 10.

 

46

 

                                                       

estrangement of Evans and Stephenson in 1924, the national Klan’s propagation efforts

were significantly hindered, and the Klan needed new recruits. Although a desire to

expand the Klan’s reach and to further the cause of “100% Americanism” were without

doubt a part of this impulse, the most immediate impetus was money. 59

The ten-dollar Klecktoken was the national Klan’s main source of revenue,

meaning the continued functioning of the Imperial hierarchy effectively depended on a

steady stream of new members. As such, Evans and the Imperial Kleagle, Louis A.

Mueller, redoubled efforts to attract new recruits by sending considerable numbers of

Kleagles into states in the north and west. The immediate problem with this was that local

Klans generally resented the presence of Kleagles, who took their orders directly from a

King Kleagle, who was in turn directed by the Imperial organization. At no point was the

local Klan consulted. Rather, it was dictated to. Kleagles personified the issues of

autocratic leadership and the siphoning of funds away from the local organization.

Kleagles generally had only been active in states that had not yet received an

official Imperial charter. Once a charter was granted, the Grand Dragon took charge of

propagation efforts, and local Klans were expected to work to bring new members into

the Invisible Empire. In Maryland, Frank Beall had removed all Kleagles from the state

after being appointed Grand Dragon in 1923. While the national organization had sent a

small number back to the state in the following years, Beall had generally quickly forced

them out again, citing their “objectionable propagating methods,” and continued with a

 59 Frost, Challenge of the Klan, 8; Wade, Fiery Cross, 192; Newton, Ku Klux Klan, 376-380; Jenkins, Steel Valley Klan, 10; Jackson, Klan in the City, 237-239; Washington Evening Star, September 14, 1926.

 

47

 

attracted many Klansmen was

                                                       

“sane, but slow” building of the Klans through the Klans themselves. The flood of

Kleagles that arrived in 1925 and early 1926 was, however, difficult to ignore.60

As the rate of recruitment fell, Imperial officers attempted to revoke Maryland’s

charter and reinstate the Kleagle system. As Beall explained it, under the national

propagation scheme “king kleagles, assisted by staffs of kleagles, go into the various

States and solicit new members wherever they desire.” Their practice was “to go over the

heads of local grand dragons as to where they wish to carry on their work, as well as to

the methods they desire to employ.” This, asserted James Webster, Exalted Cyclops of

Cumberland Klan No. 37, “was the beginning of the fight which…thoroughly disgusted

Cumberland.”

Under the control of Mueller, Kleagles began to flood into the state. On April 23,

1925, Kleagle W.E. Atkinson arrived at Mount Rainier Klan No. 51 with a letter from the

national offices appointing him “field director and Kleagle for vicinity,” and

commanding all local Klansmen to “give him co-operation and help him build for Klan.”

Atkinson began to give regular talks on the “encouragement of the order.” Cross burnings

increased in number, with four in April and May.61 By early June, Atkinson had

organized a large-scale membership push, separating the entire Klan into two teams

competing to recruit the most members. The Klansman who recruited the most new

Knights would win a cash prize. At the same meeting, Atkinson installed an entirely new

set of officers, ousting those who had previously been elected to the positions. Similar

tactics were brought to bear in Klans across the state. The civic activism that originally

thrown aside in favor of “easier various methods to secure

 60 Baltimore Sun, June 29, 1926. 61 Prior to Atkinson’s arrival, crosses were burned on average once every three months.

 

48

 

                                                       

money from its members for expenditure by national officers,” as the Cumberland Klan

put it. Local Klansmen found the actions of these Kleagles, out of state control,

“continually embarrassing and disgusting to the local organization.”62

Grand Dragon Beall visited the national headquarters in Washington and made his

objections known. The national leadership, however, continued to send Kleagles into

Maryland “to propagandize the State along lines that were objectionable” since, as Beall

explained, “the money did not roll in…fast enough.” Struck ill, Beall could do little to

stop the spread of the Kleagle system in Maryland until his recovery in June 1926, when

he discovered that the aggressive campaign of recruitment had continued to spread. On

June 23, 1926, Beall resigned as Grand Dragon, citing the “shamefully crooked” and

