The following copy of the application for charter membership illustrates this point:
“To His Majesty, the Imperial Wizard, Emperor of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (Inc.):
I, the undersigned, a native-born, true and loyal citizen of the United States of America, being a white Gentile person of temperate habits, sound in mind, and a believer in the tenets of the Christian religion, the maintenance of white supremacy, the practice of an honorable clanishness and the principles of “pure Americanism,” do voluntarily most respectfully, seriously and unselfishly petition you for citizenship in the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and be a charter member of a Klan located at .................. State of ..........
I guarantee on my honor to conform strictly to all rules and requirements regulating my “naturalization” and the continuance of my membership, and at all times a strict and loyal obedience to your constitutional authority and the constitution and laws, and all regulations and usages of the fraternity. The required “donation” accompanies this petition.
Signed: ....................................., Petitioner.
Date .................. 192....
Residence Address ............................................
Business Address ......................................
Endorsers will sign on other side.
Notice: Check the address to which mail may be sent.”
This is the standard form for application for “citizenship” and several hundred such applications, properly signed, have come under my personal observation. It is distinctly a request to be “naturalized” as a “citizen” of the “Invisible Empire,” Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and not an application for membership in an order known as the “Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” by itself.
It appears from an examination of the records, that the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan made but little headway for several years, when it was under the sole management of William J. Simmons. An examination of the Atlanta City Directory reveals the fact that the present “Emperor” was engaged in other lines of activity, largely as a professional organizer. In 1915 he appears listed as “Organizer of the Woodmen of the World”; in 1916, “Imperial Wizard and founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan”; in 1918, the next year a directory was issued, as “State Manager, Heralds of Liberty”; in 1920, as “Lecturer”; and in 1921, again as “Imperial Wizard, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” It was not, apparently, until he joined forces with Edward Young Clarke, that the enterprise was placed on a paying basis. Clarke, it is said, has had wide experience as a professional propagandist, and prior to his taking charge of the Ku Klux movement was employed to raise money for the Anti-Saloon League and the Salvation Army, conducting drives for those bodies. The city directory of Atlanta lists him as follows: 1915, “Secretary, Brooks County Industrial Club”; 1916, Secretary, “Georgia Chamber of Commerce”; 1918, “Secretary, Southeastern Exhibit Association”; 1920-21, “President Southern Publicity Association.” Under the direction of Clarke the entire system of field work has been perfected, and as Imperial Kleagle, Clarke is responsible for the success of the movement.
Clarke, whose chief helper and backer was Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler, was conducting the Southern Publicity Bureau at the time, and quickly saw the big financial possibilities which lay in the capitalization of the name “Ku Klux.” Simmons, who had concocted the scheme of organization which placed the “entire works” into his own hands, lacked the ability to put his ideas into execution. At this point, I should like to take issue with practically every man who had made any attack on the Ku Klux Klan. The general opinion has been that “Simmons is absolutely sincere in what he is doing, but has been in the hands of Clarke and Mrs. Tyler.” I have never met Simmons in person, but I have studied his organization in the most minute detail. From my study of the system and the part the man has played in it, I believe that he is a cunning, shrewd adventurer, who, from the start conceived the idea of acquiring both wealth and unlimited power from his secret “Invisible Empire.” In all of his public utterances in the newspapers and before Congress he has shown a shiftiness and evasiveness clearly discernible amid a vast mass of wordiness.