From 1922 to 1925, Chicago saw itself embroiled in a controversy that many thought was endemic only to the South. As part of a nationwide movement, the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan set up shop on the shores of Lake Michigan, and within a year had secured thousands of white-sheeted, hooded adherents. Preaching “100 percent Americanism,” and white Protestant supremacy, the Chicago Klan found fertile ground for its ideals of bigotry. Different from its Reconstruction predecessor, the new Klan of the 1920s tailored its message of hate to each specific territory it invaded. In Chicago, that message preyed predominantly on the insecurities and fears of Protestants against Catholics. Thousands of Chicagoans heeded the call, and for two years the Klan flourished, holding meetings, social events, and recruitment drives. The Chicago Klan published a weekly newspaper entitled Dawn that kept the faithful tuned in to all that was happening in Chicago Klandom. In response, a small group of investors founded the American Unity League, devoted to the eradication of the Klan in Chicago and across the country. Publishing its own newspaper, Tolerance, the A.U.L made significant inroads in their mission against the Klan. After a short, but intense two-year battle, the Chicago Ku Klux Klan and its sworn enemies flamed out as quickly as they ignited, all but forgotten to memory and history. How it was possible and why its remnants are so rare are perhaps more significant than the events themselves.
National Origins
The revival of the Ku Klux Klan had its genesis atop Stone Mountain in Georgia in November of 1915, two weeks before the Atlanta opening of D.W. Griffith's cinematic homage to the Klan of the Reconstruction era, Birth of a Nation. William Joseph Simmons, a tall, imposing fraternal organizer, led a band of fifteen followers to the top of Stone Mountain. There, by the light of a burning cross, the group swore allegiance to the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. A week later, the group received its first charter from the state of Georgia. From these humble beginnings, "Colonel" Simmons' Klan, which he referred to as "my child...my first born," grew over the next ten years into an organization that claimed over two million members in forty-eight states. [1]
While founded as a memorial to the original Klan, the new version evolved with important differences. During Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan emerged in response to Republican rule in the South, and white Southerners' fears that their superiority would be challenged by blacks. Carpetbaggers and scalawags were viewed as traitors to their race, and the Klan's efforts to intimidate African Americans into subservience were seen as redemptive. As one southern woman noted, "No brighter chapter in all the South's history, no fairer page, will ever be read than that which tells of that illustrious and glorious organization called the Ku Klux Klan." [2] Responding to emancipation and its perceived effects on the social, economic and political order in the former Confederacy, the Klan emerged as a Southern, rural, anti-black movement after the Civil War.
Reaction Against Forces of Modernity
The reemergence of the Klan in the early twentieth century was in response to societal changes of a different nature. The census of 1920 proclaimed that for the first time more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas. This growth brought significant changes to the American cultural landscape. Urban popular culture - with its jazz rhythms, mass media, bright lights and literary experimentation - lured millions of rural Americans, especially young people, with its siren song of modern living. However, for many Americans with traditional conservative values, urban culture was bewildering and frightening . The forces of modernity and diversity inherent in urban culture triggered a desire in many to return to times of “normalcy.” The flappers and rogues of the jazz age, whose lifestyles purported fast cars, suggestive music and loose sexuality, represented the dangers of urban life to many.
Here the Ku Klux Klan stepped in to offer an illusory hope of imposing rural values on this exciting, but dangerous environment by turning back the clock to an idealized version of the status quo of the 1890s: fundamental Protestantism, white supremacy, extra-marital chastity, and respect for paternal authority. Liquor was evil, and Prohibition laws were to be obeyed. In fact, all laws were to be obeyed, and the postwar crime wave was targeted by the Klan, as were dishonest politicians. Whores, bootleggers, gamblers, and grafters had no place in the Klan’s America. And in their struggle to resist the modern world, the Klan found that “liberals were a worse menace than foreigners.”[3]
The growth of the cities, particularly in the industrial North, was due in large measure to the huge influx of the “new” immigrants - those from eastern and southern Europe, whose languages, customs, appearance, and, perhaps most significantly, religions were distinctly different from earlier immigrants from northern and western Europe. These new immigrants - Poles, Italians and Russians, in particular - were largely Catholics and Jews. While the new Klan certainly did not discard the old Klan's attitudes toward African Americans, its focus in the 1920s was directed primarily against Catholics. Derided as "popery" and "Romanism," anti-Catholicism proved to be an effective recruiting tool for the Klan. Catholics were portrayed as being disloyal to the United States, their true allegiance reserved exclusively to the Pope, whose secret mission was world domination. Fantastic stories circulated about Catholic plans for revolution. One rumor claimed Catholic families celebrated the births of their babies by burying a gun and fifty rounds of ammunition for each child beneath the local Catholic church until they reached shooting age, when the guns would be dug up and used to seize power and give the United States to the Pope. In Kokomo, Indiana, word spread that the Pope was "pulling into town on a southbound train from Chicago to take over." A mob formed and stoned the train.[4]
In addition to the cultural changes occurring in the cities, other events help explain the climate that made large-scale Klan membership possible. Widespread disillusionment over the results of World War I left many desiring a return to isolationist policies. Americans were promised a "war to end wars" that would "make the world safe for democracy," neither of which came true. Government-sanctioned discrimination against Germans and the Espionage and Sedition Acts conditioned many Americans to accept intolerance of differences. The anti-communist crusade of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial illustrated for many an America where dissent, especially when brandished by immigrants, was not to be tolerated. For a growing number of Americans, the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty was all too literally true: America was taking in Europe's "wretched refuse of its teeming shore."
