Not Fundamentalists but Moralists and Political Actors - Essay Example

? 1920s Klansmen: Not Fundamentalists but Moralists and Political Actors 13 January 1920s Klansmen: Not Fundamentalists but Religious Nativists and Political Actors In 1915, William J. Simmons founded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan , Inc. (KKK) in Atlanta, whose membership expanded to three million during the mid-twenties, and where members no longer concentrated in Old South, but included those in the Midwest and Western states (Rhomberg 1998: 39). Several scholars such as Bennett in 1988 and Wade in 1987 argued that the 1920s Klansmen were fundamentalists with dominant “status anxiety” issues. Stanley Coben counters these historians and says: “In the 1920s, Klansmen were not a fringe group of fundamentalists bur rather solid middle-class citizens who were concerned about the decline in moral standards in their communities.” This paper discusses this argument using different journal articles and books. It agrees that the 1920s Klansmen were solid middle-class citizens concerned with declining moral standards, although literature also provides evidence that the Klansmen were religious nativists and active political actors who served diverse community-based social, economic, and political purposes. This paper begins with the historical analysis that the KKK were made of backward extremists. In The Party of Fear, David Bennett (1988:12) argues that the KKK is part of America's right-wing “subculture,” who rejected the evolving social conditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Klansmen attacked foreigners and communism, although Bennett (1988: 13) argues that the KKK was the “traditional nativism's last stand.” Bennett (1988) emphasises that the KKK developed as a response to widespread economic, cultural, and social changes. The economy was doing well enough for wages to increase and for people to buy numerous consumer goods (Bennett 1988: 204). Leisure time also increased and led to new values that promoted “hero” worship of movie stars and sports icons and cosmopolitan attitudes and practices (Bennett 1988: 203). At the other side of those who adjusted to the new America were the “losers,” who were mostly “small-town folk in the South, West, and lower Midwest” (Bennett 1988: 204). They were economic losers who “felt a terrible loss in the displacement of traditional values no matter what their personal economic or social situations” (Bennett 1988: 204). Bennett (1988: 204) argues that since these people could not access the new world of “sexual and social freedom,” they used repressive movements, such as the KKK, to advance their own values and interests. Bennett (1988) believes that the KKK provided the means by which nativists can regain their lost social status and by which they could call themselves as true American heroes, while charging Catholics, Jews and numerous “un-American” minorities as the causes of society's social, cultural, and economic problems. Another work underscores the fundamentalist nature of the Second Klan. Wyn Craig Wade's (1987) The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America is geared for the masses and less scholarly in writing style than Bennett's work. Unlike Bennett, Wade (1987) argues that racism, lawlessness, and Reconstruction values and goals had driven people to establish the KKK. He opposes Coben's analysis that KKK were not fundamentalists. For Wade (1987), the 1920's Klansmen were fundamentalists who were bent on cleansing society of un-American values and races. Wade (1987), nevertheless, supports Bennett (1988) that the Klansmen were made of economic losers from rural areas. Wade (1987) also agrees with Coben that there is a religious nativist tone in the KKK's activities. The Klansmen wanted to preserve conservative values and to promote Prohibition laws that were aligned with Protestantism, particularly Victorian values and attitudes. They were religious nativists because they rejected other religious values and practices, which became more prevalent with the rising ethnic minority population. Wade (1987: 219) wrote a chapter on Indiana, the state with the biggest and politically most powerful Klan group in the 1920s, to argue that the KKK was most successful in Indiana, because of its “clannishness and backwardness.” He stressed that “displaced, uneducated Southern rustic” were the dominant population in Indiana (1987: 219). It was their simple and “narrow-minded arrogance” “that the Ku Klux Klan would exploit to the hilt” (Wade 1987: 221). Coben and Moore, however, do not agree with Wade and Bennett. Coben (1994) finds Moore's analysis credible with his exhaustive use of records, and where Moore shows that the KKK were ordinary people who wanted to preserve Protestant religious beliefs. Moore (1990) agrees with Coben that morality issues turned a number of middle-class citizens into Klansmen and that the KKK movement could be argued as a populist one. Moore (1990) studied Indiana Klansmen through acquiring detailed information about their members using census data, public documents, and church membership lists. Moore's findings showed that Indiana Klansmen were ordinary citizens, while Kazin (1992: 141) described them as “truly average, by every demographic marker.” These Klansmen mainly came from different occupations, but were largely white, male Protestants who desire to preserve religious nativist values (Moore 1990: 352). They lived in different communities, not just rural ones or in the south like traditional historians