Here's Where It Gets Interesting - A Movie and a Man Who Revived the Klan

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

How did one of the most popular movies in the country–a blockbuster of epic proportions–fuel the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan? And how, in just a few short years, did the Klan grow from small pockets of state chapters into a national social organization with a membership in the millions? The KKK and the prohibitionists of the 1920s worked hand-in-hand to turn America into a dry, white, Protestant-ruled nation. As booze dried up in towns across the nation, white supremacy began to rise. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to the eighth episode in our series about prohibition, from hatchets to hoods. A few years back in 2019, a board at Ohio's Bowling Green State University reached a decision that prompted some of Hollywood's most celebrated stars like Helen Mirren, James Earl Jones, and Martin Scorsese to send them a letter of protest. The board had voted to remove the name Gish from the campus's Gish Theater, despite the fact that the late actress it was named after, Lillian Gish, has long been hailed as the first lady of American cinema and had a career that lasted 70 years. What prompted the college to drop her name and for so many others to disapprove of that action? It has to do with Lillian's leading role in one of the most controversial American films ever made. A silent film that hit theaters during the

tumultuous years leading up to Prohibition. A film called The Birth of a Nation. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. where it gets interesting. In the era of silent film, Birth of a Nation was a groundbreaking mega blockbuster. It was the Titanic or the Avatar of its day. Based on a 1905 book called The Klansman, the film took nearly eight months to shoot, and it cost $500,000 to make, which was more than 10 times its initial budget. Its director, D.W. Griffith, used a variety of new techniques like fades, flashbacks, and jump cuts to show the passage of time and close-ups of faces to emphasize emotion. Its epic battle scenes required thousands of actors and extras, and its stars, including Lillian Gish, were A-listers. When The Birth of a Nation debuted in theaters across the country during the winter of 1915, people everywhere lined up to view the epic film about the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era.

But there was something noteworthy about the film's audience. It was overwhelmingly white. Then, and still now, the three-hour-long movie is considered groundbreaking for its technical and dramatic innovations. It is the film's story that's at the center of its controversy. It portrays black men as ignorant and criminal, while at the same time it glorifies the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. The original movie poster depicts a man atop a horse, his face obscured by a pointed, atop a horse, his face obscured by a pointed, almost hood-like helmet, and he's wielding a burning cross above his head. The black population in 1915 was like, say what now? The film was deeply, deeply racist, and they were not about to let it slide without speaking up. A woman named Beatrice Kennedy immediately organized a protest in the city of Portland, Oregon. At the time, she was

young. She was only 25, but she was already a lifelong activist, a founding member of the Portland chapter of the NAACP, and the assistant editor of Portland's Black-owned newspaper, The Advocate. Beatrice recognized the alarming dangers that the popularity of Birth of a Nation would cause for Black Americans. There was no way that she was going to let this new anti-Black film have repeated showings in her town without some serious pushback. She used her platform and wrote, in her town without some serious pushback. She used her platform and wrote, as citizens of Portland, we must protest because the peace and harmony that existed between the two races may be destroyed. She worked to mobilize both Black and white Portlanders to carry signs outside theaters that showed the film. And she wasn't the only one. Protests sprang

up around the entire country. In Boston, thousands of Black women organized rallies. One speaker's voice rang clear over the heads of hundreds, saying, This movie would not be tolerated if it affected any other race or people. But Massachusetts civil rights leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and William Trotter knew that picketing with signs and holding rallies would not be enough to convince Boston city leaders to ban the film. The white men in positions of power wouldn't act just because the movie was racist. They had to appeal to them through the idea that the film would disrupt both the Black and white populations.

They argued that the film was a threat to public safety, that it was so racially charged it would lead to violence between the races. Despite all of the outrage, Birth of a Nation continued to play in American theaters, packed with white moviegoers. Its leading lady, Lillian Gish, became even more of a sensation and starred in dozens of silent films during the Prohibition era before breaking into talkies in the 1930s. where the protests had been so fierce, the city's censorship board found nothing about the birth of a nation objectionable, and it went on to show for over six months. The protesting itself had two very distinct outcomes. It was fuel that fed the fire, right? The more controversial something is, the more people want to know why.

Audiences flocked to the film in part because they wanted to know what the scandal was about. But more subtly, the NAACP, which was still in its very early years of organization, gained a little bit of notoriety. Black activists were suddenly interviewed about the protests in newspapers that reached a whole lot of white American households. In the post-Civil War era, white supremacy, especially in the South, grew in new ways, supported by white laborers and their insecurity that Black men would take their jobs. The KKK got its start as a private club in Tennessee in 1865. Its original goal was to provide a place for Confederate veterans to gather socially.