Marketing and Visibility
While the Ku Klux Klan had its roots in the rural South, the new Klan of the twentieth century spread rapidly through the urban North, and by 1922 Chicago had the largest membership of any city in the United States. This growth was unforeseen by Colonel Simmons in 1915. In the first five years of its existence, Simmons’s Klan had procured a meager membership of less than two thousand Southern men.[5] National expansion, and the Klan’s growth to the urban North, became a reality as a result of two events: Simmons’s agreement to turn over recruiting to two enterprising promoters in 1920, and an expose of the renewed Klan in the New York World in 1921.
Edward Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler formed the Southern Publicity Association and used their talents to market organizations like the Anti-Saloon League, the Salvation Army, and the Red Cross. After Tyler’s son-in-law joined the Ku Klux Klan, Clarke and Tyler contracted with Simmons to create a Propagation Department in exchange for a two dollar and fifty cent cut of each new recruit’s ten dollar initiation fee. In order to expand recruitment around the country, Clarke and Tyler devised a strategy where kleagles (paid organizers) were encouraged to study their local territories and identify groups that might be considered enemies to native-born Protestant whites: Mormons in Utah, union radicals in the Northwest, and Asian Americans on the Pacific Coast. Using modern marketing and advertising techniques, kleagles began by soliciting their friends and acquaintances and followed all contacts with application blanks, Klan propaganda material and a solicitation for dues. Protestant ministers were recruited, and the national office sent lecturers - often Protestant ministers – to speak about the need for the Klan’s crusade of militant Protestantism. Their strategy worked: during the first six months of their efforts, Clarke and Tyler claimed the recruitment of 85,000 new members.[6]
Alarmed by the Klan’s growth, the New York World began a three-week expose of the group on September 6, 1921. Based on months of research by Rowland Thomas, the articles placed particular emphasis on the more violent aspects of the Klan, and were carried by eighteen newspapers across the country. Partly as a result of the World’s coverage, the United States House of Representatives began an investigation of the alleged misdeeds of the Klan. Imperial Wizard Simmons was called to testify. Dressed impressively, and exuding confidence and respectability, Simmons used the occasion to promote the Klan’s virtues. He testified that the Invisible Empire neither promoted nor tolerated violence of any kind, and that the Klan’s oath and ritual were a matter of public record. He further stated that the violent actions attributed to the Klan were in fact perpetrated by troublemakers hiding behind the robes of the Klan. Simmons dramatically swore “in the presence of God,” that if the Ku Klux Klan were guilty of a hundredth part of the charges made against it, “I would from this room send a telegram calling together the grand kloncilium (executive council) for the purpose of forever disbanding the Klan in every section of the United States.” In the end Congress did nothing, partly because Representative W.D. Upshaw of Atlanta introduced a bill calling for similar investigations of other “secret” societies – including the Knights of Columbus.[7]
The net effect of the investigations of Congress and the World was that the Klan received free, nationwide publicity. Many people outside of the East tended to side with the Klan simply because a New York paper had condemned it. The Klan now became a popular topic of conversation and within a year, membership applications – many of them facsimile blanks printed in the New York World – poured in to Klan headquarters, increasing the rolls from one hundred thousand to almost one million nationally. [8]
Fertile Ground in Chicago
At first glance, Chicago seemed to be an unlikely place for Klan recruitment. The city’s staggering growth – from 503,185 in 1880, to 2,701,705 just forty years later in 1920 – was largely a result of new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. The census of 1920 showed that Chicago was the home to over 1,000,000 Catholics, 800,000 foreign-born immigrants, 125,000 Jews, and 110,000 African Americans. The city seemed to embrace and embody all that was modern and exciting of the Roaring Twenties. Fifteen breweries, 20,000 speakeasies, and the underworld crime and violence of men such as Al Capone, Dion O’Banion, and Johnny Torrio gave the city a well-justified reputation for vice, corruption and lawlessness. But the Ku Klux Klan found fertile ground in Chicago in the 1920s, and by 1922, Chicago had the largest Klan membership of any city in the nation.[9] Fully 13% of those eligible in Chicago – adult, white, Protestant, men - had joined the Klan by 1922.[10] What accounted for the unprecedented popularity of such a rural-based movement in a giant, cosmopolitan metropolis like Chicago?
