Storm in the Time of Shelter Vol. 1

Institute For Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University Volume 1

Richmond, VA Saturday, April 21, 2018 - Sunday, September

Believing that all people living under Our American Flag should Know the the Origin, Organization and Ideals of the Knights of the States of and the long-term impact on the current systems of the United

STORM IN THE TIME OF SHELTER Paul Rucker

9,

2018 Truth concerning Ku Klux Klan

America.

Produced on the occasion of Declaration, the inaugural exhibition of the Institute for Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA

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GUIDE ORGANIZATION

pg. 6

IDEOLOGY

pg. 14

ORIGIN

pg. 10

NEWSPAPERS

INTRODUCTION

The KKK robe was an image that captured my imagination when I was younger. Growing up in South Carolina, I witnessed Klan rallies. But I didn’t think much about them until 25 years later, when I started researching the organization.

The Ku Klux Klan, I learned, had three distinct waves.

The second wave in the 1920s had five million active members – equal to the population of New York City at the time, or 5% of the US 2

population at the time. The Klan robe factory in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia was so busy, it became a 24-hour factory. Twenty thousand robes were on hand at all times to keep up with demand.

This work, “Storm in the Time of Shelter,” is based on a hymn my mother knows well from her years as a church organist. The images of “storm” and “shelter” have special meaning when associated with the dramatic rise in

Klan membership in the early 20th century. Thinking about the image of the KKK robe, and its rapid proliferation, I wanted to make art that made others feel its power. And I wanted to share what I learned about the Ku Klux Klan’s origin, organization, and ideology, because its influence continues, sewn into the very fabric of White American culture.

PAUL RUCKER

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THE KLU KLUX KLAN

EARLY KLAN COSTUME Late 1860s

EARLY KKK

The archetypal costume of the Ku Klux Klan became popular during the second revival of the Klan from 19151944. It is one of the Klan’s most distinctive features and is recognized around the world.

The outfit (sometimes referred to as the “glory suit” by Klansmen) consists of a floor-length white robe and a white, sharply pointed cloth hood that covers the face and is cut with eyeholes. It is frequently decorated with a

round, red badge bearing the insignia of a white cross. The costume has some variations based on rank or region (different colored robes, for example), but the basic design was intended to disguise the wearer’s identity and to give the wearer an intimidating, disturbing appearance.

The origins of the costume are unclear. Similar garments have been worn traditionally by penitents in Spain and Portugal during Holy

Week, the days preceding Easter Sunday. In Spain and its former territories, the cone-shaped hats with eyeholes are called “capirote.” They evolved during the 16th century, when the Spanish inquisition was in full swing. Despite its visible resemblance, the capirote is unrelated to the KKK hood.

It was William J. Simmons of Atlanta who may be responsible for the costume we associate with the KKK today. Obsessed by fraternal

organizations (very much in vogue at the start of the 20th century) and inspired by Thomas Dixon Jr.’s novel “The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan,” Simmons re-established the Klan as a fraternal organization in 1915. The new organization (and Simmons himself) made their profit from membership dues – $10 – and from Klan regalia, which Simmons manufactured and sold.

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THE FIRST KLAN

The first KKK began violence against African Americans in the South during the 1860s Reconstruction Era, and died out by the early 1870s.

It was founded in1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee by six veterans of the Confederate Army. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide identities.

A secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence against black and white Republicans.

They worked to curb the education and economic advancement of blacks, as well as the right of blacks to vote and to keep and bear arms. It had no membership rosters, no chapters, and no local officers.

There were never hierarchical levels or centralized headquarters, but the Klan spread into nearly every southern state, launching a “reign of terror against Republican leaders both black and white.” In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Force Acts, which were used to prosecute Klan crimes and suppress Klan activity.

NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST Confederate fighter, slave trader, millionaire and the Klan’s first Grand Wizard (Leader)

Historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership:

Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of anti-black vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own.

Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen.

PRESS PHOTOS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN PARADE 1925

THE SECOND KLAN

THOMAS DIXON

Southern Baptist minister and Playwrite who penned The Clansmen.

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The second Klan movement was a very large, controversial, nationwide organization in the 1920s. It was founded near Atlanta, Georgia in 1915 by William Joseph Simmons, with fifteen “charter members.” The second Klan adopted a modern business system of recruiting, and rapidly grew nationwide at a time of prosperity in the early and mid-1920s. During this time, the group adopted the standard white costume along with code words from the first Klan. (Sales of the costumes, together with initiation fees, financed the movement.) Cross burnings and mass parades were added. Its appeal was directed exclusively at white Protestants, preaching “One Hundred Percent Americanism.” The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation’s eligible population,

approximately 4–5 million men. The second Klan’s anti-black, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic agendas were reactions to new issues of urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. The massive immigration of Catholics and Jews from eastern and southern Europe and the Great Migration of African Americans to the North led to white Protestant fears about jobs, housing, and social competition.

Most Klansmen were lower- tomiddle-class whites who were trying to protect their jobs and housing from the waves of newcomers to industrial cities.

The cross had never been used as a symbol by the first Klan. The second Klan embraced the practice of burning a Latin cross primarily as a symbol of intimidation. It was loosely based on ancient Scottish clans’ burning a St. Andrew’s cross (X-shaped) as a beacon to muster forces for war.

