THE MODERN KU KLUX KLAN
CHAPTER I
Introduction
If the psychologist, looking over the diversified and conflicting interests and classes of the American people, attempted to find a common state of mind, he would probably discover one thing that applies to all American men, without regard to “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” He would learn that there is a common American trait possessed by the white man and the negro, the Jew and the Gentile, the Catholic and the Protestant, the native and the foreign-born—in fact by every conceivable group of the males of the United States.
They are all “joiners”!
One has to search far and wide for an American who does not “belong” to some sort of organization, and who would not, under proper circumstances, join another.
I am a joiner-by-birth.
My joining developed at the early age of ten, when I organized a secret society among the boys at school. We had an awful oath to which we swore, and in imitation of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, sealed it with our blood. We had no fees or dues, but each boy was required to contribute a copy of Nick Carter or Diamond Dick or Old Cap Collier. The organization survived a brief period and was then ruthlessly destroyed by an irate parent who disapproved of its intellectual standards.
I had scarcely reached the age of twenty-one and started life in Chattanooga as a newspaper reporter, when I took up seriously the habit of joining fraternal orders. In five years I had taken degrees in practically every one to which I was eligible. I became a Mason, a Knight of Pythias, an Odd Fellow, a Red Man, a member of the Junior Order United American Mechanics, of the Royal Arcanum, of the Woodmen, an Elk, an Eagle, an Owl, and an associate member of the Theatrical Mechanics Association.
The last “order” I joined was the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.