The answer almost certainly lies in the origins of the Protestant population of Chicago. The Klan was, in fact, a small-town phenomenon in spirit, and in some ways, Chicago was, too. The Klan of the 1920s flourished most strongly in newer cities and those which had grown dramatically within a generation or two: Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Dayton, Indianapolis, Denver and Chicago.[11] Here were millions of newly-urbanized people. For while immigrants made up a significant portion of Chicago’s population growth, hundreds of thousands of newcomers arrived from the farms and small towns of the Midwest as well. In addition to those who were lured by the bright lights and excitement of the big city, many white Protestants were driven off the farms by low crop prices, new machinery, and competition from corporate farms, and came to Chicago to work in the city’s growing industries. Many brought with them the educational limits and social insecurities of the decline of rural America. The Klan offered comfort to people who lamented the loss of a way of life that they felt defined America:
And what a sensation they caused on a Friday night in some drab little town when they paraded holding blazing torches. A Klan parade passed by in utter silence, a silence so complete, some claimed, that you could almost hear the breathing of the crowd. What a release this was from the inferiority complex of these grade-school graduates, struggling for a crust in a severe economic recession, forced by an industrialized, urbanized world into daily awareness of their position at the bottom of society. They fastened like the shipwrecked to the one positive attribute they possessed – their old-stock Americanism. In their daft way they believed that this single virtue qualified them to be guardians of society. Don the flowing robes, converse in the cryptic speech of the Klansman, parade past a crowd awed into silence, and for a while the burning sense of inferiority was gone. A nobody in the world became a somebody in the Klan.[12]
True to the marketing techniques of Edward Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler, the Chicago Klan adapted its message to its constituency. With African Americans comprising only four percent of the city’s population in 1920, the Chicago Klan focused its efforts on capitalizing on Protestants’ fears about the one million-plus Catholics scattered across the city in 231 parishes.[13] Distribution of Chicago Klan membership in 1923 shows a nearly identical number of members on the north and south sides of the city, at a time when virtually all African American housing was limited to a small strip on the south side known as the “Black Belt.” [14]
Gaining a Foothold in Chicago
The Chicago Ku Klux Klan began its recruitment drive in June of 1921 with the arrival of Grand Goblin (regional commander) C. W. Love from Indianapolis. Setting up shop on Clark Street, Love and his staff of forty-one recruiters worked through the summer lining up prospective Klansmen. Their initial efforts culminated on the evening of August 16, when 2,376 candidates were initiated in a meadow six miles south of suburban Lake Zurich. Headlines in the Chicago Tribune the next day proclaimed “Ku Klux Rites Draw 12,000.” [15] As a result, John V. Clinnin of the United States District Attorney’s office in Chicago initiated an investigation into the Klan. After months of research, Clinnin declared that, although the organization would foster disorder and anarchy, he could find nothing on which to base legal action. The Chicago city council moved as well, unanimously passing the following resolution on September 19, 1921:
Whereas the traditions and odium attached to the Ku Klux Klan and the acts which have been attributable to it make it a menace to a city like Chicago, having a heterogeneous population and different religious creeds; now therefore be it: Resolved, that the city council of Chicago officially condemns the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Chicago and pledges its services to the proper authorities to rid the community of this organization.[16]
But investigations and resolutions did not have the desired effect, and membership rolls increased by leaps and bounds in the coming months. Typically, the Klan would only charter one chapter in any given city or town, but Chicago was eventually able to support more than twenty neighborhood Klan units. Groups were chartered in racially threatened areas of the south side, including Englewood, Woodlawn, and Kenwood. Charters were also granted in areas that were ethnically, but not racially threatened on the north and west sides: Irving Park, Logan Square and Austin. By 1922, large-scale Klan demonstrations were brazenly held near Joliet in June, and at 91st and Harlem in Chicago in August.[17]
Image Enhancement: A Kinder, Gentler Ku Klux Klan
Image-enhancement became a priority for the Chicago Klan, and church visits became a regular activity. The usual scenario for such visits was the interruption of a Protestant church’s services while the robed Klan members processed up the aisle to leave a monetary donation to the church, then left as quickly as they had arrived. Such visits took place at Douglas Park Christian Church, Pacific Congregational Church, Third Congregational Church, the Southfield Community Church and the Nazareth Evangelical Church. At Immanuel Baptist Church at 23rd and Michigan Avenue, five hundred Klansmen filed past the minister, dropping contributions in a large basket. Adding speculation to the church’s preordained complicity was the presence of a Chicago Tribune photographer, who snapped photos for the following day’s edition.[18]
Klan recruitment even reached the Chicago public schools. Schools Superintendent Peter A. Mortenson ordered an investigation into the practice of Klan members paying Chicago school children to collect the names and addresses of Protestant classmates’ families. The mothers of the families were then sent circulars addressed “To Protestant Women of American Birth.” Extolling the virtues of the Ku Klux Klan, the pamphlets read, in part:
Although as a woman you are not eligible for membership, you will, we are sure, if you sympathize with the aims of this order, not take it amiss if we venture to suggest that you might send us on a slip of paper a list of a few Protestant gentlemen who you think would be interested in hearing about the organization.
