Ku Klux Klan members in United States politics

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This article discusses notable figures in U.S. national politics who were alleged to have been members of the Ku Klux Klan prior to their public careers.

Known members

Harry Truman

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman, the Democratic politician who became president in 1945, dabbled with the Klan briefly. In 1924, he was a judge in Jackson County, Missouri. Truman was up for reelection, and his friends Edgar Hinde and Spencer Salisbury advised him to join the Klan. The Klan was politically powerful in Jackson County, and two of Truman's opponents in the Democratic primary had Klan support. Truman refused at first, but paid the Klan's $10 membership fee, and a meeting with a Klan officer was arranged.[1]

According to Salisbury's version of the story, Truman was inducted, but afterward “was never active; he was just a member who wouldn't do anything”. Salisbury, however, told the story after he became Truman's bitter enemy, so historians are reluctant to believe his claims.[2]

According to Hinde and Truman's accounts, the Klan officer demanded that Truman pledge not to hire any Catholics or Jews if he was reelected. Truman refused, and demanded the return of his $10 membership fee; most of the men he had commanded in World War I had been local Irish Catholics.[3]

Truman had at least one other strong reason to object to the anti-Catholic requirement, which was that the Catholic Pendergast family, which operated a political machine in Jackson County, were his patrons; Pendergast family lore has it that Truman was originally accepted for patronage without even meeting him, on the basis of his family background plus the requirement that he was not a member of any anti-Catholic organization such as the Klan.[4] The Pendergast faction of the Democratic Party was known as the “Goats”, as opposed to the rival Shannon machine's “Rabbits”. The battle lines were drawn when Truman put only Goats on the county payroll,[5] and the Klan began encouraging voters to support Protestant, “100% American” candidates, which was anathema to the Catholic Pendergasts. The Klan allied itself against Truman and with the Rabbits, and Shannon instructed his people to vote Republican in the election, which Truman lost.[6] Truman later claimed that the Klan “threatened to kill me, and I went out to one of their meetings and dared them to try”, speculating that if Truman's armed friends had shown up earlier, violence might have resulted. However, biographer Alonzo Hamby believes that this story, which is not supported by any recorded facts, was a confabulation based on a meeting with a hostile and menacing group of Democrats that contained many Klansmen, showing Truman's “Walter Mitty-like tendency […] to rewrite his personal history”.[7] Sympathetic observers see Truman's flirtation with the Klan as a momentary aberration and point out that his close friend and business partner Eddie Jacobson was Jewish, and assert that in later years, Truman's presidency marked the first significant improvement in the federal government's record on civil rights since the post-Reconstruction nadir marked by the Wilson administration.[8]

Edward Jackson

Edward L. Jackson, a Republican, was elected as governor of Indiana in 1924. He was a member of the KKK when he was elected, but tried to distance himself from the organization after D.C. Stephenson's rape and murder scandal.[9][10]

Robert Byrd

Senator Robert Byrd was a Kleagle, a Klan recruiter, in his 20s and 30s.

Democrat United States Senator Robert C. Byrd was a recruiter for the Klan while in his 20s and 30s, rising to the title of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter. After leaving the group, Byrd spoke in favor of the Klan during his early political career. Though he claimed to have left the organization in 1943, Byrd wrote a letter in 1946 to the group's Imperial Wizard stating "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia." Byrd defended the Klan in his 1958 U.S. Senate campaign when he was 41 years old.[11]

Despite being the only Senator to vote against both African American U.S. Supreme Court nominees (liberal Thurgood Marshall and conservative Clarence Thomas) and filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Byrd later said joining the Klan was his "greatest mistake." The NAACP gave him a 100% rating on their issues during the 108th Congress.[12] However, in a 2001 incident Byrd repeatedly used the phrase "white niggers" on a national television broadcast.[13]

Hugo Black

Supreme Court justice Hugo Black.

Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Hugo Black, a Democrat. In 1921, Black successfully defended E. R. Stephenson in the sensational trial for the murder of a Catholic priest Fr. James E. Coyle. He joined the Ku Klux Klan shortly after, in order to gain votes from the anti-Catholic element in Alabama. His membership ignited a national scandal when he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Black later said that joining the Klan was a mistake, but he went on to say "I would have joined any group if it helped get me votes."[14][15]

Theodore G. Bilbo

Senator Theodore G. Bilbo.

Theodore G. Bilbo, a Democrat and United States Senator from Mississippi revealed his membership in the Ku Klux Klan in an interview on the radio program Meet the Press. He said, "No man can leave the Klan. He takes an oath not to do that. Once a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux."[16]

Rice W. Means

Rice W. Means, a Republican United States Senator from Colorado, was endorsed by the Klan in Colorado. He served a three year term in Congress before losing renomination to Republican Charles W. Waterman in the 1926 election. [17] Means was one of 3 KKK members to hold high office in early 1920s Colorado, along with the Denver mayor and Colorado governor. [18]

Clarence Morley

Morley was a Republican and the governor of Colorado from 1925 to 1927. He was a KKK member and a huge Prohibition supporter. He tried to ban the Catholic Church from using sacramental wine and attempted to get the University of Colorado to fire all Jewish and Catholic professors. [19] [20][21]

Bibb Graves

Governor Bibb Graves.

Bibb Graves, a Democrat, was the 38th Governor of Alabama lost his first campaign for governor in 1922, but four years later, with the secret endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan, he was elected to his first term as governor. Almost certainly Graves was the Exalted Cyclops (chapter president) of the Montgomery chapter of the Klan, but both Graves and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, another Alabama Klan member, were more opportunists than ideologues, politicians who used the temporary strength of the Klan to further their careers.[22]

Clifford Walker

Governor Clifford Walker.

Clifford Walker, a Democrat and the 64th Governor of Georgia, was revealed to be a Klan member by the press in 1924.[23]

George Gordon

George Gordon, a Democrat and Congressman for Tennessee's 10th congressional district became one of the Klan's first members. In 1867, Gordon became the Klan's first Grand Dragon for the Realm of Tennessee, and wrote its "Precept," a book describing its organization, purpose, and principles.

John Clinton Porter

John Clinton Porter, an Independent, was a member of the Klan in the early 1920s, but was no longer a member when he was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1928.[24]

Warren G. Harding

Warren G. Harding by Harris & Ewing photo studio.

Warren G. Harding, a Republican, was allegedly a Ku Klux Klan member. Allegations that President Harding was a member are all based on a third-hand account of a second-hand recollection in 1985 of a deathbed statement made sometime in the late 1940s of an incident in the early 1920s. Independent investigations have turned up many contradictions and no supporting evidence. Historians reject the claim and note that Harding in fact publicly fought against the Klan.

Evidence for Harding's membership

Wyn Craig Wade states Harding's membership as fact and gives a detailed account of a secret swearing-in ceremony in the White House, but bases this claim on a private communication in 1985 from journalist Stetson Kennedy. Kennedy, in turn had, along with Elizabeth Gardner, tape recorded the "late 1940s" deathbed confession of former Imperial Klokard Alton Young, who claimed to have been a member of the "Presidential Induction Team" as Young was dying in a New Jersey Hospital. Young also claimed to have repudiated racism on his deathbed.[25] Wade claims that,[26]

"Simmons' ultimate vindication came when President Warren G. Harding agreed to be sworn in as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. A five-man “Imperial induction team,” headed by Simmons, conducted the ceremony in the Green Room of the White House. Members of the team were so nervous that they forgot their Bible in the car, so Harding had to send for the White House Bible. In consideration of his status, Harding was permitted to rest his elbow on the desk, as he knelt on the floor during the long oath taking. Afterward, the President appreciatively gave members of the team War Department license tags that allowed them to run red lights all across the nation."

Evidence against Harding's membership

Wade states that “This matter was a major issue in letters sent to Coolidge during the 1924 election”, and gives a reference to “Case File 28, Calvin Coolidge papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.” In this file there is a letter from Wizard Edward Young Clarke to President Calvin Coolidge on 27 December 1923, charging Wizard Hiram W. Evens with trying to turn the Klan into a “cheap political machine”. “It [the Klan] was to be an organization designed to up-build and develop spirituality, morality, and physically the Protestant white man of America.”

