Here's Where It Gets Interesting - White Squares Off Against the KKK

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

In its fight for a dry, anti-alcohol nation, the Anti-Saloon League recruited the Ku Klux Klan to join its mission to make Prohibition the law of the land. Klan members themselves weren’t specifically pro-Temperance, but they were happy to use dry laws as a way to target and perpetrate violence against Black Americans, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics. But the power of the Klan was beginning to fade… 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 to the ninth episode of our special series on Prohibition. On September 22nd, 1906, race relations in Atlanta, Georgia reached a boiling point. Local newspapers reported unsubstantiated stories about Black violence against white women and incensed by the details made up by the papers. White men gathered into a crowd, which then grew into a mob. The mob was out for blood. For five long days, they persecuted Black Americans, assaulting them and raiding and destroying their businesses. It's estimated that upward of 40 black Americans were murdered and hundreds more were arrested by the police for carrying self-defense weapons. Witnessing it all was a 13-year-old child named Walter White.

He was terrified for his family because despite his blonde hair and blue eyes, Walter was black. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Before we begin, I have an editorial note and a word of caution. During this time in history, and also in original documents, racist language was commonplace. We have chosen to replace a racist slur with the term Negro, which is historically accurate, although certainly not a preferred term today, but I think you all know what it refers to. I also want to issue a content warning. Today's episode discusses racial and sexual violence, and it may not be appropriate for young children.

Walter White and his family survived the Atlanta race massacre, and when he was a man in his 40s, he recounted those harrowing nights as he remembered it. He said, counted those harrowing nights as he remembered it. He said, the church bells tolled for Sunday service, but no one in Atlanta believed for a moment that the hatred and lust for blood had been appeased. Like skulls on a cannibal's hut, the hats and caps of victims of the mob of the night before had been hung on iron hooks on telegraph poles. None could tell whether each hat represented a dead Negro, but we knew that some of those who had worn the hats would never again wear any. Late in the afternoon, friends of my father's came to warn of more trouble that night, that plans had been perfected for a mob to form. nightfall to march to what the white people called Dark Town,

three blocks or so below our house to clean out the Negroes. There had never been a firearm in our house before that day. Father was reluctant, even in those circumstances, to violate the law, but he at last gave in at mother's insistence. We turned out the lights early, as did all of our neighbors. No one removed his clothes or thought of sleep. Apprehension was tangible. We could almost touch its cold and clammy surface. Toward midnight, the unnatural quiet was broken by a roar that grew steadily in volume. Even today, I grow tense in remembering it. Father told mother to take my sisters to the rear of the house, which offered more protection from stones and bullets. Father and I, the males

of the house, took our place at the front windows of the parlor. There was a crash as Negroes smashed the street lamp nearby. In a very few minutes, the mob bearing torches appeared. A voice which we recognized as that of the son of the grocer with whom we had traded for many years, yelled, that's where the Negro mail carrier lives. Let's burn it down. It's too nice for a Negro to live in. In the eerie light, Father turned his drawn face toward me in a voice as quiet as though he were asking me to pass him the sugar at the breakfast table. He said, son, don't shoot until the first man puts his foot on the lawn, and then don't you miss. The mob moved toward the lawn. I tried to aim my gun, wondering what it would feel like to kill a

man. Suddenly there was a volley of shots. The mob hesitated, stopped. Some friends of my father's had barricaded themselves in a two-story brick building just below our house. It was they who had fired. Some of the mob's men, still bloodthirsty, shouted, let's go get the Negro. Others, afraid now for their safety, held back. Our friends, noting the hesitation, fired another volley. The mob broke and retreated. In the quiet that followed, I put my gun aside and tried to relax, but a tension different from anything I had ever known possessed me. from anything I had ever known possessed me. I was gripped by the knowledge of my identity,

and in the depths of my soul, I was vaguely aware that I was glad of it. I was sick with loathing for the hatred which had flared before me that night and come so close to making me a killer. But I was glad I was not one of those who hated. I was glad I was not one of those made sick and murderous by pride. Walter White was born in 1893 to George and Madeline, who were the last generation of their families to be born enslaved. Walter, his six siblings, and his parents all had fair coloring, and Walter took after his mother, who also had blonde hair and blue eyes.