But as its white membership grew, and they watched Black Americans gain more rights, the club's agenda became increasingly violent. Members began to terrorize Black communities in an effort to keep them scared and submissive. They wore disguises to keep their identities invisible, though they didn't yet have their signature white hoods. And they entered Black neighborhoods to burn down churches, rape women, and lynch Black people under flimsy and false accusations of wrongdoing. After Ulysses S. Grant was elected president in 1868, Congress passed a series of acts to combat the growing racially motivated violence. Grant himself declared martial law in several South Carolina counties where Klan brutality was highest and arrested a significant number of its members. It was enough to scatter and disband the invisible empire of the Klan.

That doesn't mean that violence or racism ended, however. Jim Crow laws in the South kept white people in power and Black Americans disenfranchised. The Equal Justice Initiative estimates that the number of lynchings during Reconstruction is around 2,000. The new century brought more violence. By 1915, a second generation of the Ku Klux Klan began to mobilize. An increase in immigration in the early 20th century raised the hackles of white Americans who felt threatened, and they clamored to keep power and control. Shortly after its Hollywood premiere, The Birth of a Nation became only the second film to be screened at the White House when it was shown to President Woodrow Wilson and several of his family and cabinet members. An interesting fact, by the way,

is that the screening was held at the White House because Wilson's wife, Ellen, had died in August of 1914, and Woodrow was still in the traditional mourning period. It would have been inappropriate for him to attend a movie at the theater, so they set it up in the East Room instead. to attend a movie at the theater, so they set it up in the East Room instead. Wilson already had some ties to the movie because of a history textbook he had written back in 1902, and the film's director, D.W. Griffith, was such a fan of Wilson's five-volume history book called History of the American People that he referenced it when he was making the film. It was Griffith who asked the president to screen the movie personally, and while Wilson himself gave no public opinion about it,

Griffith used the White House viewing as a way to drum up interest. A movie screened at the White House was perceived as an endorsement of the film, and a man named William Simmons understood this implicitly. The former preacher had seen a showing of the birth of a nation in Atlanta and was inspired by the heroic depiction of the previous incarnation of the Klan. Soon, Simmons began to organize. William Simmons grew up in Alabama as the son of a physician, and although his plan was to follow in his father's footsteps, he ended up joining the military instead and served in the Spanish-American War before becoming a traveling preacher for the Methodist Episcopal Church. Soon, though, he was suspended by the church for the vague reason of inefficiency, and this would become a theme of his career hopping over the next several years. He rarely stuck with a job for long, although he did have a growing interest in fraternal organizations.

He was a member of the Freemasons and the Knights Templar and did some organizing for the Woodmen of the World, a fraternal group that sought to ease the medical and financial burdens of their members. William was the type of guy who didn't enjoy a place in the background. He preferred to be front and center, speaking in front of crowds and drawing attention to himself and his worldviews. So it wasn't a big jump for him to take the ideas he saw perpetrated in The Birth of a Nation and decide that a righteous crusade was in order. And he was just the man to lead it. To serve as the nucleus of his revived clan, William organized a group of his like-minded acquaintances and contacts, including his father and two older men who had been members of the original clan. On Thanksgiving in November of 1915, 34 men signed the charter of the new chapter

of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and celebrated by climbing Stone Mountain near Atlanta. climbing stone mountain near Atlanta. There, they burned a cross and built an altar for the Bible, an American flag, and an unsheathed sword. William gave himself the title of Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The ritual of burning a cross had not been used by the original Klan, but was introduced to American audiences in the birth of a nation. And that on-screen ritual was inspired by historic practices of Scottish clans who burned crosses as a method of signaling between hilltops to each other. This image of a burning cross is also featured prominently in the 1810 poem Lady of the Lake by Scotland's Sir Walter Scott, which is the very same poem from which abolitionist Frederick Douglass took his surname after he escaped

enslavement. The burning cross, of course, would evolve to become a symbol of intimidation and violence as Klansmen lit them on lawns of churches, organizations, and the homes of activists. The signature white robes of this second KKK also came from the costuming in The Birth of a Nation. from the costuming in The Birth of a Nation. The white robe and pointed hood was just one variety of the costumes used for the actors portraying Klansmen in the film, but William Simmons took it and ran. He also began to establish the organization's foundational messaging and goals, which were to protect white Protestant America from degenerative forces. He defined these degenerative forces as immigrants, Jews and Catholics, and anyone who was not of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. The real America, he said, has always been country America,

