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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2018
This essay uses a quilt made from used Ku Klux Klan regalia to examine the complicated interpersonal relationships and internal ambivalence that have emerged in the process of the author's study of Klan material culture. Concerns about the relationship between preserving objects and preserving ideology emerge through the process of untangling the story of this enigmatic object.
1 Catherine Parmeter quilt, courtesy of the Yakima Valley Museum. All photos by the author.
2 Accession File, Catherine Parmeter quilt, Yakima Valley Museum.
3 The Klan's various women's auxiliary organizations, most notably the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, had a separate manufacturing and distribution structure for regalia. For more information on this see the correspondence of Lorena Senter in the Senter Collection at the Denver Public Library, and the WKKK Constitution in the Women of the Ku Klux Klan Collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia.
4 The number of extant robes and hoods is based on my own database of Klan materials as of June 2016. The estimated number of robes produced in Atlanta regalia factories is based on data that can be found in chapter 4 of my dissertation, “Uniform Threat: Manufacturing the Ku Klux Klan's Visible Empire, 1866–1931,” Department of American Culture, University of Michigan, 2017.
5 Anna Weber was central to this effort.
6 Almost all of the Klan robes on public display are in the US, but the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, UK, holds a significant exception.
7 Accession File, Ku Klux Klan robe donated by Tim Basford, Indiana State Museum.
8 I have identified at least 38 Klan robes listed for sale on auction websites since 2008. The majority of these garments were purchased for private collections.
9 “Auction House to Start Sale of KKK Robes,” USA Today, 29 Jan. 2005, at http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-29-klan-robes_x.htm, accessed 25 May 2016.
10 At a 2005 sale of Klan paraphernalia in Howell, Michigan, the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University purchased a robe for their collection for $700, but the six other robes for sale sold for as much as $1,400. David Pilgrim, founder of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, writes about the experience of trying to buy Klan regalia at auction in his book Understanding Jim Crow (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015). See chapter 7, “A Night in Howell,” 159–71.
11 Arjun Appadurai used the phrase “social life of things” to discuss the ways in which values of different kinds are produced through the life cycle of an object. In addition to the obvious assertion that humans imbue objects with meaning through processes of commodity exchange, he also productively argues that “things-in-motion illuminate their human and social context.” Appadurai, Arjun, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Exhibition: Controversy: Pieces You Don't Normally See, Ohio Historical Center, Columbus, OH (1 April–20 Nov. 2011).
13 Ned McIntosh, “Capitol Gossip: New Ku-Klux Klan Gets Charter from the State,” Atlanta Constitution, 7 Dec. 1915, 5; Atlanta Journal, 7 Dec. 1915; Constitution of the Order, officially adopted 29 Sept. 1916, reprinted in William Joseph Simmons, “The Ku Klux Klan: Yesterday, Today, Forever” (1921), Ku Klux Klan Items 1920–1950, Folder 2, Box 1, Atlanta History Center.
14 Lennard, Katherine, “Old Purpose New Body: ‘The Birth of a Nation’ and the Revival of the Ku Klux Klan,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 14, 4 (Oct. 2015), 616–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My work builds on several generations of careful scholarship on the political, social, and cultural life of the Ku Klux Klan. In addition to excellent works on regional Klans, I have benefited particularly from the work of scholars thinking about the relationship between local Klaverns, the Klan's national organizing body, and the cultural phenomenon of the second Ku Klux Klan. This cohort includes Harcourt, Felix, Ku Klux Kulture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baker, Kelly J., Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011)Google Scholar; McVeigh, Rory, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009)Google Scholar; MacLean, Nancy, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Blee, Kathleen M., Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)Google Scholar.
15 On nineteenth century KKK dress see Parsons, Elaine Frantz, Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 72–109Google Scholar; Parsons, , “Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan,” Journal of American History, 92, 3 (1 Dec. 2005), 811–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 This worldview is particularly evident in the speeches made by various Klan officials during the Klan's Second Imperial Klonvokation (Convention) in 1924. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Incorporated, “Official and Department Reports Made to the Second Imperial Klonvokation” (1924), Ku Klux Klan Materials, MS 644, Keenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center.