In fact, Walter's enslaved great-grandmother birthed six children in the 1830s, and White family records indicate that their father was her enslaver, William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States. The white family thrived after George and Madeline's emancipation. While opportunities for freed Black Americans in the South during Reconstruction were limited, the couple knew that their way forward would be through education. They put themselves through school at Atlanta University, and after they graduated, George worked as a mail carrier while Madeline became a school teacher. They were solidly middle class, but the family lived between worlds. They were a Black household, but no one knew how to categorize them. For example, they couldn't ride on Atlanta's segregated transportation without getting rude remarks and glares, no matter which side they chose to sit on.

They looked white, but they lived in a black neighborhood. Later in Walter's life, when he himself was an adult, he got word from his sister back in Atlanta that his father had been in a car accident. He was badly hurt and taken to the hospital where doctors prepared for immediate surgery. But when Walter's brother-in-law, whose skin was darker than the White family's, rushed in to check on George, the surgeon realized that George was a Black man. He refused to go ahead with the operation and instead took George across the street to what Walter called the Jim Crow ward. George died from his injuries a few weeks later.

These experiences, and many more like them over the years, all contributed to Walter's complex relationship with racial identity. In his autobiography, A Man Called White, he wrote that my skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blonde, the traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me. But I am not white. There's nothing within my mind and heart which tempts me to think I am. Yet I realize acutely that the only characteristic which matters to either the white or the colored race, the appearance of whiteness, is mine. There is magic in a white skin. There is tragedy, loneliness, exile in a black skin. He declared, I am Negro by choice. Walter, however, fluidly embraced both parts of his

ancestry over the course of his life. Though he never completely denied his blackness, he did use his white passing appearance to protect himself because Walter came of age at the same time William J. Simmons began his revival of the Ku Klux Klan. In our previous episode, we talked about how the KKK and the Anti-Saloon League made a particularly mutually beneficial alliance during the early days of Prohibition. In its fight for a dry, anti-alcohol nation, the Anti-Saloon League was delighted to have the Klan join its mission to make Prohibition the law of the land. If this sounds like an odd pairing, temperance fighters and white supremacists, it was.

Klan members didn't explicitly abstain from drinking alcohol themselves, by the way. But they were happy to use dry laws as a way to target Black Americans, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics. In states like Indiana and Oklahoma, the KKK and the Anti-Saloon League used their political influence and powers to help pass bone-dry laws, which had more severe penalties for selling alcohol and forbade using alcohol for medicinal or religious purposes, two exceptions that were listed in the Volstead Act. The more aggressive members of the Klan took it upon themselves to raid homes and businesses in the name of prohibition. They searched for evidence of violations, and if they found alcohol, they confiscated it, often keeping it to drink for themselves, because prohibition was their flimsy excuse for hate.

The threat of lynching was often used as a means of controlling people. With a membership of millions, it was a small percentage of Klan members who carried out real violence. But where white America saw a social organization with a few rogue members, Black and immigrant families knew how quickly threats could turn into action. It was chaotic, vigilante violence. Anyone could be lynched at any time for any or no reason. If a Black man looked at a white woman in public, he had no way of knowing if a nearby person was a Klan member who would then gather a mob and punish him outside the boundaries of the law. Heck, most of the law

employed Klan members who were willing to join the violence or at least look the other way. Lynching was a tool by which the KKK enforced Jim Crow laws, responded to wildly unsubstantiated rumors of crime, and silenced community leaders in an attempt to drive Black families out of town. On that front, they had some success. For example, after a lynching in Forsyth County, Georgia in 1912, white supremacists distributed leaflets demanding that all Black people leave or risk death. So many Black families fled that just eight years later, by 1920, the county's Black population fell from 1,100 to 30. Three, zero, 30. And we can't fall into the trap of thinking that lynching violence was happening only in Southern states. The North and Midwest saw its fair share

