I am in favor of wiping out of our national life any organization, agency or association that tends to stir up the race question in any manner, shape or form, and leaving the subject to take care of itself under the guidance of men in the South who are devoting their lives to the work. In the city of Atlanta, there is an organization known as the Interracial Association headed by Rev. Ashby Jones, a Baptist minister, whose father, Rev. John William Jones was a chaplain in the Confederacy under General Lee. Men of the highest standing, including Dr. C. B. Wilmer, a well-known Episcopal minister of Atlanta, are in this movement, and I am informed that since they have commenced their activities, there has been a great deal of positive good accomplished in the elimination of discord between the white people and the negroes. On the other side, Doctor Moton, the head of the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Dr. Booker T. Washington, is going up and down the South, preaching sane things to the negro and to the white men. The leadership of these men represents the best thought and the best effort of both races in the South. The leadership of William J. Simmons and his Ku Klux Klan does not.
I think that the stirring up of the race question in the South, or elsewhere, for that matter, is at all times as dangerous as playing with dynamite, but the Ku Klux Klan has included in their propaganda against the negro its fight on the Catholics and Jews. While they do not specify in their ritual that this is the case, they imply it, and I have seen the actual propaganda as it is handled. The classification of the white Catholic and Jew with the negro is a stupid blunder, if nothing else. It is stupid, because, in the event of trouble on an extensive scale stirred up by this organization or by its psychological effect on the country, it is splitting the white race into factions at a time when it should stand together.
As I shall show further on, in discussing the history and structure of the original Ku Klux Klan, there is absolutely no racial condition in the South or anywhere in America today that warrants the existence of such an organization. It is even worse than folly to make the religious element figure into questions touching a section where racial matters are always in the acute stage.
In order to swell its roster, and to bring under its banner of discord all the elements in the country which it thinks it can handle, Ku Kluxism is attempting to win the people of the Pacific Coast by putting forth the doctrine of “White Supremacy” in relation to the Japanese question. I have seen and heard read many reports from California indicating that the Kleagles on the coast are doing a land office business and that the people are “donating ten dollars” to the “noble cause” as rapidly as they can sign the petition for citizenship. Without regard to the merits or demerits of the Japanese question, as it affects the people of California, there again creeps into the subject the discrimination against white men by classing them as foreigners along with the Japanese. I know nothing of the industrial conditions of California, but I am quite sure that a portion of the prosperity and greatness of the State has been developed by Catholic and Jewish people.
As a general proposition Southern people are exceptionally capable of sympathizing with Californians in their peculiar racial problem, and would probably back them in every way that is legitimate, but the Japanese question is an international one, and should be and must be handled by the State department in Washington, and not by the “Emperor” of the “Invisible Empire” in Atlanta. The carrying on of a vigorous campaign for members of the Ku Klux Klan on the Pacific Coast is an infringement on the duties and prerogatives of the United States Government. If it is not stopped, it is likely to lead to unpleasant and dangerous international consequences.
CHAPTER IX
Religious Propaganda
One of the strongest pieces of evidence that the Simmons monstrosity is not “the genuine original Klan,” and that its claim to being “a monument to the Confederate soldier” is an insult to the cause headed by Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, is its propaganda of religious animosity and prejudice, which is directed specifically at Catholics and Jews. While it claims to be a great and “noble cause” for the “uplift” of humanity, the protection of womanhood, the enforcement of law and order and the maintenance of “white supremacy,” I am firmly convinced that its fundamental idea is the creation of a secret political Empire for the purpose of totally eliminating Catholics and Jews from public life.