In their 2005 book Freakonomics, University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner alluded to Warren Harding's possible Klan affiliation. However, in a New York Times Magazine Freakonomics column, entitled "Hoodwinked? Does it matter if an activist who exposes the inner workings of the Ku Klux Klan isn't open about how he got those secrets?",[27] Dubner and Levitt said that they no longer accepted Stetson Kennedy's testimony about Harding and the Klan.

Primary source material on file at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus does not contain evidence of Harding's alleged membership in the Klan.[citation needed] Primary source material on file at the Marion County (Ohio) Historical Society (Warren G. Harding Collection) also does not confirm or indicate any involvement in the Klan, nor support the idea of Harding’s alleged Klan membership.[citation needed] The Site Administrator[who?] of the Harding Home Museum (Ohio Historical Society property) in Marion, Ohio, draws a relationship between Harding's alleged Klan activities directly to the rumor-mill stirred up after the President died in 1923 and Mrs. Harding in 1924.

The 1920 Republican Party platform, which essentially expressed Harding's political philosophy, calls for Congress to pass laws combating lynching.[28] Harding was the first American President to publicly denounce lynching and did so in a landmark 21 October 1921 speech in Birmingham, Alabama, which was covered in the national press. Harding also vigorously supported an anti-lynching bill in Congress during his term in the White House. While the bill was defeated in the Senate, such activities would be in direct conflict with Klan membership.

In his book, The Strange Deaths of President Harding, historian Robert Ferrell says he was unable to find any records of any such "ceremony" in which Harding was brought into the Klan in the White House. John Dean, in his 2004 book Warren Harding also could find no proof of Klan membership or activity on the part of Harding. Review of the personal records of Harding's Personal White House Secretary, George Christian Jr., also do not support the contention that Harding received members of the Klan while in office. Appointment books maintained in the White House, detailing President Harding's daily schedules, do not show any such event.

Payne argues that the Klan was so angry with Harding's attacks on the KKK that it originated and spread the false rumor that he was a member.[29]

Carl S. Anthony, biographer of Harding's wife found no such proof of Harding's membership in the Klan, he does however discuss the events leading up to the period when the alleged Klan ceremony was held in June 1923:

...knowing that the some branches of the Shriners were anti-Catholic and in that sense sympathetic to the Ku Klax Klan and that the Klan itself was holding a demonstration less than a half mile from Washington, Harding censured hate groups in his Shriners speech. The press "considered [it] a direct attack" on the Klan, particularly in light of his criticism weeks earlier of "factions of hatred and prejudice and violence [that] challeng[ed] both civil and religious liberty".[30]

In 2005, The Straight Dope presented a summary of many of these arguments against Harding's membership, and noted that, while it might have been politically expedient for him to join the KKK in public, to do it in private would have been of no benefit to him.[31]

David Duke

File:Rsz davidduke.jpg
David Duke former Grand Wizard in Sachsen, Germany, 2002

David Duke, a politician who ran in both Democrat and Republican presidential primaries, was openly involved in the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan.[32] He was founder and Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1970s; he re-titled his position as "National Director" and said that the KKK needed to "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms." He claims to have left the organization in 1980. He ran for president in the 1988 Democratic presidential primaries. In 1989 Duke switched political parties from Democrat to Republican.[33] In 1989, he became a member of the Louisiana State Legislature from the 81st district, and was Republican Party chairman for St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana.[34]

Benjamin Stapleton

Benjamin Stapleton, a Democrat, was mayor of Denver in the 1920s-1940s. He was a Klan member in the early 1920s and appointed fellow Klansmen to most positions in municipal government.[35]