stressed, because many Klansmen also came from central and northern counties (Moore 1990: 352). For Moore, the cross-section characteristics of Indiana Klansmen give evidence that “the Klan was a popular social movement, not an extremist organization” (Moore 1990: 352). Furthermore, Coben (1994), Lieven (2004), and Moore (1990) agree that the KKK were not racial nativists, although they did oppose the rising immigrant population. Moore (1990: 352) underlines that the racist rhetoric of the Klansmen had a minor role in the KKK's activities. Lieven (2004: 132) confirms that “negrophobia” was the least of the Klan's worries. Moore (1990) stresses that it is also simplistic to argue that the Indiana Klan was a vigilante group or composed of racial fundamentalists. His study showed that these Klansmen were only concerned of building a “cohesive” community, which can be inferred from its “spectacular social events, civic activities and philanthropic works” (Moore 1990: 352). They were not satisfied with the lax execution of Prohibition laws and demanded a greater number of schools (Moore 1990: 352). They pushed local politicians to promote numerous social and civic projects that also benefited communities in general. Moore (1990), however, rejects Coben's analysis that declining moral values was the main community issue for the Klansmen. Moore (1990) argues that the diversity of community issues compelled middle-class citizens to form and join the KKK of the 1920s. This was evident in his study of Klansmen Indiana, where Klansmen supported diverse causes, according to community needs and issues. Goldberg also supports Moore. Goldberg's Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado used membership lists for the biggest Klan chapter in Denver and rural Fremont County. Goldberg agrees with Moore and Coben that the Klansmen were not low-status and socially marginalised. Denver and Fremont County Klansmen represented the populations where they came from. They were also political activists who pursued numerous social and political aspirations. Goldberg (1981) argues that the focus of the Klansmen changed from one community to another, because of different community problems. Denver and Pueblo, says Goldberg (1981), were concerned of Prohibition and related anti-vice legislations. In Fremont County, Goldberg (1981) shows that the Klansmen were concerned of the political and economic hegemony of the Canon City's elite. These business leaders already succeeded before the KKK was formed and they blocked KKK's calls for modern roads, a sewage system, and new school buildings (Goldberg 1981). The KKK was successful in weakening the economic elite, nevertheless. The Colorado Klan, however, was quite hostile against ethnic minorities and they staged violent activities toward the latter (Goldberg 1981). Goldberg asserts, however, that these racist vigilante movements were isolated events and transpired in high white-Protestant populations. Rhomberg (1998) agrees with Moore (1990) that the Klansmen were political actors: “[...] the Klan, rather than a deviant aberration, should be seen as a significant actor in the urban political arena” (39). Rhomberg (1998: 41) describes that Oakland KKK organizers W.G. McRae and R.M. Carruthers promoted the KKK as a “patriotic fraternal society” that aimed to “keep closer check upon public officials,” to avoid lax execution of public responsibilities, and to “fix its attention on the prosecution of cases involving the honor of women.” These scholars indicate that the Klansmen were ordinary people who were not pervasively rural or backward in thinking. Instead, they persevered to pursue social, cultural, and economic goals through political activities. Coben disagrees with the traditional historical interpretation of the 1920s KKK as backward and rural fundamentalists. Rhomberg, Moore, and Goldberg agree with Coben that the Klansmen wanted to improve moral values and they were generally ordinary and middle-class citizens coming from both urban and rural areas. These scholars, however, promote the view that the Klansmen were significantly community-centered, in terms of their political, social, and economic aspirations. This paper then shows that scholars have different ideas of what the KKKs wanted to achieve. As a whole, nevertheless, modern revisionists agree that the KKK was more than a fundamentalist organisation and they highlight the social, political, and economic contributions of the 1920s Klansmen to their communities. Bibliography Bennett, David H. 1988. The Party of Fear : From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press). Coben, Stanley. 1994. 'Ordinary White Protestants: The KKK of the 1920s.' Journal of Social History, 28 (1), pp.155-165. Goldberg, Robert Alan. 1981. Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado (Urbana : University of Illinois Press). Kazin, M. 1992. 'The Grass-roots Right: Hew Histories of U.S. Conservatism in the Twentieth Century.' American Historical Review, 97 (1), 136-155. Lieven, Anatol. 2004. America Right Or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Moore, Leonard J. 1990. 'Historical Interpretations of the 1920's Klan: The Traditional View and the Populist Revision.' Journal of Social History, 24 (2), 341-357. Rhomberg, Chris. 1998. 'White Nativism and Urban Politics: The 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Oakland, California.' Journal of American Ethnic History, 17 (2), 39-55. Wade, Wyn Craig. 1987. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York : Simon and Schuster). Read More