Dark Knights in White Satin Hoods: A Ku Klux Klan Library

by Stephen J. Gertz

[SHEET MUSIC] SEALE, Walter B. and Adger M. PACE
Wake Up!! America and Kluck, Kluck, Kluck
Lawrenceburg, TN: James D. Vaughan, 1924. Quarto (32cm).
Pictorial card covers; 3pp. Also includes the Adger Pace composition
“Sweet Little Girl of Mine” inside front wrapper. A cheery little K.K.K.
recruiting anthem, beginning: “...If you want to be happy, just sing
a little song, And join the mighty army of the K.K. throng...”
Rare; OCLC gives only one location (Mississippi).

The Ku Klux Klan - The Circle of Brothers, the name taken from the Greek word 'kulkos," i.e. "circle" - first arose during Reconstruction. A vigilante group dedicated to righting the perceived wrongs of Northern oppression of the defeated South, it ran its course by the end of the 1870s.

In 1915, however, the organization was resurrected in the wake of The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith's  adaptation of Thomas Dixon Jr.'s The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905), a paean to "the Great Cause" that glorified the original Klan; Leo Frank's lynching after his death sentence for the rape and murder of a white girl; and William J. Simmons re-establishment of the organization using sophisticated recruiting methods, and a modern business structure. The 1920s were the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan, 4,000,000-members strong.

Constitution and Laws of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Atlanta: Imperial Palace, Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 1921.
Narrow octavo (21cm x 10cm). Staple-bound, illustrated wrappers. 34pp.
One of four different versions of this KKK membership manual published
in 1921; this, apparently, intended as an abridged vest-pocket reference
(the other issues were of 96 and 113pp). This issue scarce; OCLC records
only two locations; none others in commerce.

The second coming of the Klan integrated the organization's traditional belief in white supremacy with anti-immigration, anti-Semitsm, anti-Catholic, anti-Communist, anti-Socialist, anti-unionism; the usual anti- laundry list. There was something for everybody; if you didn't agree with the racist element you could rally around another. Far from being confined to rural Southern states, the new Klan made its biggest inroads into cities well into the North, anywhere where Black migrants competed with Whites for employment and housing. It was during this period in the Klan's history that cross-burnings were introduced, a ceremony initially conducted to welcome new klaverns (chapters) into the fold but, soon later, used for ritual threats.

Constitution and Laws of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Atlanta: Imperial Palace, Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 1921.
Small, square 16mo (10cm x 10cm); 96pp. Illustrated wrappers; 96pp.
One of at least three different versions of this KKK membership manual
published in 1921. With sections dedicated to organization, hierarchy,
ceremonies, and by-laws.

This modern iteration was particularly insidious as the Klan was sold and accepted in many communities as a sort of Rotary Club. Everybody joined, simply because of the business and social connections that could be made. Your friends and family were members. To not join was to risk important relationships. For some, perhaps many, morality and ethics were routinely put through a wringer.

The Seven Symbols of The Klan. Imperial Instructions Document No. II.
Series A.D. 1960, A.K. LXXXXIV. Being Official Instructions in K-uno in the border Realm of Karacter [&c...] N.p. [Tuscaloosa, AL]:
Office of the Imperial Wizard, 1960. Tri-fold brochure, 22cm;
single sheet folded to make 6pp. Front cover graphic of a hooded
Klansman on horseback.Brief exegeses on each of the seven
“sacred symbols” of the Klan: The Bible, The Cross, The Flag, The Sword,
The Water, The Robe and The Hood. Of the latter, the author writes:
 “...Who can look upon a multitude of white robed Klansmen without
thinking of the equality and unselfishness of that throng of white robed
saints in the GLORY LAND?” An uncommon Klan item; OCLC gives
one location only (Wisconsin Historical Soc).

In a county in central Texas, for instance, the owner of the local Ford dealerships automatically joined the Klan when a local klavern was established in the early 1920s. That he taught his children to respect black people and prohibited them from ever using the N-word, was as tolerant, peaceful and non-violent a man as can be imagined, was not a racist or anti-Semite, intervened when the local doctor refused to treat a black woman on Christmas day, made no difference. He was genuinely concerned about the consequences if he didn't become a member of the Ku Klux Klan or spoke out in opposition to it, however benign. His business and social life would have been ruined. He was human and did not possess the super-strength character that would have been necessary to risk everything for his principles. While he might have done differently had he been a single man, he had a wife and two children to think about and support.