“shockingly immoral” actions of the national organization.63

Following Beall’s resignation, the national organization made the worst possible

choice for the continued existence of the Ku Klux Klan in Maryland, and made Imperial

Kleagle Mueller the new Imperial Representative for Maryland. Membership dropped

precipitously. In September, Fort Cumberland Klan No. 37, reportedly the largest single

Klan in Maryland with more than two thousand members, seceded. Exalted Cyclops

James Webster named the Kleagle system and the dishonest and “immoral”

administration of Klan activities by national officials as the reason for the Cumberland

Klan’s decision. Once again, the national organization disregarded the local situation and

replaced Webster with Reverend William L. Childress, a Kleagle. The next meeting of

the Cumberland Klan had just forty-nine members.64

 62 Baltimore Sun, June 24-29, 1926; September 5-9, 1926; Marlboro Gazette, April 23-May 28, 1926; Records of Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier. 63 Baltimore Sun, June 24-29, 1926; New York Times, June 30, 1926. 64 Baltimore Sun, September 5-9, 1926; Washington Evening Star, July 11, 1926.

 

49

 

                                                       

By the time of the grand Klonvokation in Washington D.C. in September 1926,

the Maryland Klan was in dire straits. The August outing to Chesapeake Beach had

drawn a little over three thousand Knights from Maryland, Virginia and the District. The

year before, more than five thousand Klansmen from Maryland alone had attended. More

worryingly, only six new recruits were inducted during the naturalization ceremony,

compared to eighty the year before. The National Parade through Washington D.C. on

September 13 had around seven hundred marchers from Maryland, mostly Baltimore and

Hyattsville. The year before, the state had sent more than twice that number to march. On

September 14, Imperial Wizard Evans effectively put the final nail in the coffin of the

Maryland Klan, and declared that its charter had been returned to a provisional basis, as

had those of Delaware and Arizona. The Kleagle system would be formally reinstituted.

The same day, the seceding Cumberland Klansmen established their new organization,

the Sons of the Stars and Stripes. 65

By the beginning of 1927, the Ku Klux Klan was moribund in Maryland. One of

the few cross burnings to receive wide attention, outside a candidate for city council’s

home in Hyattsville, was likely the work of copycats, and the local Klan denied

responsibility. Other than the annual trip to Chesapeake Beach, which drew around a

thousand attendees, large-scale Klan activities ceased almost entirely. After losing an

appeal to the Supreme Court for the right to carry on activities in any state without the

permission of the state, Maryland state officials pointedly told the Baltimore Sun that the

 65 Baltimore Sun, August 9-11, 1925; September 14-15, 1926; Washington Evening Star, August 8-9, 1925; August 31, 1925; September 7, 1925; September 12, 1925; September 14-15, 1926; Washington Post, September 13, 1925; August 22-29, 1926.

 

50

 

                                                       

Klan was liable to prosecution as either an unregistered foreign corporation or an

unchartered domestic corporation.66

In December, Imperial Wizard Evans admitted that the Klan was “weakened

numerically,” although he claimed that it was “coming back strong.” To an extent, he was

right. In many places throughout the country, the presidential election of 1928 breathed

new, albeit temporary, life back into the Klan. In Maryland, though, the expected

opposition to the candidacy of the Al Smith, governor of New York and a Catholic, never

materialized. Evans’ presence in the city was the only impetus for a half-hearted parade

through Baltimore. The fourth annual trip to Chesapeake Beach, which was to double as

an anti-Smith rally and expected to attract three thousand supporters, quickly fizzled

when less than two hundred people attended.

By the end of 1928, ex-Klansman C.T. Rice alleged that the Klan was insolvent,

despite having collected revenue “greatly in excess of the amount necessary to pay its

lawful and necessary expenses.” Klan spokesmen moved quickly to deny the charge, but

it went largely unnoticed. The Ku Klux Klan was not dead in Maryland – the Mount

Rainier Klan was still operating as late as 1934 – but it was irrelevant. The Invisible

Empire had peaked in the state in 1925 with a membership of over 35,000. By the end of

 66 The case had originally been brought against the Klan by the State of Kansas in 1922, petitioning the state supreme court that the Klan “be ousted, restrained, and enjoined from acting or doing business as a corporation within the state.” In attempting to prove that the Klan was effectively operating as an unlicensed business, Kansas Attorney General Richard J. Hopkins emphasized the distribution of income from the collection of Klecktokens. It appears as though Maryland never took any legal action against the Klan, perhaps because it had already declined to such a degree. Sloan, “Kansas Battles the Invisible Empire,” 393-409; Baltimore Sun, February 25, 1927; New York Times, February 25, 1927; Washington Evening Star, February 26, 1927; September 6-9, 1927; Washington Post, May 8, 1927; September 8, 1927.

 

51

 

response to a wide array of per

                                                       

1926, it had dropped to a little over 15,000. By 1930, Maryland was estimated to have

only 516 Klansmen.67

Obviously, not every state declined in the same way. Just as no single reason will

suffice to explain the growth of the Invisible Empire, no single reason will explain its

downfall. It must be remembered, though, that there was a striking unanimity in the

timing of the decline of Klans across the country. It is not sufficient to limit the scope of

inquiry purely to state-specific explanations. The Klan may have been local in nature, but

it was national in organization.

Scholars of the Ku Klux Klan have expended a great deal of time and energy in

showing that the members of the Invisible Empire were not the psychologically unstable

oddities or the imbecilic “third and fourth raters” that contemporary opponents and

several generations of historians have made them out to be. The Right is not an

unthinking mass of humanity that suddenly appears from nowhere and just as suddenly

disappears again. Not liking conservative causes is an inadequate reason to be content

with simplistic answers about their social, economic and political underpinnings. It is

made up of multitudes of people, with disparate motives and responses. The beliefs,

values and choices of these individuals are worthy of careful research and considered

study. The great social historian E.P. Thompson wrote that it was time to rescue the

working class from the “enormous condescension of posterity.”68 It is worth rescuing the

history of American conservatism from a similar condescension.

The overwhelming majority of Klansmen joined the organization as a reasoned

ceived problems – “un-American” behavior, the failure of

 67 Baltimore Sun, December 23, 1927; July 1, 1928; Washington Evening Star, September 9, 1928; October 16-18, 1928; Washington Post, September 7-8, 1928; November 2, 1930; July 26, 1934. 68 Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, 12.

 

52

 

Prohibition enforcement, the threat posed by Papal interference in American politics, the

hazards of unrestricted immigration, the relative loss of status of the white Protestant

community, corruption in government, public schools, and the ceding of American power

to the World Court to name just a few. This was not an irrational and unthinking reaction

to postwar conditions, but a conscious decision based on strongly held beliefs and values.

Similarly, the decision to leave the Klan was not due to a sudden realization that their

values were contrary to American society’s progressive thrust or the collapse of an

aberration of history. It was a considered choice, prompted by immediate conditions – in

Maryland’s case, the autocratic attempts by the national leadership to override local Klan

organizations in an attempt to raise much-needed revenue. This decline was not

inevitable. It was the result of the poor decisions made by national leaders, and the

reactions engendered in the average Klansmen.

 

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IV. Bibliography

Manuscript and Record Collections/Public Records Records of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Klan No. 51, Mt. Rainier, Maryland,

University of Maryland Archives. United States, Bureau of the Census. Fourteenth Census of the United States, Taken in

the Year 1920, Enumeration District 41. United States, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, Taken in the

Year 1930, Enumeration District 41. Newspapers and Magazines Baltimore Sun Fiery Cross Frederick Post Marlboro Gazette New York Times Time Washington Evening Star Washington Post Books and Articles Alexander, Charles C. “Kleagles and Cash: The Ku Klux Klan as a Business

Organization: 1915-1930.” Business History Review 39, no. 3 (Autumn 1965): 348-367.

