The Modern Ku Klux Klan

by Henry P. Fry

As to permitting foreign membership corporations to do business in a State, it should be enacted that before being permitted to engage in the business of soliciting members from whom initiation fees or “donations” are to be secured, the corporation should be required to file with the Secretary of State a sworn statement of all its national officers, its plans for doing business, a copy of its charter of incorporation, its constitution and laws, and, where agents are employed to canvas for members it should be specified what compensation they are to be paid. These agents should be licensed by the State as the “Blue Laws” require the licensing of stock salesmen. The organization should, furthermore, be required to file a bond with the Secretary of State insuring the good behavior of the organization while engaged in business in the State, and it should be specified that the bond be forfeited should any local branch be guilty of committing a lawless act, in which case, also, the right of the corporation to do business in the State should automatically be terminated. No foreign corporation which permits its members to go about, in other States, disguised should be permitted to enter. After having complied with the foregoing provisions, the act should further provide that at stated intervals the secretary of each local branch be required to make two copies of the roster of membership of his branch, filing one copy with the county clerk of his county, and mailing one copy to the Secretary of State. These two copies should be open for public inspection at all times. In the event that the local branch fails or refuses to file its roster, the right of the national organization to do business in the State should automatically terminate.

As a matter of safeguard to the community, every State in the United States should have a statute enacted along the lines of the Tennessee Ku Klux act (Sections 6668, Shannons Code et seq.) which reads:

“6668. If any person or persons, masked or in disguise, shall prowl, or travel, or ride, or walk through the country or towns of this State, to the disturbance of the peace, or to the alarming of the citizens of any portion of this State, on conviction thereof (they) shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, and imprisoned in the county jail of the county wherein convicted, at the discretion of the jury trying the case.

“6669. If any person or persons, disguised or in mask, by day or by night, shall enter upon the premises of another, or demand entrance or admission into the house or inclosure of any citizen of this State, it shall be considered prima facie that his or her intention is to commit a felony, and such demand shall be deemed an assault with an intent to commit a felony, and the person or persons so offending, shall, upon conviction, be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary not less than ten years nor more than twenty years.

“6670. If any person or persons, so prowling, traveling, riding, or walking through the towns or country of this State, masked or in disguise, shall or may assault another with a deadly weapon, he or they shall be deemed guilty of an assault with intent to commit murder in the first degree, and, on conviction thereof, shall suffer death by hanging; provided that the jury trying the case may substitute imprisonment in the penitentiary for a period of not less than ten years nor more than twenty-one years.”

In connection with this Tennessee statute, it is interesting to note that the leading case, reported in the State, based on the act fully sustained the statute. In the case of Walpole against the State, 9 Baxter 369, delivered in 1878 by a Supreme Court composed entirely of Democrats, with several Confederate soldiers the court held:

“It is apparent that the object of this statute was to repress a great evil which arose in this country after the war, and which grew to be an offense of frequent occurrence, that of evil-minded and mischievous persons disguising themselves to terrify or to wrong those who happened to be the objects of their wrath or resentment. This was a kind of mob law, enforced sometimes by a multitude of vagabonds, who grew to be a great terror to the people and placed human life and property at the mercy of bad men, whose crimes could scarcely ever be punished because of the disguises under which they were perpetrated.”

In closing its opinion the court said:

“The penalties of a violation of this law are severe, but they have proved themselves wholesome in the partial suppression already of one of the greatest of the disturbing elements of social order in this State. Affirm the judgment.”

If every State in the Union will pass a law along similar lines to the above Tennessee statute, there will be no Ku Klux parades, no midnight burnings of the fiery cross, and no repetition of the tar and feathers occurrences that have been prevalent in the State of Texas. I think that there should be a modification, however, of the Tennessee statute, making it a misdemeanor to go about disguised in the daytime, and a felony at night.