He went along to get along.  For many, I suspect, to reject the Klan was tantamount to accepting Communism, and no solid, middle-class citizen of the era was sympathetic to it.

ETHERIDGE, Paul S. (introd). Klansman’s Manual
N.p. [Atlanta?]: Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 1924. Octavo (22.5cm).
Textured brown card wrappers, printed in black;. 86, [10], pp.
A complete manual of training for the Klan initiate, “to be instructed in
the principles and methods of the order.” Includes sections on history,
hierarchy, ceremonies, duties of officers, and a Penal Code for offending
members. Concludes with the Klan Loyalty Oath. Uncommon, and a
key early Klan document.

That man was my maternal grandfather, who died before I was born, and I feel no little amount of shame about his Ku Klux Klan connection.  I have no idea what he made of all of this; perhaps he was too tolerant a man. Someone has to have the courage to say no in a sea of yeses. But while I like to think that I would have behaved differently, I really have no idea how I might have acted in similar circumstances. Social and financial pressures can take their toll on the strongest ethos and wear it down, The truly heroic are few and far between. For all the many advantages of small town life, the smaller the town, the more difficult it is to be a non-conformist. He lived in a community of 5,500.

The Practice of Klanishness. Imperial Instructions Document No.1,
Series AD. 1924, AK. LVIII Atlanta: Imperial Palace Invisible Empire
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 1924. Narrow octavo (21cm x 10cm).
Staple-bound, illustrated wrappers; 8pp. Described as a “First Lesson
in the Science and Art of Klankraft....Being Official Instructions in
K-uno in the border Realm of Karacter from the one who traversed
the Realm of the Unknown...”

The second coming of the Klan, once strong with 4,000,000 members nationwide in the 1920s, ended in 1944 after declining membership rolls and a huge tax lien forced it to formally dissolve. The social discontent that had spawned its renaissance had passed, its terrorist activities had become too much for the average member, and the pressures of law enforcement had taken their toll.

GAFFNEY, Albert Sydney. The Son of a Klansman.
Kansas City: Franklin Hudson Publishers, (1926). Octavo (19cm).
Publisher’s tan pictorial cloth boards, stamped in brown. dustjacket.
317pp; illus. An “allegorical, historical novel” set in the Kentucky
mountains and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.
A rough-hewn but decent hillbilly does battle against a scheming
rival, at home and abroad. The KKKtheme is tangential, but the
author clearly regards the values of the Klan, and its “wonderful
work in restoring peace and good will in the South after the war,”
as laudable. Of Albert Sydney Gaffney we find no biographical
information in the expected sources. Based on the book’s very detailed
(if atrociously-written) accounts of the Philippine conflict, we suspect
he had first-hand experience in the Spanish-American War.

Informal and independent iterations of the Klan with all the traditional accouterments and vile acts surfaced during the 1950s through 1960s as the civil rights movement grew and ancient fears became manifest and anxiety took firm hold. This was the era of the  modern Klan's most violent activity as the worst fears of segregationists became a reality, a streak that would end only with the Federal government's revival of the Force and Klan Acts from Reconstruction to investigate and indict Klansmen.

SIMMONS, William Joseph. The Ku Klux Klan: Yesterday Today and Forever,
[Atlanta: Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan, ca 1921].
Staple-bound pamphlet, 22cm x 9.5cm (9” x 4”). Original
pictorial wrappers. [12pp].Recruiting brochure, offering a
brief history of the Klan, the circumstances leading to its
re-birth in the 1915, and outlining the elements of the modern
Klan’s Constitution and prerequisites to “Citizenship in the Invisible Empire.”
The author was founder (in 1915) of the modern Klan and its Imperial
Wizard until 1921. This brochure undated, but makes reference to the
“recent purchasse” by the Klan of Lanier University in Atlanta;
that purchase took place in 1921.

The present-day Klan is a hodgepodge of competing factions and chapters. It has gained traction since the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency.

Ex-Grand Wizard David Duke claims that thousands of Tea Party movement activists have urged him to run for president in 2012. The Tea Party refused to endorse the NAACP's call to purge its membership of racial bigots unless the NAACP denounced the Black Panther Party, not associated with the NAACP at all, and despite the NAACP's rejection of violence of any nature from anyone.