a statement that reflected the influence of his upbringing in rural Alabama. After World War I, William began in earnest to expand the Klan by hiring a public relations firm from Atlanta. spanned the Klan by hiring a public relations firm from Atlanta. The Southern Publicity Association, run by Edward Young Clark and Mary Elizabeth Tyler, transformed the second Klan into a business enterprise for a cut of initiation fees. The firm hired recruiters called Klegels, because everything having to do with the Klan has to start with a K, it seems like, or has some weird alternative name to what you would use in real life. So these recruiters were called Klegels, and they got a commission on dues, and they began organizing claverns, their names for local chapters throughout the Deep South. Initiates paid $10 each, swore the Klan oath, and had to buy their robes and regalia exclusively from the official Klan catalog at $10 to $15 a pop. A deal, maybe, until you consider that $15

in 1920 is like $200 today. As I mentioned, the Kliegels, who were the recruiters, received a percentage of the new membership fees, and the rest went straight to the national leaders. New members were then encouraged to invite their friends and family. And once they recruited a certain number of people, then they could achieve the rank of Kliegel. recruited a certain number of people, then they could achieve the rank of Kliegel. Basically, William had set up the new Klan system just like a good old pyramid scheme. Even their sales pitch had a familiar scam ring to it by claiming that the average American income is around $3,000 a year, but a motivated Klan recruiter can make that in just a few weeks. But as sketchy as all of this sounds, and it was sketchy, it worked. In just 16 months, 100,000 new members had joined the Klan. Millions of dollars started flowing into the organization and paid for new

marketing materials, Klan publications and activities, and rallies. The thing about William Simmons, however, is that he was just the ideas guy. William had a vision that the Klan would save the country and white Protestants would transcend as the superior race, but he didn't know exactly how to implement his broad proclamations as actionable plans. And frankly, he didn't even want to. He considered himself the spiritual leader of the Klan. He left the day-to-day operations to other members, which meant that once the Klan began to maintain a robust membership and operate in the black, they no longer needed their figurehead to act as a prophet. In 1922, William Simmons was ousted as the Imperial Wizard and replaced with Hiram Evans, a dentist from Texas,

although his dentistry credentials are very suspicious. Makes my teeth hurt to think about it. Technically, the removal of Simmons was a coup, but it was a sneaky one. He was convinced to take a six-month vacation to rest after such hard work. And Hiram Evans ran things as the interim leader, but Simmons never got to resume the role. Instead, they gave him the position of Imperial Emperor for Life, which was a fancy title that had absolutely no real meaning and no duties. Simmons really disliked Evans and he put up a fight. and he put up a fight. But in the end, Simmons relinquished his copyrights on Klan materials for a payout and retired from the Klan altogether. It was Evans who led the Klan into their powerful expansion to the next level. He argued that in addition to appealing to prospective members as

a fraternal organization, because fraternal organizations were very, very popular during this time period, the KKK needed to become a purity reform group. Across the country, they began to crusade for immigration restriction laws and for prohibition. and for prohibition. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends, and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single

episode of The Office, with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments.

So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. From the beginning, Prohibition was entangled with anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic rhetoric. For many of its advocates, the goal was to preserve the American family unit, and what was implied was that that family unit was white and Protestant. In a period of just under 45 years, from 1880 to 1924, over 25 million people immigrated to the United States.

And by the time we entered World War I in 1917, one in three U.S. citizens were either first or second generation Americans. Most WASPs, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, fell into two camps when it came to this influx of immigration. Immigrants needed to be restricted from entering the country altogether, or they needed to be Americanized. Americanization was the name given to the process of molding immigrants into an American identity. Some demanded 100% Americanism, in which immigrants completely abandoned their birth countries, language, traditions, and loyalties in much the same way that indigenous people were forced to assimilate and take on Anglo-Saxon names and customs. In the early 20th

century, the Women's Christian Temperance Union partnered with other organizations to halt Americanization activities and classes. The Daughters of the American Revolution, the YMCA and YWCA, the National Council of Jewish Women, and many other groups, as well as public libraries, all worked to help foreign-born residents assimilate towards citizenship. Americanization activities often included English language classes and character education, which sought to teach immigrants moral values that WASP educators felt their races were lacking. From 1900 to 1920, the WCTU also had a missionary center on Ellis Island to more quickly help start the Americanization process for incoming immigrants. In contrast, the Anti-Saloon League