of racially targeted brutality. As early as 1900, journalist Ida B. Wells Barnett told the Chicago audience, so potent is the force of example that the lynching mania has spread throughout the North and Middle West. It is now no uncommon thing to read of lynchings north of the Mason and Dixon's line, and the most responsible for this fashion gleefully point to these instances and assert that the North is no better than the South. Lynchings were happening all over the country, but very rarely was anyone ever prosecuted or punished for the murders. In fact, there's only a 1% conviction rate in the United States of murderers who participated in lynchings after 1900. And if you are thinking, Sharon, that was so long ago. Let me bring you up to speed. The last reported lynching by the Klan occurred in Mobile, Alabama in 1981. 1981! That was 42 years ago.

Perhaps the most enduring legacy to be born out of wide-scale lynching was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP. The NAACP began its work in 1908 as an organized response to the high rates of lynching and violence happening against Black Americans. In the first 10 years, its membership soared to 90,000 members and 300-plus branches across the nation. The Crisis, their news magazine, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois, became the most influential race publication in the country's history. After Walter White graduated from Atlanta University in 1916, he helped get the Atlanta branch of the NAACP up and running. The chapter was successful in their goal of getting the Atlanta Public School Board to increase their funds for the segregated

black schools. Walter's persistent work caught the eye of the NAACP's executive director, who asked him to move to New York City and serve as the assistant secretary for the entire national organization. Walter's role, once he began working for the National NAACP, changed dramatically. He was no longer pushing for civil rights by making phone calls and organizing letter-writing campaigns. Instead, he became a spy. Instead, he became a spy. National leaders for the NAACP took one look at Walter White and knew exactly how they were going to put him to work. With mob violence and lynchings at an all-time high, Walter's job was to pass as white and infiltrate the KKK.

Going undercover into a hotbed of white supremacists meant that his life was at risk at every turn. But Walter didn't waver. Posing as a white reporter, Walter was able to speak with men who would have been hostile to him as a black man. He was a skilled speaker and had a knack for making people feel at ease around him. His undercover work gave the NAACP firsthand knowledge of at least 40 murders of Black people. Walter and the NAACP published this information, exposing the crimes to the public. Infuriatingly, there were virtually no arrests made for the murders. Walter himself came close to danger on more than one occasion. Once, when he was in Little Rock, someone exposed his identity as a passing black man, and a mob hunted him through the streets. He narrowly escaped on an outbound

train, sinking low in his seat, afraid 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. During the Civil War, the state of Indiana fought for the Union, though you wouldn't believe it just five decades later. An astounding one in three men was a Klansman. And the Klan member governor they elected used the power of his office to deputize and deploy 30,000 Klansmen as his private police force. In Indiana, the Klan didn't operate outside the law. The Klan was the law. They harassed people. They seized their homes. They threw them in jail. law. They harassed people, they seized their homes, they threw them in jail, and they lynched countless numbers of innocent Black Americans under made-up accusations. I warned you at the top of the show that the material may not be suitable for all listeners. And while we won't

be too graphic, I want to reiterate that warning now. In Indiana and elsewhere, lynchings were often part of public festivities, and the main attraction was murder. The growth of the photography industry in the 1900s meant that individuals who wanted a memory of the day could pay for one, and people did in scores. Numerous historical records indicate that people stood in long lines to have their picture taken with the bodies of the individuals murdered by the KKK. Individuals of all ages, children and adults, could gather up body parts of the murdered people and the rope as souvenirs to take home. Others bought postcards of the scene to mail to friends or family who weren't able to attend. Indiana's high Klan membership success was due in part to a man

named David Curtis Stevenson who went by DC. And if you want to immediately understand the sort of man DC was, he often boasted that he would rise to become the biggest man in the United States. D.C. was a Texan by birth, but settled in Evansville, Indiana in his 20s. He was a liar to the point of compulsiveness, but he told his lies with such charisma that people couldn't help but believe him. He bragged that he had a close friendship with President Warren Harding, which Harding, problematic as he was, vehemently denied. D.C.'s grandstanding was a boon to the Klan, though. It's what made him an effective recruiter. In just a few short years, their numbers in Indiana had skyrocketed. In Evansville,