GORDON, Rev. James L. The Destiny of the Anglo-Saxon Race.
San Francisco: First Congregational Church, n.d. [ca 1917].
Staple-bound leaflet, 23cm x 10cm; illustrated wrappers, 8pp.
The author, a Congregationalist minister, views the German War
as a trial for the ascendancy of the Anglo-Saxon race:
“...I believe that the Anglo-Saxon Race - all English-speaking peoples -
fits into the outlines of Biblical prophecy...I believe that the world
should be directed and dominated by the best race which time has
ever produced...the Anglo-Saxon race will lead the world: and its
theatre of action, for the next five hundred years, will be the
Continent of North America.”

To be sure, not everyone in the Tea Party Movement is a racist; the majority are not and appear to be very sensitive to the mere suggestion of sympathy to racism and racists. But the dregs of humanity who desperately cling to white supremacy but dare not speak its name have found a home there, and Tea Party enthusiasts who do not denounce that element within must share a burden of shame.

I love the flawed grandfather with feet of clay that I never knew but despise and categorically reject his involvement with the Klan. This is a sick gene in the pool that deserves to drown.

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With the exception of The Clansman, all images courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Vile Rarities From the Archives of the American Right-Wing

by Stephen J. Gertz

WARNING: This post contains highly disturbing images containing commensurate text. 

Once upon a time (for this truly seems like a fairy tale), the Right and Left wings in the United States had homes in both the main political parties. While the Republican Party teemed with rabid, ugly, and bigoted anti-Communists, the Democratic Party was host to rabid, ugly, bigoted segregationists. And then there were the Right-Wingers who'd flown so far to the Right that they flew out of the mainstream and into fringe parties of particular nastiness.

The campaign brochure above heralds the contentious 1930 Alabama elections, in which a number of Ku Klux Klan-funded Democrats broke away from the party to run as Independents. The Independents lost, and the event marked a pivotal moment in the consolidation of old-line Democratic power in the state, which would go unchallenged until the Civil Rights conflicts of the Sixties.

This illustrated brochure, produced by  main-line Democrats, was intended to show that, despite rejection of KKK backing, the Party remained staunch in its support of the principle of White Supremacy. Page one provides brief text and lists members of the Party’s Executive Committee and Honorary Vice Chairmen (among whom was future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black). The remaining three pages reproduce ten captioned political caricatures lampooning the campaign tactics of the apostate Democrats and the Republicans. An unusual item; not located in OCLC.

The Democratic Party Is Calling You! [Birmingham]: Democratic State Campaign Committee, [1930]. Quarto (28cm). Single sheet, folded to four newsprint pages. 

Marilyn R. Allen's Caucasian quo vadis, White Man! What of the Night? (1959) is an anti-integration tract by the author best-known for her 1949 inspirational, spiritually uplifting  opus, Alien Races and Mongrelization: “...since the Warren Court’s communistic race-mixing decision was admittedly NOT based in and on the Constitution (nor on precedent), but on alien socialistic doctrine and Organized Minority pressure, it is therefore null and void.” Not located in OCLC.

ALLEN, Marilyn R. White Man! What of the Night? Salt Lake City: By the author, [1959]. Gate-fold leaflet, 15cm x 14cm. Single sheet folded to six newsprint pages.

It wouldn't be a party without the American Nazi Party spiking the punch with their  brand of poison. Here, the National Socialist White People’s Party,  successor to George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party, descries Special Rights for Black Savages. Insert homosexual, feminist, Jewish, etc. for the full Party platform. This recruiting broadside for the NSWPP states its headquarters address as 2507 North Franklin Road, Arlington, VA, where the group moved following the assassination of Rockwell.

Special Rights For Black Savages? Arlington, VA: National Socialist White People’s Party, N.d. [post- 1968]. Broadside, 11” x 8.5”, printed recto only on newsprint. 

 

This broadside from the good ol' folks of the Fighting American Nationalists simulates a typical “Wanted” poster, depicting an African-American in caricature; the subject here is identified as “Levi Coon.” Alias “Jigaboo, Baboon, Ape....he has been known to be led by communist Jews in a conspiracy to destroy America and the White race. He is believed to be armed with a razor, a gas bomb, a Star of David, and a bottle of Sweet Lucy wine.” The Manischevitz winery was surely relieved by their exclusion from this arsenal imagined by the malignantly asinine.

This is one of the more horrific pieces of racist propaganda you'll ever encounter. The “Fighting American Nationalists” was a  hate group reputedly established by George Lincoln Rockwell in the mid-1960s as a front for the American Nazi Party.

WHITE, C. Wanted Dead Or Alive. Hendersonville, NC: Fighting American Nationalists, 1975. Broadside, 11” x 8-1/2” (ca. 28 x 22cm). Printed recto-only on a single sheet of standard xerographic paper.

If the recto headline above doesn't get you right here, the verso headline will: “Scientists Say Negro Still In Ape Stage - Races Positively Not Equal.”

Edward R. Fields' scurrilous junk science screed was issued by The Thunderbolt, the official organ of the National States Rights Party, a neo-Nazi group active in the mid-1960s. This organ desperately needs a transplant; it is diseased, a thunderbolt that Zeus rejected and speared into the garbage can, only to be retrieved by ignorant, bottom-feeding mortals and thrust into the soul of America.

Here, the standard pseudo-scientific tropes are proffered regarding Negro inferiority (reduced brain size; prognathous jaw; prehensile toes, etc). It concludes: “As the black genes of the Negro are more powerful than white genes - the Negro has thereby destroyed every white civilization that he has come in contact with or has left that civilization stagnant and rotting and dependent upon the last drop of white blood from outside to keep it going. Mongrelization of the Races Would Destroy White Christian Civilization.” It also includes a brief discourse on the “Two-toed Vadoma Tribe,” whose members can “run like the wind, scale trees.” Not located in OCLC (this screed, not the Vadoma tribe, which lives in the western region of Zimbabwe and whose members, indeed, have a congenital foot disfigurement).

There's a silver lining to this toxic cloud.  Black-Americans can take cold comfort in knowing that, by its own statement, the National States Rights Party believed that Negroes were biologically superior to Whites, with super-duper DNA that overwhelms all others. Curiously, the National States Right Party appears to have accepted evolution and Darwin's The Descent of Man. At the time, however, anti-science had yet to be added to the far-Right's anti-everything list.

Given the caliber of white people addressed here Black-Americans would surely prefer to be related to apes. I'm white and proud to be descended from apes; they have more dignity. I'll take King Kong over King Cotton's DNA anytime.

FIELDS, Edward R. The Negro Is Related to Apes -- Not White People. Marietta, GA: The Thunderbolt, Inc., N.d. [ca 1964-5]. Quarto broadside (36cm), printed in black ink on both sides of a standard ledger-sized sheet. With four illustrations.

The National States Rights Party's Most Important Program  planned for the deportation of American Blacks to the African continent, noting that “...African nations could receive the entire Negro population of the United States within twenty years, without disproportionate strain on any one nation...” Also includes a draft “Back To Africa Law,” calling for stripping all Negroes of American citizenship; cash bonuses for those volunteering to emigrate; and forcible deportation of those unwilling to volunteer. The National States Rights Party was a neo-Nazi group founded in 1958 and active through the early Seventies. Theirs  was a very short-sighted scheme. Who'd they think was going to perform all the low-class menial labor that poor white trash felt was beneath them?  C'mon, people! Geesh!

SMITH, Drew L. How To Ship Negroes Back To Africa. Marietta, GA: National States Rights Party, N.d. [ca 1964-65].  Printed folio circular (ca 36cm x 22cm). Single sheet folded to four pages.

When racism and rabid anti-Communism get together the results are always a joyful expression of self-realization for the zealously righteous, revealing a breathtaking psychopathology usually associated with  the anti-Christ in Jesus' robe. The above graphic reproduces a photograph of Martin Luther King, Abner W. Berry, Aubrey Williams, and Myles Horton in a classroom of the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The text identifies these subjects, calling them the “four horsemen of racial agitation...[who] have brought tension, disturbance, strife and violence in the advancement of the Communist doctrine of ‘racial nationalism.’”

