The Most Unfortunately Titled Novel Ever Published In English

by Stephen J. Gertz

“They’re not flamingoes, Adrian thought;
there wouldn’t be flamingoes on Dildo Cay in September.” 

"A very unusual book, with a puzzling quality, an indefinable fascination and some very distinguished writing. The strangeness of the setting (an island off Jamaica), the inarticulated intensity of the characters, the mood that pervades the whole is absorbing. For 250 years, the Ainsworths had followed the pattern set by the founder of the name, who had brought some 200 blacks to the island; and continued the tradition of loveless marriage, the family salt mill as a focus of interest, and the impersonal relations with their people. Tension increases, and things come to a head when Delbridge, brought in to help build white prestige, is murdered. Adrian, scion of the Ainsworths, and Carol, hard-surfaced daughter of the slacker, Delbridge, are faced with a decision -- and meet the test. A strange book, very well done. But not a book for the casual reader, seeking entertainment. Read it and see for yourself" (Kirkus Reviews, February 13, 1939).

O-kay, let's read and see for ourselves. But caveat lector: I suspect the only salt from the Ainsworth  mill used by Kirkus to season this review was bath salts because the writer was clearly high on something.

"Ainsworths do not marry for love. They choose their women to carry on the line–thoroughbreds who can endure the loneliness and the eternal wind of the Ainsworth island–Dildo Cay. This speck in the Atlantic lies six hundred miles southeast of Great Bahama. Here the Ainsworths have lived for eleven generations–the one white family among two hundred blacks.

"Young Adrian Ainsworth has followed the family tradition in selecting his wife, Mary. Then Carol arrives with her father, hired to revive the salt industry on which the livelihood of the Ainsworths and the blacks depends. Carol is a glittering and sophisticated creature caught in a strange situation. Adrian’s deep, growing desire for Carol and the tension between her arrogant father and the blacks mount to an electric climax. Without sentimentality, but with a powerful honesty, the author paints a consuming passion against a romantic and exotic background" (Dust jacket flap blurb).

For the record, the dildo referred to in the title has nothing to do with phallic mascots. Acanthocereus tetragonus, aka the dildo cactus, abundant on Dildo Cay (a real place, aka Salt Cay, "The island that time forgot" in the Turks and Caicos, a handful of sand with salt), is a cactus species native to southern Florida and the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas in the United States, Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, and northern South America. Wherever for whatever, be careful where you plant it.

The Dildo Cactus (Acanthocereus tetragonus).

The book was, apparently, loosely based upon the Harriot family of Salt Cay, who dominated the tiny island's salt plantations, production, and export from 1829 until the local industry's WWII collapse, hence Carol and father arrive to revive with a saline solution to the Ainsworth's woe. "The Harriotts were very angry at being the basis for the book Dildo Cay by Nelson Hayes... Lawsuits were threatened. Winnie Harriott thought the best-selling book 'scandalous'" (Salt Cay Inside the White House).

Yes, you heard right. Dildo Cay was a best-seller. A British edition was issued in the same year, and - with no irony at all given the city was the locus of the 60's Sexual Revolution in Europe - an  edition out of Copenhagen.

"Dildo Cay is bad in ways that surpass its title. The product less of an unsteady hand than of a resoundingly tin ear, the novel’s prose is so categorically graceless as to supersede camp and plunge straight into ontological confusion. Herein, I’d like to suggest, is the triumph of an exquisitely bad book such as Dildo Cay: it is so earnestly bad as to call its own existence into question. In many ways, of course, the novel parades the typically forgettable qualities of other undistinguished midcentury fiction: tawdry displays of local color, liberal deployments of racism and misogyny, textbook Oedipal conflicts, and the hypertrophic use of italics. But Dildo Cay boasts countless passages that far exceed these indistinctions:

‘Father, I want to talk with you!’

Adrian had been watching his father walk the dike unsteadily, and suddenly he had seen himself at the age of sixty walking the dike unsteadily, and on top of his restlessness it was too much for him.

‘How strong do you think that pickle is?’ his father asked, ignoring the tone of Adrian’s voice.

"If ever the family romance has so forcefully raised its pickle, I know few other novels so susceptible to accidental (?) allegory. We all walk the dike unsteadily" ((Jonathan P. Eburn, Pennsylvannia State University, American Book Review Volume 31, Number 2, January/February 2010).