Supt. Mortenson declared that the Klan’s activities were a clear violation of school rules and that they would not be tolerated. Interestingly, he also added, “I would take the same action against any society or organization. This is not a crusade on my part against the Ku Klux Klan.”[19]
By October of 1922, the Chicago Klan’s image-enhancement plan included the first edition of a weekly publication entitled Dawn. Originally published in the Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago’s south side, Dawn extolled the virtues of “100 percent Americanism,” and in its first issue made this claim to brotherhood:
Not to advocate the oppression of any people, white or black. Not to malign anyone. Not to foster hatred in any way, but for the purpose of bringing together in whose union all one hundred percent Americans, The Dawn enters the field. Brazenly, as we will be quoted, we announce “our creed” and what could be more glorious than the creed of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
By invoking Protestant Christianity, unfailing loyalty to the flag of the United States, and God’s intention that the races be kept separate, Dawn characterized the Ku Klux Klan as nothing more than another fraternal organization. “It is impossible to judge folks correctly on first sight,” the first edition stated. “And when we attempt to do so we most often find that we are decidedly wrong.” [20]
From October 21, 1922 until its final edition of February 9, 1924, Dawn was published weekly, coming out every Saturday at a price of 10 cents. With the exception of its somewhat crudely drawn cover, Dawn was a slick publication that kept readers informed of Klan-related activities nationally and locally. Letters to the editor, editorials, advertisements for local businesses, and classified ads gave the paper a mainstream look. Generally eschewing the overt racism against African Americans one might expect from a Ku Klux Klan organ, Dawn tended to focus on its anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant theme in the name of “100 percent Americanism.”
In spite of the Ku Klux Klan’s legacy as an organization of violence and intimidation, the Chicago Klan of the 1920s was remarkably nonviolent. Klansmen were repeatedly reminded that theirs was a nonviolent organization, and that offenders would be punished by the legal authorities as well as by the Klan. Only one incident marred an otherwise unblemished record. On June 15, 1922, three Klansmen were arrested at four o’clock in the morning for speeding on Archer Avenue. When police pulled the car over, they discovered that the license plates had been altered with grease and found in the car two loaded revolvers, a blackjack and a cat-o’-nine-tails. The arrested men admitted that they were on their way back from Morris, Illinois where they had unsuccessfully attempted to flog a chiropractor who had supposedly mistreated a young girl, although the three could not tell authorities who the girl was, nor the nature of her mistreatment. After locating the chiropractor at a Morris dance, the Klansmen followed him home and attempted to drag him into their car. He successfully fought them off and reached the safety of his home. “About six weeks ago I began receiving letters signed by the Ku Klux Klan,” he said. “They ordered me to quit my chiropractic practice and leave Morris under threats of being horsewhipped or otherwise mistreated if I failed to comply.” The three Klansmen boasted from their Chicago jail cell that “The Klan is powerful, it will not let us stay in jail or suffer for what we’ve done - the Klan has too much influence for that; it will get us out of trouble, come to our rescue.” In spite of their confidence, the three were returned to Morris for trial without incident.[21]
A more widely publicized story was the strange case of Mildred Erick. On February 7, 1923, Chicago Police found the twenty-six-year-old woman nearly unconscious and bleeding profusely. She told of being threatened by the Ku Klux Klan because of her recent conversion to Catholicism. A musician, Erick had been singing in Catholic church choirs and was taking pipe organ lessons at St. Louis Academy at 117th and State. She claimed she had been abducted by a man wearing a black mask and thrown into a car, where she passed out. Upon awakening, she found herself beside the railroad tracks in Roseland, with nine crosses cut into her body in several places, including the middle of her back. The police were skeptical, but headlines implicated the Klan. The story took a bizarre turn two days later, when Erick’s father, Henry Erick, swore out a warrant for his daughter’s arrest, charging disorderly conduct. After being taken into custody, Mildred admitted she had carved the crosses herself. She had recently moved out of her parents’ home to live with Margaret Alexander, a nurse who had lived with the Ericks until being forced to leave by Henry Erick. Mildred told police she invented the story and carved the crosses in her own body in response to her father joining the Ku Klux Klan. The father told police he believed there was something unusual about the girls’ friendship. He said Miss Alexander bought clothes for Mildred and gave her money when she was out of work, and that Miss Alexander held a peculiar influence over his daughter. Miss Alexander admitted a great fondness for Mildred, and said she was helping her with her musical education because of Mildred’s remarkable ability. Mildred Erick died at age 67 in 1962, 39 years to the day after her confession. Her obituary lists her “dear friend, Miss Valerie Alexander.”[22]
In fact, the only major acts of violence involving the Chicago Ku Klux Klan were those perpetrated against it. On April 5, 1923 the former publishing office of Dawn, located in Hyde Park, was practically demolished by a black powder bomb. The office had only a month before been moved to the Loop. Soon after, bombs rocked the shops of roofer F. W. Gilliland, and jeweler George A. Penrose, both of whom had advertised in Dawn.[23]
In its drive for public acceptance, the Klan of the 1920s portrayed the threat of Catholicism not in religious terms, but political. According to Imperial Wizard Evans, “The real objection to Romanism in America is not that it is a religion - which is no objection at all - but that it is a church in politics; an organized, disciplined, powerful rival to every political government.” The Pope was seen as a political autocrat with a ravenous desire to extend his political influence across the Atlantic. Klan orators spoke of a Romanist uprising and the “confessions” of Helen Jackson, an “escaped nun” were distributed at Klan rallies. Wild stories circulated about Protestant girls being held captive in convents, of Catholics gaining control of the heights around Washington, D.C., and of the Knights of Columbus drilling at night and storing arms in the churches.[24]
