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THE KU KLUX KLAN, LABOR, AND THE WHITE WORKING CLASS DURING THE 1920S

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2018

Thomas R. Pegram
Thomas R. Pegram*
Affiliation:
Loyola University Maryland
*
email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Historians usually consider the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s to have been consistently opposed to labor unions and the aspirations of working-class people. The official outlook of the national Klan organization fits this characterization, but the interaction between grassroots Klan groups and pockets of white Protestant working-class Americans was more complex. Some left-wing critics of capitalism singled out the Klan as a legitimate if flawed platform on which to build white working-class unity at a time when unions were weak and other institutions demonstrated indifference to working-class interests. In industrial communities scattered across the Midwest, South, and West, white Protestant workers joined the Klan. In Akron, Ohio, the Klan helped to sustain white working-class community cohesion among alienated rubber workers. In Birmingham, Alabama, the Klan violently repressed mixed-race unions but joined with white Protestant workers in a political movement that enacted reforms beneficial to the white working class. But Klan attention to working-class interests was circumstantial and rigidly restricted by race, religion, and ethnicity. Ku Klux definitions of whiteness excluded from fellowship many immigrant and Catholic workers. Local Klans supported striking white Protestant workers when Catholic, immigrant, or black rivals were present, but acted, sometimes violently, against strikes that destabilized white Protestant communities. Ku Klux sympathies complicated urban socialist politics in the Midwest and disrupted the effectiveness and unity of the United Mine Workers. Lingering Klan sympathies among union workers document the power of reactionary popular movements to undermine working-class identity in favor of restrictive loyalties based on race, religion, and ethnicity.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 373 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2018 

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References

NOTES

1 I am indebted to Allen Safianow and Robert Chiles for advice and encouragement. Robert Woodrum and Mark Paul Richard pointed me to sources. Two anonymous readers provided expert editorial guidance. Keyssar, Alexander, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 225–37Google Scholar (quotations 227, 232). For Swift's settlement-house activity, see Davis, Allen F., Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 9, 40Google Scholar.

2 “A Klansman's Creed,” Imperial Night-Hawk, May 2, 1923, 7; Orbison, Charles J., “The Origin and Operation of the Constitution of the United States of America,” Papers Read at the Meeting of Grand Dragons, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan at their First Annual Meeting held at Asheville, North Carolina, July 1923 (reprint ed., New York: Arno Press, 1977), 29Google Scholar; “‘Wobblies’ Want Negro Members from South,” Dawn, Dec. 8, 1923, 13.

3 New York Herald, Oct. 3, 1923, clipping in American Civil Liberties Union Records, subgroup 1, The Roger Baldwin Years, Reel 31, Volume 228 [hereafter ACLU].

4 An Exalted Cyclops of the Order, “Principles and Purposes of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,” Papers Read, 29. Reichert, William O., “The Melancholy Political Thought of Morrison I. Swift,” New England Quarterly 49 (Dec. 1976): 557–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar identifies Swift's authoritarian and anti-Semitic sentiments.

5 Virginia Durr interview, Hardy T. Frye Oral History Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Auburn University, 14, 18 (quotation).

6 Scott Nearing, “Who Is Joining the Klan and Why,” Advance, Feb. 11, 1924, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228.

7 W. D. Robinson report, May 3, 1922, W. D. Robinson Papers, Series 1, Folder 2, Southern History Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Robinson also stated that “75 per cent of the yellow pine saw mill owners” also worked through the Klan “to keep out bootleggers and I.W.W. agitators.”

8 For opposing positions on the impact of class on progressive reform, contrast Shelton Stromquist, Reinventing “the People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Johnston, Robert D., The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar. Stromquist contends that progressives, fearing the disruptive potential of working-class consciousness, “banished the language of class from the vocabulary of reform” (4), thus hampering modern liberalism. Johnston, on the other hand, asserts that class consciousness on the part of the middle class was a vital element of progressive activism. One need not accept Stromquist's claims of a unified progressive movement or agree that progressives rejected class considerations to recognize the preference many progressives expressed for a harmonious civic ideal rather than class consciousness as a primary working-class identification.

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12 Nearing, “Who Is Joining the Klan.”