It was adopted as a 1920s Klan ritual modeled after the film

IN THE 1920S THE KLAN INCLUDED 4-5

The Birth of a Nation, which inaccurately portrayed the first Klan practicing cross burning.

Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as Reinhold Niebuhr in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan, gaining national attention.

Though most members of the KKK saw themselves as holding to American values and Christian morality, virtually every Christian denomination officially denounced the Ku Klux Klan. The formation of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also effectively campaigned against the Klan and its agendas. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930.

MILLION MEMBERS

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THE KU

THE THIRD KLAN

KLUX KLAN (KKK OR THE KLAN) IS THE NAME OF THREE DISTINCT MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Numerous independent local groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation used the “Ku Klux Klan” name, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they forged alliances with Southern police departments and governors’ offices and operated with

impunity. To combat local and state support of the Klan, the government revived the Force Acts and the Klan Act from Reconstruction days, which federal prosecutors used effectively as a basis for investigations and indictments of Klan activities and members.

Once African Americans

secured federal legislation to protect civil and voting rights, the KKK shifted its focus to opposing court-ordered busing to desegregate schools, affirmative action and more open immigration.

ADVERTISEMENT FOR FORREST & MAPLES The slave trading business that made Nathan Forrest a millionaire

THE CURRENT KLAN

The current Klan manifestation consists of numerous small, unconnected groups that use the KKK name.

They have all emphasized secrecy and distinctive costumes.

All have called for purification of American society, and all are considered right wing. Today, many sources classify the Klan as a “subversive or terrorist organization.” Researchers estimate that there may be 150 Klan chapters with upwards of 5,000 members nationwide, with about two-thirds of KKK members concentrated in the Southern United States and another third situated primarily in the lower Midwest.

Many KKK groups have formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis, adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads. For some time, the Klan’s numbers have been steadily dropping. This decline has been attributed to their

history of violence, a proliferation of competing hate groups, their lack of competence in the use of the Internet, and a decline in the number of young racist activists who are willing to join groups at all.

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ORGANIZATION pg. 10

pg. 6

pg. 14

ORIGIN

IDEOLOGY

NEWSPAPERS

Klan robe & hood, 1920 Worn by a Knight’s Kamellia K-Duo Klansman, the Primary Order of Knighthood. pg. 15

Ship Slave branding iron pg. 9

The Clansman by Thomas Dixon pg. 7

Civil War era twist tobacco label I.D stamp “RICHMOND” pg. 8

Allen & Ginter, The Richmond Mixture tobacco tin pg. 8

Souvenir program book for Birth of a Nation Movie pg. 7

Confederate States of America $100 Bill pg. 9 The Clansman movie program pg. 7

Birth of A Nation movie poster pg. 20

The Clansman Playbill book pg. 7

Runaway Slave branding iron pg. 9

ORIGIN 6

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BIRTH OF A NATION

The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman) is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, by Thomas Dixon, Jr. The film chronicles the relationship of two families in Civil War and Reconstruction era: the pro-Union Northern Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy Southern Camerons over the course of several years. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln

by John Wilkes Booth is dramatized.

)

5 vel (190 o n e h T nsman, oth by The Cla 1906), b ( y a l p and r..

Dixon J s a m o Th

The Play : The Clans man Liberty T heater, New York , NY Opening D ate: January 8 , 1906 Total Perfo rmances: 51

The film was a commercial success but was highly controversial, owing to its portrayal of black men (played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan (whose original founding is dramatized) as a heroic force.

There were widespread African American protests against the film in cities across the nation, such as in Boston, where thousands of white Bostonians flocked to see the film. The NAACP spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to ban the film.

The film portrays black Americans as political and cultural threats, utilizing intermarrying and voting to ultimately dominate white society. This stoked the worst fears of white Southerners of the time. In the narrative, the whites fight back by forming the Ku Klux Klan, even portraying a lynching. By the end of the film on an election day, blacks find a line of mounted and armed Klansmen just outside their homes and are intimidated into not voting.

The Birth of a Nation original souvenir program (1915)

A title card within the film states,

“The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright.”

nsman The Cla nged to ha (name c of a th The Bir shortly Nation rog ram after) p . booklet (1915)

The film is also credited as one of the events that inspired the formation of the second era of the Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia, in the same year. The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruiting tool for the KKK. Under Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, it was the first motion picture to be screened in the White House.

Although the KKK relaunch was timed to coincide with the debut of “The Birth of a Nation,” D. W. Griffith’s cinema adaptation of “The Clansman,” the new Klan drew few members in its first five years. Only after Simmons hired professional publicists in 1920 did Klan membership take off, peaking at millions of members in 1925.

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BOX BROWN Henry “Box” Brown was born in 1816 in Louisa County, Virginia, and was a slave for thirty-three years before he escaped to Philadelphia in a wooden crate. During his life as a slave, Brown suffered relatively little physical abuse by his slaveholders, but his story makes clear the toll of emotional and psychological cruelty slaves were forced to endure, and the desperation that fosters an escape.

Brown’s first owner was John Barret, a former mayor of Richmond who treated his slaves relatively kindly. Brown was fed and clothed, and never whipped. In an account of travels to a granary in a neighboring county, Brown described how other slaves “gazed earnestly” upon him and his brother, amazed to see them dressed in shoes, vests, and hats.