The Highlander Folk School was founded by Don West and Myles Horton in 1953 as a training facility for southern civil rights workers; it was the frequent and favorite subject of attacks from anti-integrationists. The present broadside, issued under the auspices of the Georgia Commission on Education, is similar to another, larger broadside of the same ilk print-signed by Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin. OCLC notes only two locations (CSU Sacramento & Historic New Orleans Collection).

Martin Luther King...At Communist Training School. [Athens, GA]: Georgia Commission on Education. N.d. (ca 1957). Broadside, printed recto-only on a single legal-size sheet (ca 36cm x 22cm). Thirteen lines of text and central graphic.

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A funny thing happened to Right-wing Democrats on their way to the lynching. Before the ink was dry on President Johnson's signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they mentally bolted from the Party and, in 1968, with Presidential candidate Richard M.. Nixon taking advantage of their profound discontent, ran into the Republican Party's open arms and warm embrace where they and their heirs have remained  cozy and  happy ever after though perpetually disgruntled; chronic lip-service, from  wiser Party leaders who seduce for the Presidential nomination, abandon for the election  and then pragmatically lead the country from only center-right, has been their bitter reward for loyalty. Now, fed-up and having driven traditional mainstream Republicans out of the Party to become the new Republican base, they, along with what was once the Republican far-Right fringe, are the true RINOs,  Republicans In Name Only.  It's a another great, albeit strange and deeply ironic, Only in America story.

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All images courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, with our thanks. Mr. Bair is a specialist in the history, literature, and art of American social movements including the radical politics of both poles; the Left-wing falls under his purview, as well. Bair is one of the go-to rare booksellers for students, collectors, and curators interested in this subject.
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Has the American Left-wing  published odious agitprop? Of course. But though stinky, it is rarely, if ever, as blatantly and shamelessly hateful. And it is almost always designed better.

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Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles: The Real Story

by Stephen J. Gertz

Listen, Do You Want To Know a Secret?  The truth has finally emerged, as truthy as truth can be. Finally, the Communist Master Music Plan has been exposed.

Before the Beatles went home, Back in the U.S.S.R. in 1968 and heard balalaikas ringing out, they invaded the U.S.A. in 1964 and  brought with them insidious secret Soviet techniques of Pavlovian mind-control for a thorough wash, rinse, and spin of the cerebral cortexes of American kids:

“...The destructive music of the Beatles merely reinforces the excitatory reflex of the youth to the point where it crosses the built-in inhibitory reflex. This in turn weakens the nervous system to a state where the youth actually suffers a case of artificial neurosis. And the frightening, even fatal, aspect of this mental breakdown process is the fact that these teenagers, in this excitatory, hypnotic state, can be told to do anything - and they will.”

Time has proven that the "artificial" neurosis of 1960s American youth was no more artificial than our sacred right to bear arms and die with a handgun to be pried from our cold, rigid digits. Baby Boomers are genuinely neurotic. Not our Boomers, of course, just Lefty Boomers.

Underground laboratories hidden beneath remote dales and bucolic glens throughout our fair land have discovered that the Beatles' classic love song, Michelle, when played backwards and slowed down,  is an ukase straight out of Red Square and the Kremlin that commands its listeners to, "Kill pigs, bad pigs,  ils sont des porcs bien connu comme étant prigs, oui ces porcs."

It's an all-out assault on liberty and the American way of life.

That French is superciliously recited with airy pretension and an English word thrown in for a cheap rhyme makes this threat even more insidious. We bailed the Frogs out of WWI and II and now they're killing us with French fries and conspiring with The Fab Four and the Comintern to rob our youth of their precious essence. D'gall!

It's enough to drive all true,  red-blooded Americans to purge themselves of godless hemoglobin so that only pure, white blood cells flow through our veins.

Who stands up for our children when they lie down to diabolical foreign influence and are ruthlessly trod upon by Marx and his brothers, Lenin, Stalin, and Zeppo?

I read the news today, oh boy. The Beatles were actually born in Kenya and raised to worship Baal. As if we didn't know.

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NOEBEL, David A. Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music - The Communist Master Music Plan. Tulsa: Christian Crusade Publications, 1965. Revised Third Edition. Octavo. Staple-bound illustrated wrappers. 26 pp.

This book went into not just three editions but, so popular, it went into five editions through 1965, winning that year's Noebel Prize for  Litterature.

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Image courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, with our thanks.

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