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14 “Akron Klansmen Refuse to Back Bosses of G. O. P.,” Ohio Fiery Cross, March 7, 1924, 5; John D. House book manuscript, “Birth of a Union,” 1978, Ohio Historical Society, 7, 8; Nelson, American Rubber Workers, 100. Kenneth T. Jackson estimated 18,000 members in the Klan, Akron (The Klan in the City, 1915–1930 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1967], 239)Google Scholar.

15 John Lee Maples, “The Akron, Ohio Ku Klux Klan, 1921–1928” (MA thesis, University of Akron, 1974), 42–43, 48–70, 101–10.

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19 Letwin, Challenge of Interracial Unionism, 182; Feldman, Klan in Alabama, 61; “Dynamite Used to Deter Workers from Organizing,” BLA, May 4, 1918, 4; “Antagonists of Labor Perpetrate Another Outrage,” BLA, June 15, 1918, 1 (quotation); William G. Shepherd, “The Whip Hand,” Collier's 81 (Jan. 7, 1928), 8–9, 44–45. For a detailed account of the steel strike, as well as Hale's correct name, see McCartin, Joseph A., Labor's Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912–1921 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 149–56Google Scholar.

20 Brownell, “New South City,” 40; Feldman, 17–31; “Get Ready for Big Naturalization at East Lake, Nov. 20,” BLA, Nov. 17, 1923, 4.

21 “Klan Komment,” Imperial Night-Hawk 1 (June 27, 1923), 5Google Scholar; A Great Titan of the Realm of Texas, “The Klan as a Civic Asset,” Papers Read, 66–67; Feldman, Klan in Alabama, 28–29, 57–58; “Free School Books and Supplies in First Six Grades of the Birmingham Public Schools,” BLA, June 2, 1923, 1. For labor support of education reform, see “Alabama State Federation of Labor Meets in Tuscaloosa, Monday, 20th,” BLA, May 11, 1918, 1; “The Two Mill School-Tax Should be Voted,” BLA, Apr. 24, 1920, 1; “Better Pay for Teachers an Absolute Necessity,” BLA, May 1, 1920, 1; and “Committee Hard at Work on Educational Problems,” BLA, Feb. 16, 1924, 1.

22 “The Cloven Foot Appears,” BLA, Sept. 22, 1917, 1 (quotation); Eskew, Glenn T., “Demagoguery in Birmingham and the Building of Vestavia,” Alabama Review 42 (July 1989): 200–205Google Scholar; Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, 86–87; Feldman, Klan in Alabama, 59; McKiven, Iron and Steel, 162–63. For the similarity of the True American platform of 1917 to 1920s Klan policy, see “The T. A. Platform as Published and as Practiced,” BLA, Sept. 22, 1917, 1.

23 Flynt, “Organized Labor, Reform, and Alabama Politics, 1920,” 163–80 (quotation 171); “Musgrove Greeted by Extraordinary Ovations,” BLA, Apr. 17, 1920, 8; “The Allied Labor and Farmer Ticket as Endorsed by the Allied Labor Committee,” BLA, May 8, 1920, 1; Pegram, One Hundred Percent American, 148–49.

24 BLA, “Results of the Primary Election,” May 15, 1920, 1 (“prohibition,” “religious question”); BLA, “Shall the City of Birmingham be Governed by Mob Law?,” July 30, 1921, 1 (“mob law”); BLA, “Trade Council Will Celebrate Labor Day at East Lake Park,” Aug. 20, 1921, 1; “Underwood Klan Accusation Subject to Grand Jury Investigation,” BLA, Oct. 11, 1924, 1 (“Law-abiding”); Feldman, Klan in Alabama, 118–21. For a cautious appraisal of the 1926 election, see Webb, Samuel L., “Hugo Black, Bibb Graves, and the Ku Klux Klan: A Revisionist view of the 1926 Alabama Democratic Primary,” Alabama Review 57 (Oct. 2004), 243–73Google Scholar.

25 Fine, Lisa M., Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004), 6Google Scholar (quotation), 62–64.

26 Illinois Miner, Dec. 8, 1923, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228; Housebook manuscript, 16, White, Samuel William, Fragile Alliances: Labor and Politics in Evansville, Indiana, 1919–1955 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), 54–55Google Scholar.

27 For this and the following paragraph, see Roediger, David R., Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 72–92, quotation 87Google Scholar.