When John Barret was dying, Brown and his brother were summoned to his bedside.

The boys hoped to be set free, but Barret instead instructed

them to obey his son, William Barret, who inherited the slaves of his father. Brown was thirteen years old.

In the years that followed, Brown worked at a tobacco factory in Richmond owned by William Barret. In the 1830s, plug, twist, and snuff tobacco were the top commodities shipped from Richmond. There was minimal use of machinery in the tobacco factories, which meant they relied heavily on slave labor to accommodate demand for processed products. Half of Richmond’s residents were black, and three-quarters of these were slaves. Depending on the season, one-fourth to one-third of Richmond’s black residents were employed in tobacco manufacturing.

At the factory where Brown worked, 120 of the 150 black men employed were enslaved. Slaves there worked fourteen hours a day in summer and sixteen in winter.

TOBACCO LABEL I.D STAMP “RICHMOND”

ILLUSTRATION OF HENRY BOX BROWN’S “RESURRECTION” IN PHILADELPHIA. From William Still’s 1872 book The Underground Railroad

Brown specialized in twisting tobacco, a valuable skill in the 1830s tobacco market. Brown describes exerting himself “to the utmost to please Barret,” who rewarded him with new clothing, spending money, and a continued immunity to the whip. Yet life in the factory became more difficult with the hiring of John F. Allen as overseer. Brown described one account of an enslaved man who missed work due to extreme illness. The slave was forced to the factory where Allen whipped the man until he passed out. Brown witnessed merciless and barbaric behavior daily, as did hundreds of other enslaved men and women in Richmond, due to the booming tobacco industry.

In 1836, when Brown was twenty, he fell in love with a

slave woman named Nancy, owned by a Mr. Lee, who worked for the local bank.

Brown married Nancy and paid his wife’s master fifty dollars a year not to sell her. He paid an additional seventy-two dollars to rent a house for their family, which grew to include three children.

In August of 1848, Brown left his wife and children at home, as usual, where Nancy worked washing clothes for her master’s family. When he returned, he found that they had been sold to a slaveholder in North Carolina. Brown begged his master for help in rescuing his family, but was told, “You can get another wife.” Brown walked in tears beside his wife and children, enchained with over three hundred other slaves, for as long as he could.

After months of grieving his betrayal, Brown vowed to escape. He burned his hand with vitriol oil and claimed he was too injured to work in order to buy time to plan. He was also a man of faith; it was 1849 when, as Brown described, he heard in his mind the words, “go and get a box, and put yourself in it.”

Brown hired a carpenter to build a box, and he enlisted two friends to help him escape: James C. Smith, a free black man who sang in the church choir with Brown, and Samuel Smith, a white sympathizer from Massachusetts. On March 23, 1849, the Smiths nailed Brown into a box 3’ long by 2’8” deep by 2’ wide and sent the box as “dry goods” to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. The box was lined with coarse woollen cloth, and Brown carried with him only a few biscuits and a bladder of water to “bathe [his] neck with, in case of too great heat.” There was only one hole in the box for air.

It took the Adams Express Company (a private mail service favored for their discretion) twenty-seven hours to deliver Brown, via wagons, railroads, steamboat and ferries, to his destination.

Though the box was labeled “This side up, with care,” the box was often handled roughly, and Brown several times found himself upside down.

He later wrote that he “was resolved to conquer or die, I felt my eyes swelling as if they would burst from their sockets, and the veins on my temples were dreadfully distended with pressure of blood upon my head.” At one point, Brown was convinced death was “inevitable”, but fortunately, two men needing to sit down toppled the box off its end and sat upon it-- “I was thus relieved from a state of agony which may be more imagined than described.”

Quaker merchant Passmore Williamson along with three other members of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee received the box

containing Brown on the morning of March 30. They opened the box to find a sweat-drenched Brown, who greeted them with “How do you do, Gentlemen?” and recited a psalm: “I waited patiently on the Lord and He heard my prayer.” Brown spent a short time in Pennsylvania before ALLEN & GINTER traveling to Boston to speak at an anti-slavery rally. It was there he was nicknamed “Henry ‘Box’ The Richmond Mixture tobacco tin Brown.” Brown published a narrative of his life and and toured New England to promote it,

becoming a well-known speaker on the anti-slavery circuit. After passage of the Fugitive Slave

Law of 1850, which required law enforcement officials to cooperate in capturing refugee slaves even in free states, Brown moved 88

to England for safety. There, Brown continued his work, touring England with an antislavery panorama for the next ten years.

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CHATTLE SLAVERY

Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of the owner and

are bought and sold legally as commodities. Typically, under the chattel slave system, children born to slaves receive slave status at birth.

BRANDING IN AMERICAN SLAVERY

Slave owners used extreme punishments to stop slaves from escape. Most slave owners used whipping to punish slaves, but at times they also used branding. They used a branding iron to mark slaves’ palms, shoulders, buttocks, or cheeks. In testimony from a Kentucky slave owner in 1848, a runaway slave is described as having “a brand mark on the breast something like L blotched.”

In Louisiana, there was a “black code”, or Code Noir, which allowed the cropping of ears, shoulder branding, and the cutting of tendons above the knee as punishments for recaptured slaves.

South Carolina laws specifically described the punishments permitted for slaves. When a slave ran away, if it was a first offense, the slave could receive no more than forty lashes. A second offense warranted branding.

