The Modern Ku Klux Klan

by Henry P. Fry

An examination of the list of field workers of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan throughout the United States reveals the fact that strong propaganda work is being carried on in cities where there is a large negro population. In New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Indianapolis are active and aggressive headquarters from which encouraging reports come to the Atlantic headquarters.

As a general proposition, I believe that the very existence of a secret organization bearing the name Ku Klux is having an effect of promoting unrest among the entire negro population of the South. While the negro cuts but little figure in the section in which I was working, I learned from published reports and from conversations with newspaper men that there was a feeling of great uneasiness among the Knoxville negroes due to the activities of the Klan. In Chattanooga, where, on account of its anti-Catholic propaganda, the Klan is making strong headway, I found that the racial situation was more accentuated. Chattanooga is a large and important manufacturing center, and many of the big plants employ negro labor. A negro workman possessing the skill and ability requisite to hold his position can work at his trade in Chattanooga, and as a general rule the laboring classes of the negro race are industrious, contented, prosperous and happy. In talking, with men closely identified with the manufacturing interests, I learned that the feeling of discontent and unrest is taking the place of the negro’s former attitude, and that should the Klan succeed in gaining a substantial foothold it will mean the emigration of large numbers of negro laborers to Northern States, a thing that will seriously cripple the industrial life of the city. I found that the Chattanooga manufacturers, almost to a man, were absolutely opposed to the idea of having a Ku Klux Klan in the city.

All thinking men agree that the race question in the United States is one of the most ominous in the entire country. All right thinking people desire it settled peacefully and in a way that will not disturb the economic and industrial situation. I believe that, if left alone, the negro will work out his own salvation. The history of the South for the past fifty years shows that the negro has been a most important factor in the development and upbuilding of the section.

My experience and observations on the race question has convinced me that in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, where friction, serious or trivial, has occurred between the white and negro races, it has been due to the lower classes of the two races. Between the better-class white men and the better-class negro, there is, always has been, and always will be the best of feeling. I often have had Northern people say to me: “You Southern people hate negroes!” I always hasten to correct the statement, by replying, “The best people of the South not only do not hate a negro but they hold him in high esteem. The better class of Southern white man is the best friend the negro race has in this country today.” The “hatred,” if such is the word, exists between the low-class negro and the low-class white man, and if it were possible to analyze the real cause of the racial disorders in the country, it would probably be found that they are due to bad white men, bad negroes and bad whiskey.

While I make no charge that the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have taken any part in them, it is a fact, nevertheless, that since this organization was started, there have been an abnormal number of instances of interracial friction. In the State of Georgia, where the Klan is probably strongest, there has been case after case of disorder. It seems to me that as an organization designed to aid the authorities in the enforcement of “law and order,” the Ku Klux Klan has utterly failed to prevent these occurrences. If the Klan is capable of sustaining the arms of the law, why has it not done so in the State of Georgia?

Early in the summer of 1921, the whole country was shocked at the outbreak of a race riot in Tulsa, Okla., when an entire community was plunged into bloodshed and a vast amount of property destroyed. From the published accounts of the riot, it started from the most trivial cause imaginable, and in a short time white men and negroes were arrayed against each other in regular pitched battle. In examining the list of field workers of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, it is noticeable that there is a large force of Kleagles at work in the State of Oklahoma, and the presumption is that there is a Klan of Ku Kluxes in existence at Tulsa. Why did not the Klan rally to the support of the authorities and “enforce law and order?” The enforcement of law and order consists of stopping riot. Why was the riot not stopped? In this connection, I heard the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Chattanooga, where I attended a large meeting shortly before resigning, make the statement that several weeks prior to the outbreak of the Tulsa riot he had been informed by a travelling man, also a Ku Klux, that a clash between the races was likely to occur within a short time. If this condition was a true one, why were the authorities and their valuable aids and abettors, the Ku Klux Klan, not prepared to stop it?

A great bugaboo that is constantly harped upon by the professional Southerner and by the Ku Klux organizer is the cry of “social equality” likely to be forced upon the white people by the negro. This argument appeals to the ignorant white man, but the intelligent man knows that social equality between any races or people is a myth. There is no such thing as social equality between members of the white race. Social equality is a matter of opinion only, for while I might think that I am superior to a person, that same person might think that he is superior to me. Society is split into strata made up largely through community of interest, and congeniality of ideas and thoughts. The man whose sole thought in life is the accumulation of money regards only his own kind as his equal; the social butterfly skilled in the arts of polite society looks with horror upon the “impossible” person who is not; the scholar seeks solace and equality among people of brains; and the philosopher, looking at the whole human race with its follies and foibles, winks at his brother philosopher and laughs at all of them. When such a thing as equality exists between the members of the white race, then, and not until then, will it ever become necessary seriously to consider the matter of social equality between the white and black races.

While I believe in the principles of a white man’s country and a white man’s government, I believe that the negro is as much entitled to his life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as I am, and that he should be afforded all the protection that the courts and laws of the country can give him. I have seen cases tried in the South where negroes have been convicted of crime on evidence which, if presented against a white man, would be thrown out of court. Such cases are, however, uncommon, as I believe the average officer of the law in the South is usually fair and square in his treatment of the negro race.

The only way, in my judgment, that the race question will ever be successfully handled in the South, is by the promotion of better feeling among the high-class men of both races, and then have these men work on the lower classes. Let the leaders of the negro race take a strong stand in opposition to the vicious negro, whose crimes against women and children have done much toward placing the ban upon the negro as a whole; and let the leaders of the white race cast aside the demagogue and impress upon the lower-class white man that because his skin is white is no excuse for the exercise of brutality toward the negro. Let the proposition be sunk home that a white rough-neck, because his skin is white, has no warrant to ride roughshod over a decent and law-abiding negro because the latter’s skin happens to be black.

In the Northern States, while the better class of negroes attend to their own business and conduct themselves well, the lower-class negro should be taught the value of decent behavior and good manners in public. Many negroes, particularly the vicious element, come to the North, and imagine that the treatment with which they are accorded gives them the license to crowd into the street cars, and make themselves offensive generally to white people. The negro with good manners wins his way wherever he goes, but the noisy, pugnacious individual, but newly arrived from the country of the “Jim Crow” street car does much to bring his entire race into disrepute. At the risk of arousing the ire of my Ku Klux friends, I advance the thought that a man can be a gentleman and a woman can be a lady even if their skins are black; and that people who are white can be offensive and boorish.