Political Forays
The Chicago Klan attempted to flex its political muscle in response to two legal moves by the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. The first was the city council’s investigation of Chicago firemen suspected of being Klansmen. As a result of the investigation, Fire Commissioner John F. Cullerton recommended Fire Marshall Arthur F. Seyferlich to retire a reputed “kleagle” and scatter four other firemen to widely separated stations. The reputed kleagle, Fireman George Green, was ordered retired on pension. The other four were all members of engine company 117, stationed at Chicago and Laramie Avenues. Cullerton defended the decision by stating, “Consider the public danger of a situation should firemen refuse to extinguish a blaze because the owner or occupant of a building belongs to a race or creed opposed by a secret order to which they might belong.” The Chicago Tribune reported that two of the transferred firemen were “hit hard” by the order that placed one of them in “the heart of the Ghetto,” engine company No. 6, 559 Maxwell Street, and the other “into the center of a Polish district,” hook and ladder company No. 19, Chicago Avenue and May Street.[25]
Largely as a result of the city council’s actions, Republican State Representative Adelbert H. Roberts of Chicago’s Third District introduced an anti-mask bill in the Illinois Legislature on January 16, 1923. Designed to outlaw public displays by secret societies like the Klan, the measure became law in the summer of 1923.[26]
Faced with its first serious legal challenges, the Chicago Klan decided to fight fire with fire by running or supporting local politicians in the upcoming elections. In the Republican mayoral primary, Arthur M. Millard, a political unknown, finished a surprising third, ahead of Municipal Court Judge Bernard P. Barassa. Millard, rumored to be the Klan’s candidate, garnered 51,054 votes in an almost secret campaign, offering some indication of the Klan’s strength in Chicago in 1923. The victor in the Republican primary, Arthur C. Lueder, a Lutheran, faced Democrat William E. Dever, a Catholic. Rumors of Klan support for Lueder were fanned by the distribution of anti-Catholic pamphlets throughout the campaign. Offsetting the anti-Catholic vote was the endorsement of Dever by the Chicago Defender, convincing many African Americans to vote against the Republican party for the first time because of the Klan issue. Dever’s election by 105,000 votes was interpreted as a decisive defeat for the Chicago Klan. The aldermanic elections saw similar results. Klan-backed candidates in the Eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fortieth and Thirty-seventh Wards were all soundly defeated.[27]
The Battle of the Weeklies: Dawn vs. Tolerance
Perhaps the greatest challenge that faced the Chicago Klan was the formation of the American Unity League on June 21, 1922. Founded by Robert H. Shepherd, Grady K. Rutledge, and Joseph G. Keller, the A.U.L.’s sole purpose was the eradication of the Ku Klux Klan in Chicago and across the nation. Its main weapon was a weekly newspaper entitled Tolerance. Sold at newsstands, bus stops and Catholic churches for a dime, Tolerance was the A.U.L.’s answer to the Chicago Klan’s Dawn. The ongoing battle between the two publications became the focus of the pro- and anti-Klan forces in Chicago. In fact, by 1923, Tolerance had become such a thorn in the Chicago Klan’s side that the majority of the editorial space in Dawn was devoted to discrediting the rival publication. The intensity of this rivalry resulted in a high-stakes struggle, complete with intrigue, espionage, traitors, payoffs, double-crosses and lawsuits.
The two publications had some similarities. Both were weeklies – Dawn appearing on Saturdays, Tolerance on Sundays – and they were of similar size and length. Both began publication in the fall of 1922, and neither lasted beyond the middle of the decade – Dawn bowing out in February of 1924, Tolerance lasting nearly a year longer, until January of 1925. Dawn claimed a Chicago circulation of 35,000; Tolerance managed to sell 150,000 copies in its heyday. But Dawn was more consistently published. Due to legal problems, Tolerance was forced to shut down operations for several weeks twice during its short run. Dawn was also able to procure much more advertising: local merchants, lawyers, contractors, undertakers, and restaurants, as well businesses that manufactured figurines, candles and lamps shaped like little hooded Klansmen. Initially, at least, scores of local businessmen – especially on the south side and in the Loop – were eager to advertise in a publication of the Ku Klux Klan. One advertiser, the Quality Coffee Company, 7942 Dorchester, stressed their “Kuality, Koffee, and Kourtesy” in their ad.[28]
Outing the Klan: A.U.L.’s Visibility Campaign
In assessing how best to attack the Klan, the American Unity League learned well the lessons of the past. Exposing the Klan’s beliefs and tactics were not only ineffective, but counterproductive. The Ku Klux Klan’s ideals appealed to many Americans; the success of Birth of a Nation, and the Klan’s growth after the New York World’s expose proved that. Instead, the A.U.L. reasoned that the way to bring down the KKK was to expose the members themselves. As Louisiana Governor John Parker told an A.U.L. audience in Chicago, “Tell their neighbors just who these people are who seek to lie hidden while they plot against the community and the nation, and their neighbors will take care of them.”[29]
The A.U.L. used Tolerance as its means of exposing Klan members. In the first issue, on September 17, 1922, Tolerance listed the names, addresses and occupations of one hundred and fifty Chicago Klansmen, and A.U.L. Chairman Patrick H. O’Donnell stated the policy of the newspaper:
We feel that the publication of the names of those who belong to the Klan will be a blow that the masked organization cannot survive. Many Klansmen are in business or in the professions and are dependent largely upon patronage of those groups they classify as alien. We feel that it is only just that their attitude be made public. [30]