The slave’s forehead would be marked with the letter

RUNAWAY SLAVE BRANDING IRON

“R,”signaling that they were a criminal and a runaway.

SLAVE BRANDING IRON IN USE

SHIP SLAVE BRANDING IRON

19th Century Used to mark the free Africans as slaves before they were places on board the ship

RICHMOND ISSUED CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA $100 BILL With slaves depicted working

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ORGANIZATION pg. 10

pg. 6

pg. 14

ORIGIN

IDEOLOGY

NEWSPAPERS

Klan Newspapers.

Voice of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; February 8, 1923 The Call of The North; December 12, 1923, The Fiery Cross; April 20, 1923, The National Kourier; August 8, 1924 pg. 11

Constitution and Laws of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan pg. 13

Ku Klux Klan Coin pg. 12 The Outlook Magazine December 19, 1923 pg. 11

Women’s auxiliary membership documents pg. 13

Application for Admission to The Women of the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy pg.13

TIME Magazine featuring Imperial Wizard pg. 13

Kleagle’s Pledge of Loyalty document pg. 13

The Sacramento Star, Friday, May 5, 1922

Oath of Allegiance boilerplate document

Principles and Purposes of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Pamphlet pg. 12

Ku Klux Kismet sheet music

by Mary Gue, arranged by Walter Ardrell Riggs

“Scum O’ the Melting-Pot,” Anti-Immigration pamphlet Klansman Manual Knights of the Ku Klux Klan First Annual Meeting of Grand Dragons pg. 12

Various Klan membership cards, warning and intimidation calling cards

Ku Klux Klan Farm Postcards pg. 11

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POSTCARDS OF KU KLUX KLAN FARM Tuscarawas County, Ohio

On June 14, 1924, nearly 100,000 men, women and children congregated at a farm on Crooked Run Rd. west of New Philadelphia, Ohio in perhaps the largest gathering ever held in Tuscarawas County history.

The occasion? The state conclave of the Ku Klux Klan, held at the Tuscarawas County Protestant Farm.

The New Philadelphia Daily Times estimated that 25,000 automobiles were parked in fields at the farm. Members of the Tuscarawas County Klan – clad in white robes and hoods – directed traffic at the event.

Delegations from nearly every

county in the state attended, and entertainment for the event included an hour-long fireworks display and a performance by the Tuscarawas County Klan Glee Club.

The KKK emerged as a powerful organization in the Midwest in the 1920s and counted tens of thousands of members in Ohio. Its growth was spurred by fear of communism, rampant lawlessness and a rising tide of immigrants pouring into the United States from eastern and southern Europe.

The Tuscarawas County chapter was organized in March 1922. But it remained a fringe

organization until Robert S. Cox, a paid organizer for the Klan, arrived in the county on March 27, 1923. Cox, a natural-born salesman, turned his talents to recruiting new members for the organization, and, under his leadership, the KKK grew by leaps and bounds – from 80 members when he arrived, to about 10,000 within two years.

On Jan. 2, 1924, the Klan purchased a 247-acre farm on Crooked Run Road, two and a half miles west of New Philadelphia, for $23,000 for the site of its Protestant Home Farm. That December, the Klan launched a $75,000 building

program, which included a new club house and assembly room. Soon, the local Klan had a women’s organization and a group for children.

Activities were held throughout the year at the Klan farm – picnics, worship services, and biblical pageants in which Robert Cox took a prominent part. He and his wife lived at the farm and over time, Cox advanced up the Klan ranks from farm manager to Exalted Cyclops of Tuscarawas County to Grand Titan of Province No. 4, Realm of Ohio.

Stanley B. Frost (1881-1942) was a journalist who published several articles on the Ku Klux Klan focusing on its political power in Oklahoma and at the 1924 Democratic Party national convention. Later he covered the Teapot Dome scandal. Most of his articles appeared in The Outlook magazine.

He authored the book The Challenge of the Klan in 1924 which was based upon his Klan articles from The Outlook. Some authors on the Klan have observed Frost’s apparent sympathy with the hooded order.

The rise of the KKK in the 1920s can be attributed partly to the mainstream news media mocking the Klan. This not only boosted numbers for the Klan, it also created people who were sympathetic to the organization.

Close to 90 pro-Klan newspapers were produced in the 1920s. The national Klan leadership created their own national newspaper syndicate called the Kourier, with a K, which, by the beginning of 1925, claimed a circulation of over one and a half million readers. It is likely that this number is inflated, as with any numbers the Klan claimed. But even if there were only half a million readers, it would still make it one of the most widely read weekly

publications in the United States at the time.

The Klan newspapers were meant to be a family publication. They ran stories on the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, on presidential politics, and the Catholic influence in

America, for example, and on the next page include a recipe for pimento toast, or jokes and puzzles for young readers.

One carried a crossword puzzle called the “Fiery Crossword.”

KLAN NEWSPAPERS Voice of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; February 8, 1923 The Call of The North; December 12, 1923 The Fiery Cross; April 20, 1923 The National Kourier; August 8, 1924

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KLAN PRINCIPLES

PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSES OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN Pamphlet

ONE COUNTRY, ONE FLAG, ONE NATION “KIGY” – “Klansmen I Greet You” AKIA (in the center of the cross) – “A Klansman I am” – these were code words for Klansmen meeting in strange surroundings. They would be inserted into common conversation, for instance: “Does a Mr. Ayak live in this neighborhood?” The response would be, “No, but a Mr. Akia does.” The password would then be accompanied by a secret handshake or other sign of recognition.