blamed Catholic immigrants in the 1910s for the massive increase in saloon culture throughout the nation. Their leadership pressured Congress to pass a national ban on immigration to stop the demographics of the nation from changing so rapidly and from popularizing drinking. Once the 18th Amendment passed and began to be enforced, the criminal justice system disproportionately targeted immigrants, blacks, and working-class people for violation arrests. But for many who watched their communities become unsafe due to organized crime, we talked about the dominance of the Chicago outfit run by Italian Catholic immigrants and the Purple Gang run by Jewish immigrants in our last episode, it wasn't enough. That is where the KKK stepped in. The organization made a tactical alliance with the Anti-Saloon League and began to focus on the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish parts of their rhetoric. The Klan championed itself as the defender of a moral America, one that took matters into their own

hands to stop lawbreakers and bootlegging and helped clean up communities. Essentially, they worked in cahoots with the Anti-Saloon League as the brawn, the enforcers. In fact, during the 1920s, the KKK had more members enrolled in New Jersey than they did in William Simmons's home state of Alabama. Prohibition was the exact excuse they needed to push their white supremacist agenda far and wide. KKK members eagerly participated in sniffing out those they considered to not be 100% American, which of course was code for immigrant. And they did so by targeting people they suspected, largely based on nationality, to be bootleggers and violators of the Volstead Act. Vigilante Klan members sometimes tortured these individuals, burned crosses on their lawns, and raided and set fire to their speakeasies.

But while we most often picture KKK members as southern men in robes meeting at midnight to terrorize minority communities, during Prohibition, there was actually a pretty large portion of them who took a much more public route. They were the friendly persuaders, the average Americans who just wanted to preserve our traditional values. They knew the best way to add to their ranks was through mainstream means and a stellar reputation. It was a path that required the skills of a women's auxiliary branch. The WKKK, or Women of the Ku Klux Klan, took a cue, perhaps, from the WCTU's Mary Hunt, who believed that educating children was the key to creating a dry nation.

They developed a curriculum for schools intent on spreading white supremacy through indoctrination and education. These lessons were marketed as patriotic. Children were learning the value of what it meant to be American and to preserve American ideals, although the subtext, of course, was that American meant white American, and American ideals placed white Americans in positions of opportunity and power. Clanswomen also planned and held community events like parades and picnics and carnivals, where members handed out candy to children and played music and created an air of happy festivity. They did this while they wore their robes in order to help

normalize the sight of white hooded regalias. They wanted to appear friendly and valiant to the white Protestant families they were courting into membership. As the Klan's resources grew, they began to produce short propaganda films. These productions, as well as their pamphlets and rallies, used very specific language to appeal to general audiences. They placed an emphasis on their patriotism, and their informational tract was called The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, God and Government, Law and Liberty, America for Americans. It was common to read headlines in local newspapers announcing special community

projects supported by the Klan, like this one that said, The Mother Counselor of mother counselor of the ladies of the Invisible Empire has pledged through her organization to raise $5,000 for the Corvallis Children's Home. Membership continued to skyrocket, and by 1924, the Klan reported that they had over six million members. That figure was probably exaggerated as another marketing tactic, but no matter what the official counts were, 3 million, 4 million, 6 million, there is no denying that the Klan became a powerful presence across the country. And the KKK's influence didn't end with the general public. During Prohibition, they were

able to heavily influence a number of political elections in states like Oregon, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Indiana. And in Denver, Colorado, the Klan rolled over every facet of the city. In 1920, at the start of Prohibition, Denver was a modestly sized city, especially when compared to places like New York and Chicago, where overpopulated neighborhoods were already experiencing an increase in organized crime. The leaders in Denver had been telling residents for years that Denver was different, it was safer, and that crime would be squashed and alcohol would be completely eradicated. But it didn't quite work out that way. The Carlino brothers headed up Denver's Italian mafia and quickly established the state's largest bootlegging operation out of the south side of the city.

And as small as Denver was, it had seen a population increase of over 50,000 people from 1910 to 1920. Many of these new residents were Black Americans and Catholic and Jewish immigrants. If you were a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant who already enjoyed power and access, your nervousness likely mirrored the rest of the countries. If the city became a melting pot of ethnicities and religions and the mob was left unchecked, the power dynamics would eventually shift. And not in your favor. The KKK was nothing if not opportunistic.