The trick, of course, was gaining access to the names. Membership rolls in the Invisible Empire were a closely guarded secret. The American Unity League had on its payroll as many as seven investigators, but the bulk of the names came from former Klansmen. Some had been banished from the Klan, some had left over power struggles, and others were double-agents. Dr. Mortimer E. Emrick, who provided the A.U.L with its first list, was a leader in the Woodlawn Klan who resigned after unsuccessfully attempting to reorganize the south side klaverns. Dixie Shea, W.A. Hill, and Louis D. Wisbrod were all A.U.L. informants who managed to secure positions inside the Klan. The most prolific name supplier was a professional musician named Marvin V. Hinshaw, a former king kleagle of the Domain of the Great Lakes who was banished from the Invisible Empire for “conduct unbecoming a Klansman.” Hinshaw approached the A.U.L. claiming to have a “friend in Chattanooga, Tennessee” who had a list of six thousand names of Chicago Klansmen for sale at the rate of three dollars per name, or $18,000. Hinshaw rejected the A.U.L.’s initial counteroffer of six hundred dollars. When the offer was raised to twenty-five hundred dollars, Hinshaw showed up at A.U.L. headquarters at 127 N. Dearborn with the names. Lulled into a false sense of security by an impressive stack of cash on the table, Hinshaw gave the names to Grady Rutledge, who excused himself to another room to supposedly compare them with other lists the A.U.L. had acquired. Sprinting out a back door, Rutledge dashed through the Loop to the law offices of Patrick O’Donnell at Randolph and Clark, where the names were locked in a secret vault. Hinshaw’s pile of money turned out to be less than two hundred dollars. Hinshaw was eventually given another one hundred and fifty dollars, a far cry from the original $18,000 he had sought.[31]
By January, 1923, Tolerance had printed the names of four thousand Chicago Klansmen and was prepared to print six thousand more. Exactly how many Klansmen renounced their memberships is impossible to determine, but evidence suggests the number was substantial. Several small businessmen testified in court how their businesses suffered as a result of being “outed” by Tolerance. The president of the Washington Park National Bank was listed in the fifth issue of Tolerance. By the time the bank’s board of directors convinced him to step down, the bank had lost thousands of dollars in withdrawals. “I signed a petition for membership in the Klan several months ago,” the bank president lamented. “But I did not know it was anything else than an ordinary fraternal order.” [32]
The most telling evidence of the effectiveness of Tolerance’s visibility campaign was the Klan’s reaction to it. Blasting the A.U.L.’s methods as a “miserable weapon of cowards,” the Klan sued the American Unity League for revealing its secrets and temporarily succeeded in stopping the publication of Tolerance. From early 1923 until its demise in February, 1924, Dawn’s single-minded purpose was the eradication of the A.U.L. and Tolerance.[33]
Friendly Fire: The Repercussions of Listing
Printing the names they acquired from the many sources proved to be a mixed blessing for the A.U.L. Undeniably effective as a tool for reducing the ranks of the Chicago Klan, the visibility campaign included listings that were not always accurate. Some names that were included were originally forged by Klan recruiters to artificially bolster their recruiting numbers, and others were listed by the informants out of spite. The careers of several apparently innocent people were severely damaged when their names were included on the Klan lists, and the American Unity League itself was irreparably damaged by dissension and lawsuits as a result of printing erroneous names. A plumber and a physician each sued the League for twenty-five thousand dollars, and an attorney with an undertaking business filed a one hundred thousand dollar slander suit in Superior Court after being listed. The lawyer-undertaker, J. William Brooks, claimed that as a result of his name being published, “practically all his clients had deserted him, members of his parish church avoided him, and the undertaking business was ruined.” [34]
Louis J. Behan, a prominent attorney and fourth degree Knight of Columbus, was featured in a full page accusation for allegedly purchasing the full regalia of a Klansman. Behan claimed that the accusation was published soon after he spurned an A.U.L. representative seeking financial support for Tolerance.[35]
The most damaging of the suits filed against the A.U.L. was brought by William Wrigley, Jr., millionaire gum manufacturer, and owner of the Chicago Cubs. Tolerance had gained possession of a Ku Klux Klan application in Wrigley’s name, with his apparent signature on it. After publishing Wrigley’s name as a member of the Klan, Wrigley filed a fifty thousand dollar lawsuit against the American Unity League, and offered another fifty thousand to charity in the name of anyone who could prove he had signed a membership application for the Klan. The signature, which resembled a fictional signature that appeared on the wrapper of Wrigley chewing gum, but bore no likeness to his actual signature, was described by the gum manufacturer as “a rank forgery and about as much like mine as the north pole like Vesuvius.” Eventually, the Klansman who claimed to have taken Wrigley’s application admitted the whole thing was a forgery.[36]
Grady Rutledge, editor of Tolerance and secretary of the A.U.L. later charged that A.U.L. Chairman Patrick O’Donnell was behind the Wrigley scheme from the start. Rutledge claimed that soon after Tolerance began publishing names, O’Donnell instructed him and A.U.L. Treasurer Robert Shepherd to “get the goods” on Wrigley, stating that he was sure Wrigley was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Rutledge made all his usual contacts, but could find no evidence linking Wrigley to the Klan. Several weeks later, after returning from out of town, Rutledge discovered that Shepherd had secured an application to the Klan in Wrigley’s name. Rutledge found this unusual for several reasons. “Of all the names published in Tolerance while I was editor, that of William Wrigley, Jr. was the only one that came through a separate source,” he said. “It was the only name I ever knew of coming to us singly. And it was the only name that we ever had that was backed up by an original questionnaire – forged or otherwise.” When O’Donnell and Shepherd published Wrigley’s name over Rutledge’s objections, Rutledge secured an injunction restraining O’Donnell and Shepherd from interfering with the publication of Tolerance. When the ensuing legal battle was won by O’Donnell and Shepherd, Rutledge left the A.U.L. and defected to the Ku Klux Klan.[37]