Other Clan Code: S.A.N.B.O.G. or Sanbog – “Strangers are near, be on guard” O.R.I.O.N – Our Race Is Our Nation.

L.O.T.I.E or LOTIE – Lady Of The Invisible Empire. (the women) KU KLUX KLAN COIN 1920s

A.Y.A.K. or Ayak – “Are you a Klansman?”

The Attitude of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Toward the Roman Catholic Hierarchy

By Dr. H. W. Evans, Imperial Wizard Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

ALIEN IMMIGRATION.

“A large number among the vast horde of immigrants who have reached our shores in the last thirty years have been Catholics.

Another large percentage of this horde have been Jews. In Protestant America we must have time to teach these alien peoples the fundamental principles of human liberty before we permit further masses of ignorant, superstitious, religious devotees to come within our borders.

When America ceases to be a country inhabited by Americans and becomes the

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polyglot center of the universe, our co-mingled populations will have no fixed ideas as to what human liberty means, nor the responsibility which freedom entails upon the people who enjoy it, and our free institutions will collapse.

From every angle our country and its institutions are in danger, and no danger is greater or more destructive than the infiltration of peoples and ideas which are not American.”

Page 117.

This document is a collection of papers read at the first meeting of the Grand Dragons, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, held in Asheville, North Carolina, July 1923.

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HIRAM WESLEY EVANS - GRAND WIZARD

Hiram Wesley Evans joined the “Dallas Klan No. 66” in 1920, leaving behind a dental practice so that he could dedicate all his time to the group. In only two years, Evans became the Klan’s Imperial Wizard and dramatically increased the organization’s membership and assets. As leader of the Klan, Evans promoted a form of nativist white supremacy that established Protestantism as a fundamental part of American patriotism.

The Klan under Evans’ leadership supported a patchwork of right- and leftwing political positions, and advanced not only racist policies against nonwhites, but also xenophobic policies against immigrants. Evans attempted to cast his platform in science, borrowing concepts from American writers of the period who promoted eugenics and scientific racism. He argued

against miscegenation and Catholic and Jewish immigration on the grounds that they were threats to genetic “good stock” – a widely supported idea among white Americans at the time. Evans argued that immigrants would promote ideologies such as anarchism and communism, were threats to national unity, and were involved in bootlegging during Prohibition.

He considered immigrants “ignorant, superstitious, religious devotees” who wanted only to earn money in the U.S. before returning to their homelands. However, he supported immigrants he deemed “Nordic.”

During Evans’ tenure, the Klan grew beyond the Southeastern U.S., becoming active in Indiana and Illinois, and Michigan. In urban areas of the Midwest, it attracted native-born Americans competing with recent immigrants for industrial jobs.

The Klan also attracted new

members from Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington. In 1923, Evans said that he aimed to reach ten million Klan members.

That year on the Fourth of July, he spoke at the largest Klan gathering in history, a meeting in rural Indiana attended by over 200,000.

Although many of his hopes were never TIME MAGAZINE realized, Evans June 23, 1924 saw several Klansman elected to high offices, and in the mid-1920s, the KKK was criticizing them, which frequently discussed by prompted Time magazine to political commentators. put Evans on its cover.

In 1924, the Klan convinced Republican Party Evans appeared on the cover of leaders to refrain from Time Magazine, June 23, 1924.

WOMEN’S AUXILIARY -WKKK The WKKK, or Women of the Ku Klux Klan, functioned as a separate branch of the national organization. The group flourished in the 1920s when, ironically, in the spirit of WOMEN KLU KLUX KLAN hopefulness after suffrage, Receipt more women felt emboldened to participate in civic KEAGLE’S PLEDGE OF life. Headquartered in Little LOYALTY Rock, Arkansas, and with Form 125 delegates in every state, the WKKK recruited gentile, female, native-born citizens over the age of 18, who were not Catholic, socialists, or communist. They needed to be a resident in a Klan jurisdiction for six months and endorsed by at least two Klanswomen.

Contrary to the stereotype of right wing extremists, many members of the WKKK came from stable, middle-class communities. Membership in the organization reached half a

CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF THE WOMEN OF THE KU KLUX KLAN

1923

million during this decade and drew from both rural and urban areas of the country.

Klanswomen WOMEN KLU KLUX KLAN viewed racial mixing, or “inAcceptance Form termingling,” as “opposed to supremacist mission behind a the laws of God and man.” facade of social welfare. Their Promoting a nativist “America pamphlets asked readers, “Are First” ideology, the WKKK you interested in the Welfare of denounced immigrants and our Nation? As an Enfranchised Catholics as woman are you interested in “un-American,” claiming better government? Should we Protestantism as the birthright not interest ourselves in better of Americans, and that the education for our children?”