References

  1. ↑ McCullough 1992, 164.
  2. ↑ Steinberg, 1962. Salisbury was a war buddy and former business partner of Truman's. Salisbury believed that Truman attempted "to give Jim Pendergast control of [their] business." Truman alerted federal officials about Salisbury, leading to Salisbury's conviction for filing a false affidavit. Salisbury contradicts Hinde's statement that the meeting at the Hotel Baltimore was one-on-one, naming at least six individuals who were present. Salisbury states that at the meeting, Truman had to receive a special dispensation to join, because his grandfather Solomon had been a Jew; however, Solomon was not a Jew, and the rumor of Truman's Jewish ancestry was only spread later, by the Klan, once the political lines had been drawn so that Truman was the Klan's enemy.
  3. ↑ Wade, 1987, 196, gives essentially this version of the events, but implies that the meeting was a regular Klan meeting, rather than an individual meeting between Truman and a Klan organizer. An interview with Hinde at the Truman Library's web site (“Oral History Interview with Edgar G. Hinde” by James R. Fuchs, 15 March 1962, retrieved June 26, 2005) portrays it as a one-on-one meeting at the Hotel Baltimore with a Klan organizer named Jones. Truman's biography, written by his daughter (Truman, 1973), agrees with Hinde's version, but does not mention the $10 initiation fee; the same biography reproduces a telegram from O.L. Chrisman stating that reporters from the Hearst papers had questioned him about Truman's past with the Klan, and that he had seen Truman at a Klan meeting, but that "if he ever became a member of the Klan I did not know it."
  4. ↑ McCullough 1992.
  5. ↑ Truman 1973.
  6. ↑ Truman 1973; McCullough 1992, 170.
  7. ↑ Hamby 1995.
  8. ↑ McCullough notes this extensively in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Truman. While Truman had been raised in a family with Southern and Confederate leanings, he still said that he believed "in the brotherhood of all men before the law" (McCullough, p. 247). His work on civil rights was politically damaging but extensive nonetheless.
  9. ↑ </http://www.iub.edu/~imaghist/for_teachers/mdrnprd/lstmp/Klan.html>
  10. ↑ http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=61472
  11. ↑ "Pianin, Eric. A Senator's Shame." Washington Post 19 June 2005.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Ball, Hugo L. Black pp 16, 50.
  15. ↑ Hugo Black's membership was the subject of Ray Sprigle's 1938 series of articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for which Sprigle won the Pulitzer Prize.
  16. ↑ Robert L. Fleegler, "Theodore G. Bilbo and the Decline of Public Racism, 1938-1947", The Journal of Mississippi History, Spring 2006
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found./
  18. ↑ http://kdvr.com/2014/10/31/haunted-mysteries-kkk-in-denver-and-a-colorado-cannibal/
  19. ↑ http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2014/03/04/bob-beauprez-john-hickenlooper-kkk/106554/
  20. ↑ http://www.coloradoindependent.com/146329/the-govs-race-theres-extreme-and-then-theres-extreme
  21. ↑ http://www.coloradoindependent.com/19045/when-colorado-was-klan-country
  22. ↑ Glenn Feldman,Politics, Society and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999); Rice, 138.
  23. ↑ http://www.nga.org/cms/home/governors/past-governors-bios/page_georgia/col2-content/main-content-list/title_walker_clifford.html
  24. ↑ Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920's (1990), pp 138-139.
  25. ↑ “Woody Guthrie: Natural born anti-fascist” by Kennedy, retrieved 9 September 2005.
  26. ↑ Wade 1987, 165, 477.
  27. ↑ New York Times Magazine, January 8, 2006, pp. 26–28
  28. ↑ Republican Party Platform of 1920 (available from the American Presidency Project of the University of California, Santa Barbara).
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Anthony 1998, 412-413.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Goldberg, R. (1981). Hooded Empire : The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
  • Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Florence Harding, New York: W. Morrow & Co. 1998.
  • Dean, John; Schlesinger, Arthur M. Warren Harding (The American President Series), Times Books, 2004.
  • Ferrell, Robert H. The Strange Deaths of President Harding. University of Missouri Press, 1996.
  • Hamby, Alonzo L. Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
  • McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
  • Steinberg. Man From Missouri. New York: Van Rees Press, 1962.
  • Truman, Margaret. Harry S. Truman. New York: William Morrow and Co. (1973).
  • Wade, Wyn Craig. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon and Schuster (1987).
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