Pronouncing himself a Gentile, a Protestant, and a descendent of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Rutledge’s surprising about-face was comprehensive. Rutledge not only joined the Klan; he became the featured writer for Dawn for the remainder of the newspaper’s run. Rutledge’s articles exposing the inner workings of the A.U.L. and Tolerance became the centerpiece around which the newspaper was based. In the articles, Rutledge lambasted his former colleagues, asserting that the A.U.L. and Tolerance “are moneymaking enterprises capitalizing race hatreds and religious prejudices,” whose only supporters were “the Roman Catholic Church and the several lay organizations composed of Catholics.” Rejected by Protestants and Jews because of the A.U.L.’s “insincerity,” Rutledge maintained that the
organization’s membership was grossly exaggerated. In their efforts to expose Klan members, Rutledge wrote that “Tolerance editors have no evidence of Klan membership against nine out of ten men whose names they publish.” Further, A.U.L. leaders “urge the adoption of physical violence against Klansmen.” The disgruntled founder of the American Unity League and Tolerance, now writing for the newspaper of Chicago’s Ku Klux Klan, suggested that, “Anyone wishing to contribute his hard earned money to finance O’Donnell, Shepherd, et al in their effort to Unite Catholics, Jews, Negroes and foreigners in a fight with White, Gentile, Native, Protestant Americans for the control of our country should send his contribution to the Pope’s branch office, A.U.L. headquarters, 127 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago.” [38]
Dissension and Decline
By late 1923, internal dissension and the A.U.L’s visibility campaign began to take their toll on the Chicago Klan. On the national level, KKK founder William Simmons had been duped into accepting a ceremonial position, Emperor of the Invisible Empire, which essentially “kicked him upstairs.” Meeting in Atlanta for an “Imperial Klonvokation,” Klan bigwigs turned the reins over to Dallas dentist Hiram W. Evans, by electing him Imperial Wizard. By the time Simmons had discovered the ruse, it was too late. Changes had been made to the Klan Constitution which stripped him of any real power, and land he had set aside for building a university had been sold. Incensed, Simmons decided to form a women’s Klan. He took control of the White American Protestant Study Club of Oklahoma, changed its name to Kamelia, and called it the official ladies’ auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan. Simmons’s failed attempt to retake the Imperial Palace in Atlanta resulted in a tangle of lawsuits, the upshot of which eventually sent Simmons into quiet retirement and solidified Evans’s control over the Klan.[39]
In Chicago, the national power struggle created local dissension. Simmons came to Chicago in July of 1923 and was able to corral the loyalty of four of the city’s largest and most influential chapters. Imperial Wizard Evans immediately suspended the charters of the four klaverns, and came to Chicago in August to try to quell the schism by urging all Klan members to adhere to the duly constituted authorities in Atlanta. Despite the loyal support of Illinois Grand Dragon Charles Palmer, the Chicago klaverns remained deeply divided. In the fall of 1923, Palmer removed from office the presidents of ten Chicago chapters; the following year he banished fourteen thousand Illinois Klansmen for disloyalty. The upheaval caused the national office to replace Palmer by the end of 1924. By then the Chicago Klan was in disarray and the end was near. Dawn had ceased publication in February of 1924, and in May, all twenty-six Chicago chapters had merged into one unit, none of them retaining enough members to operate on their own. Evidence of Klan activity was sporadically reported in Chicago in 1925 and 1926, but for all practical purposes, the Chicago Klan was dead.[40]
Conclusion
The Ku Klux Klan’s emergence in Chicago in the 1920s involved a significant number of people for a short period of time. As part of a nationwide resurgence of the Klan, the Chicago movement drew headlines more for the threat it posed than for any particularly newsworthy events. Other areas of the country experienced violence, and a Klan march on Washington in 1925 drew media attention. From a practical standpoint, however, Klan and anti-Klan activities in Chicago were not highly significant in that most Chicagoans were not affected, and the activities had no real long-term effects. Violence was minimal; no one was killed; no one went to jail; no significant laws were enacted; and no politicians were elected, or not elected, as a result of it. Significantly, very little evidence remains that it even happened. For example, despite the large circulation of Tolerance, there does not appear to be a single complete collection of it in existence. Apparently, no one felt it was important enough to save. Historians have all but ignored the Chicago Klan. Kenneth Jackson’s research is the most significant available, and it only comprises one of the sixteen chapters in his book, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930. No one has seen fit to publish anything further in nearly forty years. [41]
What is significant about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Chicago in the 1920s is the relative insignificance with which it was perceived at the time. Racism and bigotry were so much a part of many people’s lives that the resurgence of the Klan did not inspire the kind of revulsion and indignation that would be expected in modern society. In many ways, and to many people, the Ku Klux Klan was just another fraternal organization. Hundreds of Masons joined the Chicago Klan, and Masonic halls were frequently used for Klan meetings.[42] One of the most prominent Chicagoans listed in Tolerance, Augustus E. Olsen, President of the Washington Park National Bank, admitted he had joined the Klan, with the defense that he didn’t know that it was anything other “than an ordinary fraternal order.” He was convinced to resign by the board of directors only after thousands of dollars had been withdrawn from the bank by many of its Irish Catholic and Jewish depositors. Indeed, much of the effectiveness of the visibility campaign was that listed Klan members lost business from their Catholic, African American, and Jewish customers.
