The Twenties - Southwest Career and Technical Academy

71193_23_ch23_p0800-0843 4/12/10 4:21 PM Page 821THE TWENTIES, 1920–1929 CHAPTER 23 821The Ku Klux KlanIf immigration restriction was resurgent nativism’s most significant legislative expression,a revived Ku Klux Klan was its most effective mass movement. The original Klanhad been formed in the Reconstruction South as an instrument of white racial terroragainst newly freed slaves (see Chapter 17). It had died out in the 1870s. Thenew Klan, born in Stone Mountain, Georgia, in 1915, was inspired by D. W. Griffith’sracist spectacle The Birth of a Nation, a film released in that year depicting the originalKKK as a heroic organization. The new Klan patterned itself on the secret ritualsand antiblack hostility of its predecessor, and until 1920, it was limited to a few localchapters in Georgia and Alabama.When Hiram W. Evans, a dentist from Dallas, became imperial wizard of the Klanin 1922, he transformed the organization. Evans hired professional fundraisers andpublicists and directed an effective recruiting scheme that paid a commission tosponsors of new members. The Klan advocated “100 percent Americanism” and “thefaithful maintenance of White Supremacy.” It staunchly supported the enforcementof Prohibition, and it attacked birth control and Darwinism. The new Klan made aspecial target of the Roman Catholic Church, labeling it a hostile and dangerousalien power. In a 1926 magazine piece titled “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,”Evans alleged that the Church’s “theocratic autocracy and its claim to full authorityin temporal as well as spiritual matters, all make it impossible for it as a church, orfor its members if they obey it, to cooperate in a free democracy in which Church andState have been separated.”The new Klan presented itself as the righteous defender of the embattled traditionalvalues of small-town Protestant America. But ironically, to build its membershiprolls, it relied heavily on the publicity, public relations, and business techniques associatedwith modern urban culture. By 1924, the new Klan counted more than 3 millionmembers across the country. President Harding had joined in a special White House ceremony.Its slogan, “Native, White, Protestant Supremacy,” proved especially attractive inClass Discussion Question 23.4Creed of Klanswomen (1924)Women members of the Ku Klux Klan in NewCastle, Indiana, August 1, 1923. The revivedKlan was a powerful presence in scoresof American communities during the early 1920s,especially among native-born white Protestants,who feared cultural and political change. In additionto preaching “100 percent Americanism,”local Klan chapters also served a social functionfor members and their families.Ball State University Libraries, Archives & Special Collections,W.A. Swift Photo Collection.