D.C. had managed to recruit nearly 23% of the city's population of white men. His Klan empire grew by leaps and bounds until even the governor was doing his bidding. He made his wealth off his downstream, pocketing a cut of every membership, and moved to a small mansion in Indianapolis, where he ruled as the Grand Dragon of Indiana. But there was one city D.C. couldn't quite get his grip on, South Bend. When D.C. and his gang of Klan members set their sights on the University City in 1924, the students of Notre Dame rebelled. They did not want the Klan hosting rallies in South Bend and flaunting their hate. In protest, a group of students lobbed a bunch of rotting potatoes at the electric cross lit in the Klan headquarters window. An angry Klan member retaliated by

sticking a gun to the chest of one of the students. He didn't fire, but the threat was enough that Notre Dame University President Father Matthew Walsh filed a complaint with South Bend's chief of police. The chief, who was not in the Klan's pocket, assured Father Walsh that he had denied the Klan permits to hold rallies and parades in the city. D.C. was pissed. He threw a tantrum. No permits, he thought. No problem. The Klan, in full regalia, advanced upon South Bend on March 17, 1924. Students had been strictly told to not engage with them, but they refused. As one of the students later said, we weren't going to sit idly by

and let a bunch of men dressed in sheets run us off. The Klan and the college kids clashed, of course, and D.C. used his platform to declare that Irish Catholics are un-American violent thugs. The scuffles lasted for three days, with students armed with rotting fruit and the Klan armed with gloves. Father Walsh called for piecing. Whatever challenge may have been offered tonight to your patriotism, whatever insult may have been offered to your religion, you can show your loyalty to Notre Dame and to South Bend by ignoring all threats. Eventually, the students listened and retreated back to campus bruised and a little worse for the wear. Unfortunately, nobody was killed. But the Klan spun their clash with the Notre Dame students to make them sound like

unpatriotic hooligans. The media didn't buy it. Instead, they ran headlines like, hooligans. But the media didn't buy it. Instead, they ran headlines like, Clan Display in South Bend Proves Failure. They had been bested by college students, and the resistance they faced in South Bend began to spread. For many, the clan's reputation was beginning to tarnish. D.C. Stevenson himself was taken down by a young woman named Madge Oberholzer. Madge was 28 when she met D.C. at a party in Indianapolis. He asked Madge to go on a date with him, and when she declined, he doubled down. He wasn't used to being told no, and he badgered her until she relented. They began to socialize somewhat frequently, though for Madge, the connection was likely work-related.

She was the manager of the state-run Young People's Reading Circle, and she was interested in helping D.C. develop textbooks. She worried that her position with the Circle was going to be cut and trusted him when he said he'd help her keep it. On March 15, 1925, D.C. Stevenson used his power, his promise of connections, and his opportunity for Madge to lure her out of her home and onto a late-night train ride with him to Chicago. It was on that train ride that D.C. Stevenson and his two accomplices forced Madge into the privacy of a sleeping car. D.C. raped Madge and bit all over her body, leaving a trail of bleeding open wounds.

With his men standing watch outside, no one came to Madge's rescue. No one answered her calls for help. Afterward, the men left the train with Madge in Hammond, Indiana, instead of staying on until they reached Chicago. D.C. knew he was above the law inside the state. They dragged the broken Madge to a hotel where she survived the night. In the morning, she managed to allow DC to let her make some purchases to obscure the rawness of his deep bite marks on her face. A hat, some blush. He sent an accomplice with her, and while he was occupied, Madge bought mercury bichloride tablets,

which she knew could be fatal in high doses. Back at the hotel, she took as much as she could stomach and waited for her death. But Madge lived. Panicking at her worsening condition, DC ordered her to be taken home, and she was snuck into her parents' house when they were out. She was in really bad shape when they found her. Despite the care she got from doctors, she was too weak to fight off the staph