Rather than walk the dike, Hollywood decided to walk the plank with the novel in the hope of making a big splash.

Dildo Cay was bought by Paramount, adapted for the screen by Hayes and Virginia Van Upp, and released as Bahama Passage (1942) starring Madeleine Carroll and Sterling Hayden, with Dorothy Dandridge co-starring as the exotic West Indian maid, Thalia.

"The two most gorgeous humans you've ever beheld - caressed by soft tropic winds - tossed by the tides of love!" (Movie splashline).

"Bahama Passage is a leisurely bit of Technicolor exotica starring Madeleine Carroll and her future husband Sterling Hayden. Based on Nelson Hayes novel Dildo Cay, the story takes place on a remote Bahaman island where the principal commodity-in fact, the only—is salt. The owner of the island is young Adrian (Sterling Hayden), who inherited Dildo Cay from his family. The stultifying dullness of life on the island has caused all the wives of Adrians forebears to eventually descend into insanity, and it looks as though the same thing might happen to Adrians sweetheart Carol (Madeleine Carroll), despite her uncanny ability to look 
after herself. While Carol does not go crazy, her presence on the island proves to be something of a jinx, resulting in dissension amongst the native population. The most striking aspect of Bahama Passage is the extremely casual clothing worn by the stars: Why, one would think that Paramount was trying to get the audiences mind off the films slower passages by showing off as much cheesecake and beefcake as possible" (Bosley Crowther, New York Times, February 19, 1942).

Other books in the Hayes ouevre include Blockade (1935); Bahama Passage (photoplay edition of Dildo Cay, 1940); and The Roof of the Wind (1962). 

Salt Cay, aka Dildo Cay, Turks and Caicos. 2.5 miles long.

Those still interested in reading the novel may wish to heed the accidental cautionary note that serves as the book's last line: “Keep your jib full…our course is for Dildo Cay."

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HAYES, Nelson. Dildo Cay. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940. First edition. Octavo. 328 pp. Cloth. Dust jacket.

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The First Novel On Free Blacks And Race Relations In The North (1857)

By Stephen J. Gertz

The book which now appears before the public may be of interest in relation to a question which the late agitation of the subject of slavery has raised in many thoughtful minds; viz.--Are the race at present held as slaves capable of freedom, self-government, and progress?

The author is a coloured young man, born and reared in the city of Philadelphia...

Being one of the nearest free cities of any considerable size to the slave territory, it has naturally been a resort of escaping fugitives, or of emancipated slaves...

The author takes pleasure in recommending this simple and truthfully-told story to the attention and interest of the friends of progress and humanity in England.

                                                                                     - H.B. Stowe.
                                                                           

The Garies and Their Friends, by Frank J. Webb, the second novel by an African-American (preceded by Clotel; or, The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown, 1853) and the first to consider the lives of free African Americans in the pre-Civil War North was issued in 1857 - but not in the United States. Published in London, it required an ocean to separate it from its home.

Perhaps the sympathetic mixed-race marriage that forms the center of the book had something to do with it. Or, the violent racism and riots that free Blacks experienced  in the City of Brotherly Love, one of the most racially integrated cities in the nation  but intensely so. Maybe it was the author's satire of benevolent yet patronizing white Philadelphian abolitionists who preferred sentimental tear-jerkers ala Uncle Tom's Cabin and didn't appreciate criticism. Possibly, light-skinned blacks passing as whites inspired the heebie-jeebies in fair-skinned citizens. Perchance the idea that black Americans should become capitalists and gain wealth was too much,  the final Whoa, Nelly!

This was not subject matter that comfortable whites found palatable. Though sentimental in its own right, the novel was not an uplifting experience. It provoked anxiety. It was not a great beach read on American shores; it left too much sand in the shorts.

Moreover, it didn't dwell on slavery and its horrors; it was not an abolitionist tract condemning the moral stain. And it raised questions about whether emancipation would succeed. The novel was, for the most part, given short shrift in America, if noticed at all.

It wasn't published in the U.S. until 112 years after its original appearance, in 1969.

Author Frank J. Webb (1828–1894) was an African-American poet, and essayist. The Garies and Their Friends was his first and only novel.

He was born in Philadelphia and grew to become an active member of the city’s free African American community. He married in 1845, and his wife, Mary, gained admiration for her dramatic readings of works by Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Longfellow. Her work attracted the attention of Harriet Beecher Stowe; Stowe was so impressed by Mary’s readings that she adapted scenes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin expressly for her to perform.

HBS helped to arrange a transatlantic tour for Mary, and, armed with letters of introduction from Stowe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Frank and Mary traveled to England in 1856. Mary’s readings gained critical acclaim, and the two received a warm welcome from many British nobles, including Lady Noel Byron (Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Byron) to whom Frank dedicated The Garies..., and from Henry, Lord Brougham (1st Baron Brougham and Vaux), who wrote a brief though  enthusiastic introduction for the book.

"According to its many critics...The Garies and Their Friends seems to share [Harriet Beccher Stowe's] doubts concerning the capability of 'the race at present held as slaves" to govern themselves. At least that's one way to read an African American author's frustrating decision to write a novel in 1857 that spends little time detailing the horrors of slavery - a subject that contemporary black writers took pains to elaborate.

"The year that the novel was published, a London Sunday Times reviewer chided Webb for leaving 'untouched' the problem of how emancipation 'is to be effected, without as much injury to slave as slaveowner.' For the most part, time did not change critical attitudes toward the text...More recently, critics...have argued persuasively that the text deserves analysis, not only as the second novel written by an African American, but also as one of the first to deal with volatile questions of identity and loyalty within the black community.

"Yet Webb's text still continues to languish from a general lack of scholarly attention" (Duane, Anna Mae. Remaking Black Motherhood in Frank J. Webb's The Garies and Their Friends. African American Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 [Summer 2004], pp. 201-212).

The first edition is scarce, particularly in the original cloth. OCLC notes only a handful of copies in institutional libraries, and no copies of the book, in cloth or its simultaneous issue in wrappers, have come to auction within the last twenty-five years.

The Garies and Their Friends is an extremely important American novel, if for no other reason than it illustrates the question unresolved since Webb  first broached it in fiction: Can American blacks successfully assimilate into the American mainstream without losing themselves and their culture in the quest for the American Dream?

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WEBB, Frank J. The Garies and Their Friends. With an Introductory Preface by Harrier Beecher Stowe. London and New York: G. Routledge & Co., 1857. First edition (issued simultaneously in wrappers as a "yellowback"). Octavo. vi, [2], 392 pp. Publisher's original dark blue cloth.

BAL 19392.
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Images courtesy of Between The Covers, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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Death To The Fascist Insect!

By Stephen J. Gertz

It's Death To The Fascist Insect That Preys Upon The Life Of The People Day at Booktryst. On this day thirty-eight years ago, Patty Hearst was on the lam with the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).

She had, on April  3, 1974, announced that she was now one of them and had adopted the pseudonym "Tania." Now she was in prep for her debut, on April 15, as an urban guerilla bank robber. Death To The Fascist Insect Blah, Blah, Blah, was the SLA's mission statement, radical politics at its buggiest.

In its dehumanization and abstraction of the individual it's a line, however, that Joseph Goebbels would have been proud to call his own, except, of course, for the anti-Fascist part. No little irony there. No matter  the politics,  the wider the division the more they all begin to look, sound, and behave alike until you reach, as here, the absurdum ad reductio, a Fascist anti-Fascist motto that, out of context, reads as a parody of political propaganda. But no laughing matter. When  radical extremists act out individuals tend to die.

The Secularist's Adopted Grandfather
N.p., n.d. [ c. late 19th century].
Handbill with unattributed woodcut.
 
Flanking the woodcut is text reading,
"Secularists, are you proud of your Grandfather?"
and " We should respect our Parentage - Dr. Darwin."
A previous owner has inscribed the words,
"Orang Outang - horrid beast - I am not like you in the least."

And so on this day we celebrate polarization in American politics. It's poisoning our political landscape but makes for entertaining, if somewhat frightening, reading when radicals of both the Right and Left come out to play, commit themselves to their cause in print, and wreak havoc on rational discourse. The fright aspect is heightened when one considers that radical seems to have  become the new mainstream and moderate the new extreme. 

International Workmen's Association. North American
Section, Pacific Coast Division, Organizer's Circular.
[San Francisco]: International Workmen's Association, [c. 1881].