United States was a country They organized picnics, founded “not for the refuse parades, and food drives, often population of other lands.” funneling the benefits to families WKKK members saw in the Klan. Drawing from the themselves as emancipated women whose role as voters was church-supper tradition, their gatherings could, on first glance, essential for the protection and be mistaken for sorority events. purification of the country’s But simultaneously they lobbied political, social, and moral for national quotas for fabrics. immigration, racial segregation,

The WKKK was and anti-miscegenation particularly successful in laws — and proselytized the promoting their xenophobic “eternal supremacy” of the agenda in part because they white race. excelled at hiding their white

THE KU KLUX KLAN IN PROPHECY

Alma Bridwell White (June 16, 1862 – June 26, 1946) was the founder and a bishop of the Pillar of Fire Church. In 1918, she became the first woman to become a bishop in the United States. She was noted for her association with the Ku Klux Klan and her anti-Catholicism, anti-Pentacostalism, antisemitism, THE KLU KLUX KLAN IN PROPHECY Bishop Alma White, A. M.

racism, and hostility to immigrants. By the time of her death at age 84, she had expanded the sect to “4,000 followers, 61 churches, seven schools, ten periodicals and two broadcasting stations.”

Reverend Branford Clarke. In the book she uses scripture to argue that the Klan is sanctioned by God “through divine illumination and prophetic vision.” She also believed that the Apostles and the Good Samaritan were Prophecy Book members of the Klan. The The Ku Klux Klan In Prophecy book was published by the Pillar is a 144-page book written by of Fire Church and sold over Bishop Alma Bridwell White in 45,000 copies.

1925 and illustrated by 13

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ORGANIZATION pg. 10

pg. 6

pg. 14

ORIGIN

IDEOLOGY

NEWSPAPERS

“Boating, Not Busing!”

National Socialist White People’s Party of Baltimore, MD.

The Saturday Evening Post, January 30, 1965 “The Ku Klux Klan: “We’ve Got Nothing to Hide”

“What We Stand For...Goals and Objectives of the National Socialist White People’s Party”

“White Power” Vanity License Plate 1960s pg. 16

White Defense Fund, Greenwood, Mississippi Document to support the people accused of murdering Medgar Evers pg. 16

KNIGTS OF THE KLAN VERSUS KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS Anti-Catholic Publication pg. 16

Proslavery books between Stone Mountain brass bookends pg. 19

The Negro a Beast or in the Image of God, First Edition 1900 The Negro a Beast or in the Image of God, Door to door salesman abridged version pg. 19

Take Your Choice by Theadore G. Bilbo pg. 19

The Negro: What is His Ethnological Status? by Ariel pg. 19

Behind the Florida Bombings

by Joseph North pg. 18

The Negro A Menace to American Civilization by R. W. Shufeldt, M.D. pg. 19

A Reply to Southern Slanderers

by Woodford Mabry Attorney at Law Grove Hill, Alabama pg. 19

The Baltimore News; “7 Men Burned Alive by Klan, Witness Testifies” pg. 17

Various lynching postcards pg. 17 “The Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the South”

by Winfield H. Collins pg. 17

IDEOLOGY 14

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SEPTEMBER 5, 1992 GAINESVILLE, GA Photograph by Todd Robertson

KLAN ROBES Robes of the 19th-century KKK were of various colors.

In the 20th century, the second KKK adopted as the standard color.

Late 20th-century manifestations of the KKK in small groups has meant a wider variation in robes.

Some groups use colored robes to signify rank, most commonly:

Purple (or sometimes blue) – Imperial Wizard

Green (or sometimes red) – Grand Dragon

Reddish-purple – Great Titan

Gold - Exalted Cyclops

Black – Knighthawk (security)

Red – Kleagle The insignias of the Klan often include a cross, sometimes with a drop of red blood in the center.

M.I.O.A.K. (Mystic Insignia Of A Klansman) is a red, round patch worn over the left breast of a Klansmans robe. It has a large “X” in the middle with a “K” in each corner of the “X” for Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The symbolism behind the insignia, according to various KKK groups, is that the blood drop in the center of the cross represents the blood shed by Jesus Christ at the Crucifixion, for the white Aryan race, whom they see as God’s master race or chosen people.

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WHITE POWER LICENSE PLATE

1960, found in a garage in West Virginia

WHAT WE STAND FOR... GOALS AND OBJECTIVES National Socialist White People’s Party

KNIGHTS OF THE KLAN VERSUS KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS Anti Catholic Publication, 1910

BOATING, NOT BUSING!

National Socialist White People’s Party of Baltimore, MD.

YOU CAN HELP! CONTRIBUTE TO THE WHITE LEGAL FUND

Greenwood, Mississippi Document to support the people accused of murdering Medgar Evers

Dennis Warren Nix (born November 12, 1945) was the associate editor to the National Alliance publication Attack! and illustrator for the first edition of The Turner Diaries. He joined the Alliance in August 1974 and became a staff member of that organization the following November.

George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918 – August 25, 1967) was the founder of the American Nazi Party.

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WHITE POWER COMIC STRIP

1973, Dennis Nix, George Lincoln Rockwell

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DOUBLE LYNCHING PHOTO

LYNCHING POSTCARDS

THE TRUTH ABOUT LYNCHING AND THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH: In Which The Author Pleads That The South Be Made Safe For The White Race

By Winfield H. Collins A.M. First Edition 1918

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A Mob at Columbus, Ga., Does Bloody Work.

At 10:45 o’clock, Monday morning, a scene unparalleled in the history of Georgia was enacted in the city of Columbus. At that hour a mob of fully 600 armed men broke into the Webster building during the trial of Jesse Slayton, charged with assaulting Mrs. Howard Bryan last week and took the prisoner from the officers. Slayton was carried to the building at an early hour by a strong guard of men and the trial had already begun behind locked doors and a heavy armed guard of men to protect the prisoner from any demonstration of violence.