17 Promey, Sally, “The Public Display of Religion,” in Promey, Sally and Morgan, David, eds., Visual Culture of American Religions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 27–48Google Scholar, 36–37.
18 “DeSoto Klan Quilt Helps Museum Educate,” DeSoto (KS) Explorer, 13 July 2000, 5A; MacDowell, Marsha, Worrall, Mary, Quinney, Charlotte, and Evans, Joanna E., “The K.K.K. Fundraising Quilt of Chicora, Michigan,” Uncoverings 2006: Research Papers of the American Quilt Study Group, 27 (2006), 91–122Google Scholar.
19 United States Census, 1920, Catherine Parmeter, Puyallup, Pierce, Washington, United States; ED 225; Sheet 21 A; NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), Roll 2510; United States Census, 1930, Catherine Parmeter, Puyallup, Pierce, Washington, United States; ED 207, Sheet 3A, Line 28, Family 55, NARA, Roll 2510.
20 US, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918, for Charlie Curter Parmeter, Washington, King County, Draft Board 06, Roll 1991894; United States Census, 1910, Catherine M. Parmeter in household of Charles C. Parmeter, Ardenhurst, Itasca, Minnesota, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 56, Sheet 4A, Family 5, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), Roll 707, FHL microfilm 1,374,720; United States Census, 1940, Catherine M. Parmeter, Election Precinct, Pierce, Washington, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 27-83, Sheet 3B, Line 53, Family 61, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790–2007, RG 29 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012), Roll 4356; Washington State Death Index.
21 Jackson, Kenneth, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967) 167–69Google Scholar.
22 Hiram W. Evans, edict, “Unmasking Announcement,” 18 Jan. 1928, Eastern Washington State Historical Society, Kontinental Klan Records, Butte 1916, 1921–31, Box 1, Folder 11.
23 The date of this rally is consistent with other regional gatherings that included mass unmaskings.
24 “Ku Klux Klan ‘Naturalization’ on Hill East of Town Saturday,” Sumner News, 13 Oct. 1922, 1; “Branch Klans Protest Restrictive Legislation,” Deseret News, 31 Jan. 1923, 3.
25 Catherine Parmeter quilt, Accession File, Yakima Valley Museum.
26 Ku Klux Klan collection (Tacoma, WA), Wilcox Collection, Kansas Collection, RH WL MS 33, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries.
27 Roberts, Elise Schebler, The Quilt: A History and Celebration of an American Art Form (Minneapolis: Voyageur Press, 2007), 74–75Google Scholar.
28 The Minnesota Historical Society houses the records of the WCTU spanning from 1877 to 1922. The Washington State Historical Society's records of the Puyallup WCTU span 1892, when their chapter was chartered, to 1910.
29 Blee, Women of the Klan, 103–18.
30 Harriet Baskas, “Ku Klux Klan Quilt,” Gone But Not Forgotten, KUOW, 12 Sept. 2005, at www2.kuow.org/program.php?id=9452; “Mrs. Parmeter's Klan Quilt” Hidden Treasures, National Public Radio, 25 Sept. 2005, at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4866157.
31 No record of the quilt's display exists prior to its inclusion in An American Art Form: Quilts from the Yakima Valley Museum Collections, temporary exhibit space, Yakima Valley Museum, 17 June–29 Sept. 2003; personal email from Mike Siebol, curator of collections, Yakima Valley Museum, 6 May 2016.
32 Barnett, Theresa, Sacred Relics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 53–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 James L. Swanson, “The Blood Relics from the Lincoln Assassination,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 2015. Ernest B. Furgurson, “A Host of Relics from Lincoln's Last Days All Came to Reside at the Smithsonian,” Smithsonian.com (11 April 2015), at www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/host-relics-lincolns-last-days-all-came-reside-smithsonian-180954832, accessed 1 Dec. 2016.