They took note that the city's white Protestant majority was concerned about public safety and immigration, so they marketed themselves as champions of justice and the saviors of Americanism and old-time religion. Denver's white Protestant population bought it hook, line, and sinker. The Klan organized community events that looked safe and wholesome to the middle and working class neighborhoods they wanted to influence. But don't get me wrong, the Klan didn't exactly hide their extreme racism and white supremacist ideals. They may have played up the idea that they were a social organization, but alongside the patriotic parades, they were organizing boycotts of Black and Jewish-owned businesses and intimidating immigrants to leave the city. And the white Protestants in Denver liked them all the better for it. At the peak of their power in Denver around 1925, almost one-third of the city's population of white Protestant men were Klan members. And although they're not listed in the official ledgers,

it's estimated that 11,000 women had also taken the pledge. These Klansmen and women held jobs in every sector possible. They were teachers and bankers and cabbies and journalists. They worked at the grocery store and in public parks and hospitals and pharmacies. Almost 200 Klansmen worked for the city of Denver, and around 90 more were police officers and firefighters. The KKK didn't even have to resort to intimidation tactics in Denver to scare its Black and immigrant population. Their sheer numbers and influence made it risky just to leave their homes and neighborhoods. Of course, the Klan did use intimidation tactics to keep control of the city. They pressured businesses to refuse to hire Black and other minority employees, jeered and harassed them in public spaces.

One Jewish woman remembers how her uncle, a shop owner who couldn't really afford to lose customers, put up a Christmas tree in his window every year, making sure it was big, bold, and easy to spot from the street. The Klan also burned crosses in the front yard of NAACP members, threatening them with violence unless they left the city. And Denver was far from the only place where the Klan's influence spread unchecked. In 1924, Congress passed the National Origins Act, which limited the number of immigrants who were allowed to enter the country. But the state of Oregon already had a head start on quotas and exclusions. It had been the only state to enter the union with a black exclusion law

that banned both enslaved and free blacks in the territory. It also had a long history of anti-Asian exclusion laws and violence against the state's Chinese population. White nationalism seeds in Oregon had been planted from the get-go. With Oregon's racial exclusion and the fact that almost 90% of the state's population in the early 1920s was native-born, white Protestant Klan organizers easily enrolled new members. By 1921, the Portland Police Department had more than 100 Klan members on its force and Portland city leaders, including the mayor and the chief of police, brazenly posed for a photo op with hooded Klan members after a meeting

at the Multnomah Hotel. The meeting was to solidify the Klan as part of the city's efforts to maintain the vagueness of law and order. The photo ran in papers across the entire state. One of the Klansmen decked out in his full regalia was a King Kliegel, a super successful recruiter named Luther Powell. He addressed the leaders and media that night saying, there are some cases, of course, in which we will have to take everything in our hands. Some crimes are not punishable under existing laws, but the criminals have to be punished. His words were chilling when we think about the ways in which the Klan carried out these so-called punishments. Not on criminals, but on Black Americans who threatened the Klan's quest for complete white supremacy.

And in the 1920s, with Klansmen literally making deals with city officials and posing for photo ops as if they were the poster boys for safety, what went unsaid was that their path of destruction and terror was not just cleared, it was encouraged. In fact, by 1923, Oregon's Grand Dragon, clan leader Fred Gifford, who stood in the photo near the city's mayor, George Baker, was honored at an extravagant patriotic dinner Fred Gifford, who stood in the photo near the city's mayor, George Baker, was honored at an extravagant patriotic dinner. Gifford and his chapter of the Klan were so influential in the state's politics that their endorsement had secured the win for the incoming governor of Oregon, who, in turn, honored Gifford for his involvement. In the height of its popularity around 1925, somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 Klansmen marched in their robes through the streets of Washington, D.C. in a parade that lasted for three hours and ended at the Washington Monument.

They marched next to men dressed as Uncle Sam. They carried American flags and crosses and signs that announced their state and city chapters. D.C. streets were lined with white onlookers who cheered on the parading Klan, awed by the spectacle. And while their rally at the Washington Monument got rained out, the next night, Klan members erected an 80-foot cross in Arlington Park and lit it on fire, the flames licking the sky. It seemed that the Klan's forward momentum was unstoppable. But there was hope. was unstoppable. But there was hope. In 1926, the NAACP successfully pushed to have Oregon's Black exclusion laws removed from its constitution. And back in Denver, the threatened Black communities banded together, determined to keep each other safe. A white-passing Black physician

infiltrated the city's Klan chapter and reported back on their tactics and targets before they could be carried out. The press, too, was not completely in the Klan, saying, boys, you'd better disband. You'd better take your sheets, your banners, your masks, your regalia, and make one fine bonfire. Your methods are hopelessly wrong. Every tradition of social progress is against them. They're opposed to every principle on which this government is founded. They're out of keeping with civilized life. So next time, we'll talk more about the second coming of the Klan's

reign of terror during Prohibition, and about the people who fought back. I'll see you then. people who fought back. I'll see you then. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice. We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews, and sharing on social media.

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