The mob rushed down upon the building, forced the doors and with resistless rush swept back the spectators and guards and seized and carried the negro out on the street.

Resistance was utterly useless.

A rope was placed around Slayton’s neck and he was dragged up Broad street, the crowd shooting him as they went. Near the bell tower they swung the negro up and perforated him with bullets.

After this the mob, as coolly and deliberately as in the first instance, went immediately to the court house and, overpowering the jailer, took Will Miles, a negro charged with assaulting Mrs. Albright, two years ago, and marched him slowly to where Slayton’s lifeless body was hanging from a tree. The trembling negro was

DOUBLE LYNCHING IN COLUMBUS

DOUBLE LYNCHING POSTCARD

made to look upon the fate of his brother victim, and then a rope was placed about his neck and he was slowly suspended in the air and his body perforated with shot.

Right in the heart of the city for three and a half hours, riddled with bullets the two bodies swung from one of Broad street’s shade trees. It was a gory spectacle – below the two swinging, horrible bodies, filled with leaden missives of death, was an excited crowd shouting in wild exultation.

Slayton’s gory body was placarded as follows: “All cases of this kind shall be treated likewise.”

Miles’ body was adorned with the following legend: “Both cousins. This one

convicted twice; mistrial once.

Father hung for same offense.”

Coroner Martin finally cut them down and held an inquest. The verdict rendered by both juries was to the effect that both persons came to their death at the hands of parties unknown.

The military was in readiness to protect Slayton but was not out because it was agreed Sunday, after a conference with civil authorities, that their presence would not be needed, no lynching being anticipated, as the negro had been unmolested so far as his trial was to take place immediately.

Savannah Tribune Saturday, 6 June 1896 -- pg. 4

Vengeance of Law Visited on Culprits in Broad Daylight Another article, published four days earlier in the Macon Telegraph, shares more harrowing detail:

…The terrified negro [Jesse Slayton], when he saw the crowd rushing in, crawled behind the judge’s stand, but was dragged out and a noose put around his neck.

Winchesters and pistols flourished in the air, but no shots were fired in the court room.

…The bodies [of Slayton and Will Miles] presented a gory spectacle and were an awful warning that the lives and honor of women will be protected and all outrages avenged at all cost. Two brutal crimes had been avenged.

BEHIND THE FLORIDA BOMBINGS NAACP Harry T Moore and his wife Harriette Moore

Harry Tyson Moore (November 18, 1905 – December 25, 1951) was an African-American educator, a pioneer leader of the civil rights movement, and founder of the first branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Brevard County, Florida.

Harry Moore and his wife, Harriette Moore, also an educator, were the victims of a bombing of their home in Mims, Florida on Christmas

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night 1951, on the Moores’ 25th wedding anniversary. A bomb went off under the couple’s house; Harry Moore died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital while his wife died nine days later. Moore was the first NAACP member to be murdered for civil rights activism; the couple are the only husband and wife to die for the movement.

In the early 1930s, Moore had become state secretary for the Florida chapter of the NAACP.

BEHIND THE FLORIDA BOMBINGS Joseph North

Through his registration activities, he greatly increased the number of members, and he worked on issues of housing and education. He investigated lynchings, filed lawsuits against voter registration barriers and white primaries, and worked for equal pay for black teachers in public schools.

Moore also led the Progressive Voters League.

Following a 1944 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against white primaries, between 1944 and 1950, he succeeded in increasing the registration of black voters in Florida to 31 percent of those eligible to vote, markedly higher than in any other Southern state.

The murders caused a national and international outcry, with protests registered at the United Nations against violence in the South. The NAACP held a huge rally in New York, and in other cities.

In many respects, the protests over the Moores’ murders were a dress rehearsal for the civil rights movement. The NAACP sponsored a fundraising event at Madison Square Garden, where a song entitled “The Ballad of Harry Moore” was performed, with lyrics by the renowned poet Langston Hughes.

The State of Florida called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to head the

investigation, but the case was never solved. The FBI was convinced that the Ku Klux Klan had committed the bombing and identified a number of local Klansmen as suspects, but was never able to find enough evidence to break the case.

Eventually, the FBI indicted seven Klansmen for lying about their involvement in other racial violence, hoping that the pressure of the indictments would force some of the Klansmen to crack and testify about the Moore case. But the ploy didn’t work, and the indictments were eventually dismissed. The FBI eventually closed the Moore investigation in 1953.

The case has been reopened three times: in 1978

by Brevard County, in 1991 by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), and in 2005 by then Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist. In October 2006, three weeks before he won the Republican primary for governor, Crist held a press conference in Mims and

claimed to have “resolved” the case. Although he admitted that his investigation found no new evidence, Crist named four dead Klansmen as the likely perpetrators.

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THE BIBLE AND/OR SCIENCE TO JUSTIFY SLAVERY AND/OR WHITE SUPREMACY THE NEGRO: WHAT IS HIS ETHNOLOGICAL STATUS? IS HE THE PROGENY OF HAM? IS HE A DESCENDANT OF ADAM AND EVE? HAS HE A SOUL? OR IS HE A BEAST IN GOD’S NOMENCLATURE? WHAT IS HIS STATUS AS FIXED BY GOD IN CREATION? WHAT IS HIS RELATION TO THE WHITE RACE?

by Ariel, Buckner H. Payne 1867 “The white race have long, straight hair, high foreheads, high noses, thin lips, and white skins: the olive and sunburnt color, where the other characteristics are found, belong equally to the white race.

The negro or black race, are woolly or kinky-headed, low foreheads, flat noses, thick-lipped, and have a black skin.

This description of the two races is (though not all their differences), full enough for the fair discussion of their respective stations in God’s order of creation,...” “...then when we read, that Christ died to redeem us from the curse, are we to understand, that he died to redeem us from a kinky head, flat nose, thick lips and a black skin?”

The Negro A Menace to American Civilization

By R.W. Shufeldt, M.D. First Edition 1907 Chapter VII: Passion and Criminality in the Negro: Lynch Law and Other Questions (pg. 130) “The very important question now arises is there any remedy for all this, in so far as the redemption of the American negro is concerned? My firm conviction is that there is none, absolutely none. It is impossible to improve the morals of a people when they have no morals to improve. Every one who knows anything of the typical negro, knows full well that he is an utterly non-moral being, and to endow the whole race of them in this country with a sound morality would be just as impossible as it would be to change the color of his skin and take the kink out of his hair. Few there are who realize this fact.”

Take Your Choice Separation or Mongrelization

by Theodore G. Bilbo - State Senator, Lt. Governor, twice Governor three terms United States Senator, State of Mississippi First Edition 1947 Chapter II Race and Civilization “Civilizations, the product of race, have been maintained only so long as the race which created them has maintained racial integrity. The Caucasian has founded all great civilizations, and this race, remaining white, has not lost civilization. But when the blood of the white man has become mongrelized, civilization has not been maintained. The mongrel can neither create nor continue civilization. The record of written history offers the proof.”

A Reply to Southern Slanderers In Re: The Negro Question, Lynch Law, etc.; Being: An Invitation to The International Labor Defense and All Other Associations Advocating Social and Political Equality to “Get Out Of” and “Remain Away From” the State of Alabama. We Regard Your Teachings as Dangerous and a Menace to our State. Brief and Argument by Woodford Mabry, Attorney at Law, Grove Hill, Alabama “The taxing of poor white people to furnish ‘higher education’ for Negro wenches and sassy bucks, is an outrage upon the whites and and an injury to the Negroes. The schools. . . are turning loose on the country thousands of Negro men and women who have been taught the smattering of the higher branches. . . who. . . consider it beneath their dignity to work with their hands. There is absolutely no place in this land for the arrogant, aggressive school-spoilt Afro-American, who wants to live without manual labor” “The Southern White man is the best friend the negro HAS ever had, HAS NOW or WILL EVER HAVE so long as he behaves himself and obeys the laws of the land. You, Mr. Socialist, Mr. Anarchist, Mr. Philanthropist, Mr. Communist, Mr. Social Equality Advocate ARE HIS ENEMIES.” Also titled “A Reply to Southern Slanderers In Re: to the Nigger Question The Negro Beast or in the Image of God (Door to door abridged version)

By Charles Carroll First Edition 1900 The author spent fifteen years of this life, and $20,000.00 in its compilation.

Chapter II. Biblical and Scientific Facts Demonstrating that the Negro is not an Offspring of the Adamic Family.

“The White, the highest, and the Negro the lowest of the so-called “five races of men,” present the strongest contrast to each other in their physical and mental characters; and in their modes of life, habits, customs, language, manners, gestures, etc.”

“The long, fine, silken hair of the White, finds its strongest contrast in the short, coarse, woolly hair of the Negro.”

“The prominent chin of the White finds its strongest contrast in the retreating chin of the Negro. This is another character of the ape which the Negro presents. Winchell says, “The retreating contour of the chin as compared with the European, approximates the Negro to the chimpanzee and lower mammals.”

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BIRTH OF A NATION POSTER Moore Theatre, Seattle

Although William J. Simmons’ relaunch of the KKK was timed to coincide with the debut of “The Birth of a Nation,” D. W. Griffith's cinema adaptation of “The Clansman,” the new Klan drew few members in its first five years. Only after Simmons hired professional publicists in 1920 did Klan membership take off, peaking at millions of members in 1925.

All artifacts and documents are original. If you’d like to donate items to this show, email rewindexhibition.com

CREDITS Newspaper Design: Christina Hairston Photography and Documentation:

Ryan Stevenson

Installation Specialist :

Elise Kinsey

Research/Editing : Janice Fournier Special Thanks: Margaret Rucker, Eldora Rucker, Margaret Palmer, Carla Finkelstein, Jane Brown, Neil Didriksen, Lisa Freiman, Stephanie P Smith, Joseph H Seipel, ICA Installation team, ICA Curatorial team, ICA Staff, iCubed Visiting Fellows Program - Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry and Innovation, Michael Rao, Virginia Commonwealth University, Pam and Bill Royall, Angel and Tom Papa, and 2017 Kickstarter campaign contributors.

Thanks to these Foundations and Organizations: Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, TED Fellows Program, Creative Alliance Gallery Residency Program, Creative Capital Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Smithsonian National Museum of African American Culture, Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation, MAP Fund, Rubys Art Project Grant, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.