infection from DC's bite marks and the mercury poisoning that coursed through her liver. Even in her dire condition, Madge did something heroic. She told her story. Madge's parents had their lawyer write down every word she said, and she signed the statement. and she signed the statement. Madge died a few weeks later, on April 14, 1925. It had cost her her life, but it was Madge who brought down D.C. Stevenson. After her death, D.C. was arrested and tried for murder. At first, he was confident that he'd walk away free. He had put his own hand-picked men in positions of power, after all, but the dark, vile nature of D.C. was revealed during the trial. Madge was not the first woman he had raped,

and even though he literally had a jury of his peers, all white men, many of them KKK members, they convicted him of second-degree murder in November 1925. D.C. was unable to get a retrial. He had lost all of his so-called friends and former associates. He was sentenced to life in prison and served a total of 29 years. The once powerful Indiana Klan, self-destructed in the wake of D.C.'s conviction. Furious that the governor who he had helped elect denied him a pardon, D.C. loosened his lips. He gave the press a generous helping of scandal by sharing all the dirty details of the corruption within the state's government. They had been taking the Klan's money for years. The mayor of Indianapolis was convicted and jailed on bribery charges, and the governor left politics in disgrace. It left a sour taste in the mouth

of Indiana's citizens. The Klan's reputation for moral integrity, which they had worked so hard to cultivate, was lost. The great and powerful Oz was a bunch of corrupt, violent men behind the curtain. Members in Indiana began to leave the Klan by the thousands, and the withdrawal didn't stop at the state's borders. More and more, reports of shady dealings came to light, stolen funds, political corruption, infighting. By the end of the 1920s, the Klan's power had fizzled out. Much of it can be blamed on their own self-destruction, but it's also true that the social climate of the country was evolving. When the Klan began its rise, they played into the fears of white Protestants. The country would be overrun by immigrants who would take jobs and the immorality

of bootleggers and speakeasies. But the U.S. saw economic stability in the mid-1920s. Immigrants and Black Americans hadn't upended the labor industries after all. To be frank, white Protestants retained their own dominance. Their fears had not materialized. They didn't need the vigilante Klan anymore. They now had segregation laws and limitations on immigration to protect their supremacy. And yet, despite the fact that the Klan was weakening, its most violent members persisted in terrorizing Black communities. In 1926, Walter White, who was still working tirelessly with the NAACP to persuade the government to craft and pass an anti-lynching bill, learned information about the gruesome murders of Bertha Demon and Clarence Lohman in South Carolina. They had been jailed for the illegal possession of liquor, even though none had been found in

their home. The sheriff and his deputies then forced the trio into the woods where they executed them. Walter investigated the crime undercover until he was able to compile his notes that exposed the involvement of law enforcement and the Klan. When he took his work to the state's governor, nothing happened. His report on the murderers and the perpetrators was completely ignored. So Walter, who usually published his editorials and investigation in the NAACP's publication, The Crisis, went rogue. He handed over his work to a different newspaper, The New York World, that was white-owned and had a much bigger circulation. He knew that the racially motivated murders committed by the KKK needed to be seen and taken seriously by a wide white audience. The series got national attention.

Infuriatingly, even after the public outrage, the sheriff and other Klan members who had murdered the Lomans never went to trial. But Walter didn't quit. He continued to fight for civil rights reforms for the rest of his life. It was Walter who recruited a young Thurgood Marshall to the NAACP when he recognized their need for a solid legal staff. And it was White's delegation that convinced President Truman to desegregate the U.S. military in 1948. Walter White served as the NAACP's executive secretary until his death in 1955, the same year that 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally lynched in Mississippi. Walter didn't live to see the passing of a federal anti-lynching law. The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was signed into law in March of 2022. Next time, we'll talk more about the

gatekeepers of prohibition, those who worked to enforce the law when so many were openly and brazenly defying it. I'll see you then. 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. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon.