The Modern Ku Klux Klan

by Henry P. Fry

In addition to its field force, the propagation department of the Ku Klux Klan, I learned, uses motion pictures and paid lecturers to spread the germs of Ku Kluxism. There is a picture entitled, “The Face at Your Window” that is being used extensively as an aid to the canvassing Kleagles. The film company arranges with the local Kleagle to have this picture exhibited on a certain day, and each Klansman is requested to bring a friend with him to see it. At the close of the performance the Klansman hands his friend an application blank and through the psychological effect of the picture usually gets the other to join. The system of using lecturers seems to help considerably to swell the Ku Klux roster.

Still another method of winning members was by newspaper advertising. The Exalted Cyclops, the head, of the Knoxville Klan showed me the copy for a full page advertisement that his Klan intended inserting in the Knoxville papers to secure the five hundred membership necessary before their Klan could procure a charter. I saw that such wholesale solicitation of members could have but one result—inevitably the control of this secret organization would pass into hands least competent to exercise it.

As I became more familiar with the movement, as it was being propagated elsewhere, and from my own study and observation, I reached some definite conclusions. From the first, I had observed carefully the classes of men who were being enrolled, the motives for their enlisting, and the effect the organization had upon them. The result as a whole had been disturbing, but it was from my study of the organization itself that I finally turned in revulsion from it. It was not easy to get the real facts. I asked many questions, both in writing and orally, of the King Kleagle, some of which he could answer, but most of them he could not. The Constitution of the organization I could not get. The King Kleagle had no copy and had never seen a copy. It was not until a short time before my withdrawal that I was shown the constitution and the reading of the document confirmed all too well the suspicions I had already formed about the menace that lay in Ku Kluxism. That it was a political money-making scheme rather than a fraternal order, I began to comprehend from the sales-methods I saw around me. It also seemed to me that there were certain potential dangers inherent in it. When I had once asked the King Kleagle how a Klan should function when once it was organized, “Tell them,” he had answered, “to clean up their towns.” That “cleaning up a town” by illegal means could end only in mob rule was clear enough to any thinking man, and the fact that the newspapers had been reporting outrages in various Southern States—outrages committed by masked men—did not make me feel any more comfortable.

Oppressed therefore by its potential dangers, disgusted with a ritualistic work which really seemed to me a sacrilege, and revolted by the spirit of religious and racial hatred which it inculcated, I decided to resign my work as Kleagle, and accordingly mailed my resignation to the King Kleagle on June 15, 1921.

My resignation as Kleagle was reluctantly accepted by J. M. McArthur, the King Kleagle, who wrote me to that effect and asked me to meet him in Chattanooga for the purpose of securing my final release, which was given me the latter part of June, 1921. While my name was never mentioned, the exposure of the Klan which was made by the World brought forth the statement from the Atlanta headquarters that “the individual responsible for the attack had been discharged from the propagation department for conduct and character unbecoming a gentleman.” As a matter of fact, I have in my possession a letter from McArthur expressing “genuine regret” at my resignation, warmly commending me for “excellent work,” and granting me “an honorable discharge from the propagation department of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Fortunately for the cause of decent Americanism, King Kleagle McArthur is one of these “ready letter-writers,” and the letters written by him to me have all been filed away. Some of them were valuable pieces of documentary evidence to sustain the case made against the Klan by the World.

I was invited by McArthur to attend two meetings of the Klan in Chattanooga, where I found the movement strongly organized. At one of these meetings the leader of the local Klan, a physician, made one of the most incendiary speeches I have ever heard, a speech that was vociferously applauded by a large gathering of Klansmen. He made a violent attack on Jews, Negroes and Catholics, and stated that: “the Knights of Columbus have 2,000 rifles stored in the Catholic church; they will before long march down Market Street armed with their rifles; and the Ku Klux Klan must organize and arm itself for the purpose of protecting the city from the designs of this murderous organization.”

Having resigned from the propagation department, I then withdrew from “citizenship” in the “Invisible Empire,” and denounced it in the World and its associated newspapers. Although my letter was registered and mailed to William J. Simmons personally, I never received any reply. The letter read as follows:

“You are hereby notified that I have this day voluntarily withdrawn as a ‘citizen’ of the ‘Invisible Empire,’ Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc., and shall no longer consider myself in any way connected with the organization. After five months of ‘citizenship’ in the ‘Invisible Empire,’ three months of which were spent as a Kleagle, I have reached the conclusion that your proposition is a historical fraud; that it is a money-making scheme run for the benefit of a few insiders; that it is engaged in an evil propaganda in promoting unwarranted religious and racial hatred against Jews, Roman Catholics, negroes, and foreign-born American citizens; that your entire scheme is a dangerous public menace that will inevitably lead to bloodshed and if successful must result in revolution; and that, in the interests of decent Americanism, it should be suppressed by the Federal and State authorities.

“I further notify you that I utterly repudiate and refuse to be bound in any way by any and all portions of the ‘oath of allegiance’ to the ‘Invisible Empire’ formerly taken by me, excepting that portion pledging allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and of my State, with which portion you have camouflaged the real purport and meaning of the oath. The remainder of the oath conflicts with a higher obligation I have previously assumed as an officer of the Reserve Corps of the United States Army. I therefore denounce said remaining portions of said oath as illegal, and detrimental to the fundamental principles which underlie the entire legal structure of this country. I further decline, any longer, to keep secret any part or parts of your scheme to establish in free America an ‘Invisible Empire’ fraudulent in its conception, vicious in its nature, political in its objects, and subject to the will of a self-constituted ‘Emperor’ who seeks to exploit the American people for his own personal aggrandizement.

“In defiance of your threats of ‘dishonor, disgrace, and death’ as contained in your ritual—written and copyrighted by yourself—I denounce your ritualistic work as an insult to all Christian people in America, as an attempt to hypocritically obtain money from the public under the cloak of sanctimonious piety; and, I charge that the principal feature of your ceremony of ‘naturalization’ into the ‘Invisible Empire’ is a blasphemous and sacrilegious mockery of the holy rite of baptism, wherein for political and financial purposes, you have polluted with your infamous parody those things that Christians, regardless of creed or dogma, hold most sacred.