— — —. The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

Argersinger, Jo Ann E. Toward a New Deal in Baltimore: People and Government in the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Blee, Kathleen M. Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Brugger, Robert J. Maryland: A Middle Temperament, 1634-1980. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Cash, W. J. The Mind of the South. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. New York:

Franklin Watts, 1981. Dever, Lem. Confessions of an Imperial Klansman. Oregon, 1924. Feldman, Glenn. Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949. Tuscaloosa:

University of Alabama Press, 1999. Fifty Years of Progress in the City of Mt. Rainier: Incorporated April 14, 1910, Prince

Georges County, Maryland. Mt. Rainier, 1960. Frost, Stanley. The Challenge of the Klan. New York: AMS Press, 1969.

 

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Fuller, Edgar [Marion Monteval, pseud.]. The Klan Inside Out. Chicago: F.M. Littlejohn, 1924.

— — —. The Visible of the Invisible Empire: The Maelstrom. Denver: Maelstrom Publishing, 1925.

Gerlach, Larry. Blazing Crosses in Zion: The Ku Klux Klan in Utah. Utah: Utah State University Press, 1982.

Gist, Noel P. Secret Societies: A Cultural Study of Fraternalism in the United States. Columbia: University of Missouri, 1940.

Goldberg, Robert Alan. Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Graham, Hugh Davis and Ted Robert Gurr (eds.). The History of Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969.

Hausknecht, Murray. The Joiners: A Sociological Description of Voluntary Association Membership in the United States. New York: Bedminster Press, 1962.

Helldorfer, Rita Marie. “The Gubernatorial Career of Albert Cabell Ritchie, Governor of Maryland 1920-1935.” Master’s thesis, Catholic University, 1954.

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

History of Mount Rainier M.E. Church, South: Opening Services and Tenth Anniversary. Mount Rainier: Mount Vernon Print Shop, 1926.

Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR. New York: Vintage Books, 1955.

Horowitz, David (ed.). Inside the Klavern: The Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.

Jackson, Kenneth T. The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Jenkins, William D. Steel Valley Klan: The Ku Klux Klan in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley. Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990.

Kolb, Felix. Protest and Opportunities: The Political Outcomes of Social Movements. New York: Campus Verlag, 2007.

Lay, Shawn (ed.). The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

— — —. Hooded Knights on the Niagara: The Ku Klux Klan in Buffalo, New York. New York: New York University Press, 1995.

Lienesch, Michael. In The Beginning: Fundamentalism, The Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Loucks, Emerson. The Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania: A Study in Nativism. New York: Telegraph Press, 1936.

Lynd, Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd. Middletown. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929. MacLean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry. New York: Oxford University Press,

1994. Mecklin, John Moffat. The Ku Klux Klan: A Study of The American Mind. New York:

Russell & Russell, 1963. Mencken, H. L. “Maryland: Apex of Normalcy.” Nation (Spring 1922): 517-19.

 

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Moore, Leonard J. Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

Newton, Michael. The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida. Florida: University Press of Florida, 2001.

— — —. The Ku Klux Klan: History, Organization, Language, Influence and Activities of America’s Most Notorious Secret Society. London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2007.

Papers Read at the Meeting of Grand Dragons, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

Ribuffo, Leo P. “Why is There so Much Conservatism in the United States and Why Do So Few Historians Know Anything About It.” The American Historical Review 99, no. 2 (April 1994): 438-449.

Ribuffo, Leo P. “Rediscovering American Conservatism Again.” History News Network (May 21 2007), http://hnn.us/articles/38415.html.

Rice, Arnold S. The Ku Klux Klan in American Politics. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1962.

Rohe, Mary Alice Joseph. “Press Opinion of a Political Leader: Albert Cabell Ritchie and the Democratic Party, 1924-1932.” Master’s thesis, Catholic University, 1967.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. “Biography of a Nation of Joiners.” American Historical Review 50, no. 1 (October 1944): 1-25.

Sloan, Charles William, Jr. “Kansas Battles the Invisible Empire: The Legal Ouster of the KKK from Kansas, 1922-1927.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 40, no. 3 (Fall 1974): 393-409

Tarrow, Sidney. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: University Press, 1998.

Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Gollancz, 1963. Tucker, Richard K. The Dragon and the Cross: The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in

Middle America. Connecticut: Archon Books, 1991. Wade, Wyn Craig. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon

and Schuster, 1987.