28 “Why I Would Like To Become a Klansman,” Durango Klansman 1 (May 1925): 5Google Scholar; “Shortage of Labor a Myth, Ryan States,” Fiery Cross 2 (Oct. 19, 1923): 5Google Scholar; Gerlach, Larry R., Blazing Crosses in Zion: The Ku Klux Klan in Utah (Logan: Utah State University Press), 78–79Google Scholar; Newton, The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 58Google Scholar; Loucks, Emerson H., The Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania: A Study in Nativism (Harrisburg, PA: Telegraph Press, 1936), 40Google Scholar; Feldman, Klan in Alabama, 97.

29 Fry, Henry P., The Modern Ku Klux Klan (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1922; reprinted Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2003), 104–5Google Scholar; Evans, Hiram W., “The Klan's Fight for Americanism,” North American Review 223 (March 1926): 40–45Google Scholar. For the Klan and whiteness, see Pegram, One Hundred Percent American, 49–59.

30 Chang, David A., The Color of the Land: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832–1929 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 194–204 (quotations 200, 201)Google Scholar.

31 Phillips, Michael, White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841–2001 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 85–90 (quotations 87, 88)Google Scholar.

32 Goldberg, Hooded Empire, 80, 133–34, 146–47 (quotation 80).

33 “Klan Fights for the Paper Trust in Bangor, Me.,” Daily Worker, Feb. 11, 1924, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228; Piscatiquis County Supreme Judicial Court, March Term 1924, State of Maine v. Robert Pease, John Lucell, and Willard Parent, 21, Maine State Archives (notes kindly furnished by Professor Mark Paul Richard); “Three I.W.W.’s Sentenced,” New York Times, Mar. 22, 1924, 5; Richard, Mark Paul, Not a Catholic Nation: The Ku Klux Klan Confronts New England in the 1920s (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 6, 41–42Google Scholar; “Klan Votes on Strike,” New York Times, Oct. 22, 1924, 9.

34 Horowitz, David A., ed., Inside the Klavern: The Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 13, 19 (quotation)Google Scholar.

35 Robert L. Duffus, “The Ku Klux Klan in the Middle West,” World's Work 46 (Aug. 1923): 365–66 (quotation, 366); Sloan, Charles William Jr., “Kansas Battles the Invisible Empire: The Legal Ouster of the KKK from Kansas, 1922–1927,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 40 (Fall 1974): 393–94Google Scholar; Wallace, Jerry L., The Ku Klux Klan Comes to Kowley Kounty, Kansas: Its Public Face, 1921–1922 (Winfield, KS: Cowley County Historical Society, 2012), 18–20Google Scholar; Davis, Colin J., Power at Odds: The 1922 National Railroad Shopmen's Strike (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 97–98, 213, n. 72Google Scholar (second quotation). Critics of the Klan pointed out that the Kansas KKK hired John S. Dean, the attorney for the Associated Industries, the bitterly anti-labor state employers’ organization, as its counsel when Kansas attempted to banish the hooded order (“Klan Versus Union Labor,” Muncie Post-Democrat, May 30, 1924, 2).

36 “Arkansas Farmers Lynch Rail Striker,” New York Times, Jan. 17, 1923, 1 (all quotations); “‘Citizens’ Court’ Says It Has Saved Arkansas,” New York Times, Jan. 19, 1923, 8; Davis, Power at Odds, 154–55; Blevins, Brooks R., “The Strike and the Still: Anti-Radical Violence and the Ku Klux Klan in the Ozarks,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 52 (Winter 1993): 413–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 “Ku Klux in Harrison Before Gregor Was Hanged,” Garment Worker, Feb. 9, 1923, 1; “Arkansas Mob Rule,” Federated Press Bulletin, Aug. 25, 1923, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228; “Open Shop and Klux in an Alliance,” Labor Review, May 11, 1923, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 231 (see same article from International Labor News Service as “Ku Klux and ‘Open Shoppers’ in Labor Hating Alliance,” Garment Worker, May 11, 1923, 2).