Buried in the text is an offer to members of a "scientific and
comprehensive course of chemistry," i.e. explosives training.

Coincidentally. Lorne Bair, the social and political history rare literature specialist, has just issued a new catalog, delightfully devoted, as usual, to the often strident and out there voices of yesteryear, reminding us that extreme political expression has always been a part of the American character, an All-Terrain Vehicle cycling though the American psychic velodrome. Now, however, the stakes are higher, and we need to get the poles back on the true American path, a bicycle built for two heading in one direction. Good luck and God help us all.

BOYCOTT Campbell's Cream of Exploitation Soup -
In Support of Mid-Western Farm Workers.
Toledo: FLOC [Farm Labor Organizing Committee], c. 1980s.

"Mmmm, Mmmm, [not so] Good."

When Campbell's Soup refused to negotiate with Ohio
farmworkers, a brilliant functionary of FLOC appropriated
Andy Warhol's classic pop image and created a propaganda
poster that sharply crystallized their message without
inflammatory slogans or wild-eyed declarations of evil.
The boycott worked. In 1986, Campbell's finally sat down
and entered into a collective bargaining agreement.

FAGAN, Myron C. Moscow Over Hollywood.
Los Angeles: R.C. Cary, 1948.

Josef Stalin looms over Tinseltown in this, the foundation
document of the Hollywood Blacklist, preceding the notorious
Red Channels by two years.

Note the cinematic chorus line, presumably singing and
dancing their hearts out during a performance of
The International while a sinister director looks on with
satanic satisfaction.

Protection To American Labor and American Industries.
New York: Ballin & Berman, 1888. Silk bandana.

Republican souvenir of the 1888 election, based upon
the campaign's Protection v. Free Trade issue.

Department of Strange Political Metamorphoses:
In 1888, the Republican Party was anti-Free Trade and pro-Labor.
Their Presidential candidate, Benjamin Harrison, won the election.

The Most Exciting Story of the Century Will Be Printed
in the Utica Saturday Globe.
Utica: Utica Saturday Globe, 1889.

The post-Civil War period saw more than one brand
of white-hooded racist. Here, the Utica, NY Globe advertises
a series of exposés based upon an undercover agent's
infiltration of The White Caps, a vigilante group based in
southern Indiana and contiguous counties in Kentucky and
Ohio. By 1900, the White Caps had disbanded or had been
hijacked by local Ku Klux Klan chapters, which, apparently,
believed that their territory wasn't big enough for the both of them. 
How can you tell them apart?

Is There a Pink Fringe in the Methodist Church?
If so, what shall we do about it?
Houston: The Committee For the Preservation of Methodism, 1951.

Exposé of the Methodist Federation for Social Action,
a faith-based organization following the precepts of
Jesus Christ, written by Methodist followers who
had forgotten them in the midst of paranoia.

WHARTON, Charles S. The House of Whispering Hate.
Chicago: Madelaine Mendelsohn, 1932. A presentation copy.

If only the current U.S. House of Representatives
kept their snarls at a whisper.

Actually, a memoir of three years imprisonment at Leavenworth.
But it might just as well been a memoir of three years imprisonment
in Congress, for most of us a fate worse than death.

491 years ago, on April 19, 1521, Martin Luther stood before the Diet of Worms and proclaimed in defense of his convictions, "Here I stand. I can do no other. May God help me. Amen." It is Western Civilization's preeminent statement on individual liberty, conscience, and thought.

Now, however, that eloquent declaration has become debased coin, its currency counterfeit in a culture that has gone mad with self-interest. Martin Luther has transmogrified into Sammy Davis singing I've Got To Be Me (Whether I'm Right. Whether I'm Wrong. What Else Can I Be But Who I Am)," the national conversation deep in schlock-infested waters, the  cacophony of political savagery the diet of worms in the U.S. Diet, leaving the rest of us undernourished.

It's the result of political movements that assert, as Sammy did in that anthem of juvenile yearning, "I won't settle down. I won't settle for less, as long as there's a chance I can have it all."

Calling Dr. Spock...

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All images courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, Manuscripts & Ephemera, with our thanks.
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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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The Dark Side of Currier & Ives

by Stephen J. Gertz

When we think of Currier and Ives we think of scenes like the above, The Road - Winter by Otto Knirsch, published by C&I in 1853, and now ubiquitously found on Christmas and greeting cards, postage stamps, and calendars. It is one of many enduring images published by Nathaniel Currier and James Merrit Ives that have become deeply embedded in the American psyche, each a slice of warm toast that make all Americans feel good, sentimental, and nostalgic for bygone days. They are all easily digestible.

Outside of collectors and curators, however, few are aware that between 1879 - 1890 Currier & Ives issued a series of color lithographs embracing all the worst stereotypes about Black Americans. Its Darktown series was, in fact, one of Currier & Ives' best-sellers, one print alone selling an astounding 73,000 copies.

 The prints in the Darktown Series feature the full array of negative stereotypes about American Blacks in the post-Civil War period and underscore the American tradition of reducing Blacks to buffoonish cartoon characters. As such, this rare compilation bears painful, vivid testimony of the racial attitudes of white, middle class Americans during this time. That the series was one of Currier & Ives'  - "Printmakers to the People" - most popular speaks reams.

While most of the seventy-five prints in the series - Black Americans at the racetrack, playing football, baseball, as firemen, etc., are unsigned, enough are (and stylistically similar to unsigned) to reasonably conclude that Thomas Worth and John Cameron were the artists responsible for the designs to all plates here collected.

"Thomas Worth (1834-1917), a New York artist, took his first drawing at the age of twenty to Nathaniel Currier and was compensated five dollars...This was the beginning of a long line of work which T. Worth did for the firm... He is mostly credited for his Darktown Series which was one of the firm's most prolific and profitable series. It is known that one print of the Darktown Series sold 73,000 copies" (Kipp, p. 27).

"John Cameron (1829-1862), although he died at the early age of 33, contributed many great prints to the Currier & Ives firm. Scottish by birth, he emigrated to this country and while still a young adult he was quickly recognized for his artistic talents" (Ibid, p. 32).

Currier and Ives did not publish their lithographs in albums. The prints were sold singly, through wholesalers and retailers, including pushcart vendors and door-to-door salesmen, that covered the entire nation down to each home; James Merrit Ives was a management and marketing genius. I recently had this collection pass through my hands; not a collection, really, but a salesman's sample book comprised of forty-one color lithographs from the Darktown series as well as other, similarly racist, Currier & Ives prints.

"Currier and Ives provided for the American public a pictorial history of their country's growth from an agricultural society to an industrialized on. Included in this chronicle of growth were pictures of the nation's black population. Many lithographs by Currier & Ives cast a romantic shadow over thier subjects, from kittens to mischievous children to firemen. That same rosy hue appears in some of thier prints illustrating African Americans, where antebellum plantation life is presented with warm nostalgia, carefully absolved of any unpleasantness. Other, more unusual prints, used the popular medium of lithography to confront issues like abolition. Whether implicit or explicit, lithographs from Currier & Ives now-famous firm offer strong statements on the role of race in nineteenth century American society...

"Creating a segregated community of black Americans, Darktown prints showcased a full array of negative stereotypes of former slaves who moved north after the Civil War. Portrayed as mentally slow, physically grotesque, and morally inept, African Americans became comical figures to the primarily white consumers of Currier and Ives prints. True to the period's nativist overtones, the Darktown series was accompanied by similar prints lampooning Irish and Italian immigrants, as well as Roman Catholics. Popular prints were made to satisfy popular demand; as such, this series bears a painfully vivid testament to the racial attitudes of white, middle-class Americans of the late nineteenth century" (Images of Blacks by Currier and Ives).

Between 1852, when James Merrit Ives joined Nathanial Currier's print business, and 1907, when the firm finally shut its doors, Currier and Ives published over 7,000 separate images yet while the Darktown series and associated racist prints made up only a small percentage of the total, at the time, as best-sellers, they represented a key source of profits. White Americans couldn't get enough of 'em.

Yep, them happy darkies really knew how to have a good time puttin' on airs an' foolishly tryin' to emulate white folk's ways; it's pure comedy, a laugh-a-minute minstrel show presented in color on paper. How could anyone guess that beneath the gloss of high-steppin' uninhibited, de-light, inchoate rage, hopelessness, and grief stirred an abyss of centuries-old degradation?

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CURRIER and IVES. [DarkTown Series Salesman's Sample Book]. Forty-One Color Lithographs Depicting Black Americans in the Late 19th Century ]. New York: Currier & Ives, 1879-1890.

First issue prints with full margins, at least 1 1/2 inches. Oblong folio (13 1/4 x 17 1/4 in; 336 x 437 mm). Forty-one original color lithographed prints, some highlighted with hand-coloring and heightened with gum arabic, on heavy paper.

References: Conningham, Currier and Ives Prints: An Illustrated Checklist.  Kipp, Robert. Currier's Price Guide to Currier & Ives Prints.

The Plates (w/Conningham #, date, and artist where signed):

1.  A Kiss in the Dark. (3347).  1881.
2.  Wrecked by a Cow Catcher. (6792).  1885.
3.  As Kind as a Kitten.  (281) . 1879. Thomas Worth.
4.  Jay Eye Sore - De Great World Beater. (3187).  1885.
5.  A Trot, with Modern Improvements. (6162).  1881. Thomas Worth.
6.  A Crack Trotter - "Coming Around." (1283)  1880. Thomas Worth.
7.  Well - I'm Blowed! (6613).  1883.. Thomas Worth.
8.  An Ice Cream Racket - Freezing In. (3023).  1889.
9.  An Ice Cream Racket - Thawing Out. (3014).  1889.
10.  Lawn Tennis at Darktown. A Scientific Player. (3463)  1885.
11.  Lawn Tennis at Darktown. A Scientific Stroke. (3464).  1885.
12.  A Darktown Tournament, - The First Tilt. (1431).  1890. John Cameron.
13.  A Darktown Tournament, - Close Quarters. (1430). 1890. John Cameron.
14.  Grand Football Match - Darktown against Blackville. A Kick off. (2483).  1888.
15.  Grand Football Match - Darktown against Blackville. A Scrimmage. (2484).  1888.
16.  A Foul Tip. (2090).  1882. Thomas Worth.
17.  A Base Hit. (374). 1882. Thomas Worth.
18.  De Tug Ob War! (6246).  1883. Thomas Worth.
19.  Won By A Foot. (6758).  1883. "Kemble - del."
20.  Great Oyster Eating Match between the Dark Town Cormorant and the Blackville Buster.
       The Start - "Now den dont you's be too fresh   wait for de word. (2635).  1886.
21.  Great Oyster Eating Match between the Dark Town Cormorant and the Blackville Buster.
       The Finish - "Yous is a tie - De one dat gags fust. am a gone Coon." (2636).  1886.
22.  A Darktown Law Suit. (1407).  1886. John Cameron.
23.  A Darktown Law Suit - Part Second. (1408).  1887.
24.  A Literary Debate in the Darktown Club.  Settling the Question. (3659).  1884. Thomas Worth.
25.  A Literary Debate in the Darktown Club.  The Question Settled. (3558).  1885. Thomas Worth.
26.  A Darktown Trial - the Judge's Charge. (1432).  1887.
27.  A Darktown Trial - the Verdict. (1433).  1887.
28.  A Surprise Party. (5901).  1883. Thomas Worth.
29.  A Change of Base. (997).  1883. Thomas Worth.
30.  A Penitent Mule, - The Parson on Deck. (4793)  1890.
31.  The Darktown Tally Ho, - Tangled Up.  (1427).  1889. Thomas Worth.
32.  The Darktown Tally Ho, - Straightened Out. (1426).  1889. Thomas Worth.
33.  The Darktown Fire Brigade - All On Their Mettle. (1387).  1889.
34.  The Darktown Fire Brigade - Hook And Ladder Gymnastics. (1388).  1887
35.  The Darktown Fire Brigade - Under Full Steam. (1397).  1887.
36.  "Bustin The Pool." (756).  1889. Thomas Worth.
37.  "A Clean Sweep." (1129).  1889. Thomas Worth.
38.  Two To Go! (6272).  1882. Thomas Worth.
39.  Got 'Em Both! (2453).  1882. Thomas Worth.
40.  Hug Me Closer George! (2983).  1886
41.  When! Shall We Three Meet Again? (6634). No date (c. 1877-1894). 

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Lithograph images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

Image of Currier and Ives window sign courtesy of The Philadelphia Print Shop.
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