Professional baseball player George Sisler of the St. Louis Browns, a member of baseball’s Hall of Fame, was named by Tolerance as a Klansman in two issues, yet I could find nothing about the accusation or any response he may have had to it.[43]
Dozens of ordained Protestant ministers warmly embraced the Chicago Klan as long as the robed and hooded columns of men who interrupted their services continued to drop money in the collection basket. After the Chicago city council originally forced the retirement of two Klan firemen, they were both eventually reinstated. Both enjoyed long and productive careers, one attaining the rank of captain in 1939, the other lieutenant in 1940. And no less than the Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools was unable to condemn the Klan’s infiltration of the city’s schools without adding that he held no special rancor for the Invisible Empire: “I would take the same action against any society or organization. This is not a crusade on my part against the Ku Klux Klan.”
Even the main pro-and anti-Klan protagonists often seemed to have little passion for the extreme positions they espoused. The American Unity League found a healthy roster of former Klansmen eager to betray and spill the beans on their former compatriots - some for money, some for spite, and some because they apparently enjoyed the intrigue. And the founder, president, and publisher of the only major anti-Klan organization in Chicago, the A.U.L., and its organ, Tolerance, almost miraculously reversed everything he believed about bigotry and prejudice to become the most vocal proponent of the Chicago Ku Klux Klan, all due to a business squabble with his coworkers.
Chicagoans joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s by the thousands because they believed in its message of white, Protestant supremacy. Thousands left the Klan only when their identities were revealed to their Catholic, Jewish, and African American neighbors, who then refused to do business with them. The remainder left the Klan when it became apparent that the Klan was unable to prevent the changes occurring in society that were chipping away at that dream of permanent white, Protestant supremacy.
Bibliography
Primary sources:
Chicago Tribune, 1921-1925
Dawn, 1922-1924
Tolerance, 1922-1925
Secondary sources:
Blee, Kathleen M. Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. Berkeley:University of California Press, 1991.
Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. New York: Franklin Watts, 1981.
Goldberg, David J. Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
Jackson, Kenneth T. The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
Perrett, Geoffrey. America in the Twenties: A History. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Shanabruch, Charles. Chicago’s Catholics: The Evolution of an American Identity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
Skerrett, Ellen, E.R. Kantowicz, and S. M. Avella. Catholicism, Chicago Style. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993.
Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the city, 1915-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 34
Geoffrey Perrett, America in the Twenties: A History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 34
David J. Goldberg, Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 34
Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 34
Ellen Skerrett and others, Catholicism, Chicago Style (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993). 34
Charles Shanabruch, Chicago’s Catholics: The Evolution of an American Identity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 34
David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Franklin Watts, 1981)
The Ku Klux Klan in Chicago, 1922-1925
by David Craine
[1] Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 4.
[2] Ibid., 25.
[3] Geoffrey Perrett, America in the Twenties: A History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 75.
[4] Ibid., 77.
[5] David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Franklin Watts, 1981), 31.
[6] Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 20-21.
[7] Jackson, 12.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Jackson, 95.
[10] Ibid., 126.
[11] Perrett, 74-75.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Charles Shanabruch, Chicago’s Catholics: The Evolution of an American Identity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 238.
[14] Jackson, 114.
[15] Chicago Tribune, 17 August,1921.
[16] Jackson, 95.
[17] Ibid., 96.
[18] Ibid., 98; Chicago Tribune, 21 August,1922.
[19] Chicago Tribune, 26 November, 1922.
[20] Dawn, 21 October, 1922.
[21] Chicago Tribune, 16 June and 2 July, 1922..
[22] Ibid., 9, 10 ,13 February, 1923; 12 February, 1962.
[23] Jackson, 113; Dawn, 14 April, 1923.
[24] Jackson, 20-21.
[25] Chicago Tribune, 2 January, 1923.
[26] Jackson, 110.
[27] Ibid., 110-113
[28] Dawn, 19 May, 1923.
[29] Jackson, 106.
[30] Ibid., 103.
[31] Dawn, 7 April, 1923.
[32] Jackson, 104.
[33] Dawn, 19 May, 1923.
[34] Jackson, 115.
[35] Dawn, 21 April, 1922.
[36] Jackson, 115.
[37] Dawn, 28 April, 1923.
[38] Dawn, 31 March, 1923.
[39] David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Franklin Watts, 1981), 100-108.
[40] Jackson, 122-125
[41] When contacted in connection with this paper, Dr. Jackson responded, “The copies of Tolerance I found were within the records of a court case. So you have probably seen more issues than I have. I would love to see a copy of your work.”
[42] Jackson, 95 ; Tolerance, 26 November, 1922.
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