38 “Gompers Wants Law Restored in Arkansas,” New York Times, January 24, 1923, 8; Davis, Power at Odds, 155; “Federation Spurns ‘One Big Union,’” New York Times, June 17, 1921, 13 (“mob violence”); “Labor Drops Issue of Road Ownership,” New York Times, June 21, 1922, 35; “Trades Unions Barred from Ku Klux Klan,” Garment Worker, Oct. 12, 1923, 8 (“no trade unionist”); “A Couple of Reasons Why Dunne Was Unseated as Delegate to the A. F. L.,” Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers’ Journal, Nov. 15, 1923, 20 (“blue shirt”). For examples of Dunne's actual opposition to the Klan, see Enyeart, John P., The Quest for “Just and Pure Law:” Rocky Mountain Workers and American Social Democracy, 1870–1924 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 242, 244Google Scholar.

39 “Labor and the Ku Klux Klan,” Butte Labor Bulletin, Apr. 18, 1924, 1, 3 (“Klowns”); “Central Council Condemns Ku Klux Klan,” Labor Unity, Feb. 1, 1923, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 231; Walker, John T., “Socialism in Dayton, Ohio, 1912 to 1925: Its Membership, Organization, and Demise,” Labor History 26 (Summer 1985): 384–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Errol Wayne Stevens, “Heartland Socialism: The Socialist Party of America in Four Midwestern Communities, 1898–1920” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1978), 247–48 (quotation 248).

40 Victor L. Berger, “Findings,” Milwaukee Leader, Jan. 2, 1924, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228 (“morons”); “Socialists Assail the Klan by Name,” New York Times, July 9, 1924, 6; Norman F. Weaver, “The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1954), 74–78. On the Knights of Columbus and Socialists, see James Oneal, “The Anti-Socialist Ku Klux,” New Age, Nov. 29, 1923, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228; for the Klan and Knights of Columbus, see Pegram, One Hundred Percent American, 76–78. For examples of Socialist nativism before the 1920s, see Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants, 228–35. Eastern Socialists were more likely to receive threats from Klansmen, as was the case for Reading, Pennsylvania mayoral candidate J. Henry Stump, targeted for his work among “those that crucified Christ—also those who owe first allegiance to an Italian priest and those who are of the scum of Europe” (“Another Ku Klux Note Gives Stump a Final Warning,” Reading Labor Advocate, Oct. 27, 1923, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228).

41 Walker, John T., “The Dayton Socialists and World War I: Surviving the White Terror,” in Critchlow, Donald T., ed., Socialism in the Heartland: The Midwestern Experience, 1900–1925 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 117–32Google Scholar; Robert A. Hoffman, “The Ku Klux Klan in Ohio,” New Age, Sept. 27, 1923, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228; Miami Valley Socialist, September 28, 1923, 2 (first quotation); MVS, September 7, 1923, 2 (second quotation); MVS, September 14, 1923, 2; Walker, “Socialism in Dayton,” 402.

42 “Socialists Assail the Klan by Name,” New York Times, July 9, 1924, 6.

43 “Grand Dragon Sends Reply,” Fiery Cross, Sept. 7, 1923, 1, 7 (quotation, 1); “Grand Dragon Speaks before Coal Miners,” FC, Sept. 21, 1923, 1, 3, 7 (quotation, 7). Hooded Indiana UMW miners had refused to work with anti-Klan miners. See Union Official (probably Lee Hall) to H. J. McAbier, Sept. 15, 1923, United Mine Workers of America, District #6 Collection, Box 2, Folder 10, Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, Ohio University Libraries.

44 Ayabe, Masatomo, “Ku Kluxers in a Coal Mining Community: The Ku Klux Klan Movement in Williamson County, Illinois, 1923–1926,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 102 (Spring 2009): 73–100Google Scholar. For examples of press coverage, see “Union Men Are Terrorized by Fake Dry Raids,” Labor Unity, Feb. 28, 1924, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228; and Agnes Wieck, “Ku Kluxing in the Miners’ Country,” New Republic (Mar. 26, 1924), 122-–4. For accounts of the Williamson County war, see Angle, Paul, Bloody Williamson: A Chapter in American Lawlessness (New York: Knopf, 1952), 134–205Google Scholar; and McGirr, Lisa, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (New York: Norton, 2016), 142–55Google Scholar.

45 “Ku Klux Klan Menace to Union Labor, Says Mayor of Kentucky City,” Pennsylvania Labor Herald, Sept. 1, 1923, (“destroy”); “Ku Klux Threaten Strike Organizer,” Federated Press Bulletin, Aug. 25, 1923, (“helped along”), both from ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 231; Harris, Abram L., “Strike of 1925 in Northern West Virginia,” Third Biennial Report, Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics of the State of West Virginia (Charleston: State of West Virginia, 1925–1926), 27Google Scholar.

46 “West Va. Klu Kluxers Send Threat to Organizer of Workers Party,” Daily Worker, Dec. 22, 1923 (“Imperialists”); “Kentucky Klansmen Are ‘Civilizing’ the Miners,” West Virginia Federationist, Jan. 3, 1924 (“propaganda”), both from ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228.

47 This and the following paragraph are drawn from Alan J. Singer, “Class-Conscious Coal Miners: Nanty-glo Versus the Open Shop in the Post-World War I Era,” Labor History 29 (Mar. 1988): 56–65; Alan Jay Singer, “‘Which Side Are You On?’ Ideological Conflict in the United Mine Workers of America, 1919–1928” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1982), 217 (quotation).

48 Beik, Mildred Allen, The Miners of Windber: The Struggles of New Immigrants for Unionization, 1890s–1930s (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 314–15Google Scholar.

49 Singer, “‘Which Side Are You On?’” 186–224; Beik, Miners of Windber, 316–17.

50 “Miner Insurgents Vote Lewis Down,” New York Times, January 30, 1924, 21; “Miners in Uproar, Fight Lewis's Rule,” New York Times, Jan. 31, 1924, 19; “Mine-Worker Politics,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 1924, 16; Lewis, Ronald L., Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780–1980 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 102–4Google Scholar.

51 Harris, “Strike of 1925 in Northern West Virginia,” 41.

52 “Bar Kluxers from Arkansas Mine Union,” Milwaukee Leader, Nov. 25, 1923, ACLU, Reel 31, Volume 228; Leonard McAbier to Lee Hall, Aug. 8, 1923; H. J. McAbier to Lee Hall, Sept. 3, 1923; H. J. McAbier to Lee Hall, Sept. 10, 1923 (date uncertain); Lee Hall (unsigned) to H. J. McAbier, Sept. 15, 1923 (all in United Mine Workers of America, District #6 Collection, Box 2, Folder 10). Three UMW Klansmen were tried before the executive board of Local 2528 and all denied membership in the Klan, despite testimony that fellow unionists had seen the three wearing Klan regalia at an open-air Ku Klux meeting in Redfield, Ohio. The uncooperative miners, following Klan policy, instead claimed to be attending a “church” or “100% meeting” (UMWA District #6 Collection, Box 2, Folder 10).

53 John Hessler to John L. Lewis, June 30, 1923; H. A. Henderson and John A. Riddle, General Counsel to John Hessler, Aug. 29, 1923; John L. Lewis to John Hessler, July 9, 1923 (all Series 11, District 11 [Indiana], Box 46, Folder 25, United Mine Workers of America, President's Office Correspondence with Districts (1822), Historical Collections and Labor Archives, Special Collections Library, Pennsylvania State University; United Mine Workers of America, 1924 Convention Proceedings (Indianapolis, IN: United Mine Workers of America, 1924), 795–813Google Scholar (“delicate,” 797; “destroy,” 802; “pioneers,” 808; “scabbed,” 811); “Miners Vote Down Klan Ban Repeal,” New York Times, Feb. 2, 1924, 3. For Hessler's fixation on the Klan, see Woodrum, Robert H., “Everybody Was Black Down There”: Race and Industrial Change in the Alabama Coalfields (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 228Google Scholar.

54 “To Oust Klan Miners,” New York Times, Apr. 3, 1924, 2; “Miners Scare Klansmen,” New York Times, Nov. 3, 1924, 4; W. T. Roberts to Lee Hall, Jan. 2, 1925, UMWA District # 6 Collection, (“embarrassing”); Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (New York: Quadrangle, 1977), 133–36;Woodrum, “Everybody Was Black Down There,” 116–17; Feldman, Klan in Alabama, 299–300.

55 Evans, Hiram Wesley, “The Klan: Defender of Americanism,” Forum 74 (Dec. 1925): 814Google Scholar.

56 Zerzan, John, “Rank-and-File Radicalism within the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s,” Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed 37 (Summer 1993): 1–12Google Scholar.

57 Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 71–73, 182.