The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition by Linda Gordon

Author:Linda Gordon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: politics, racism, history
ISBN: 9781631493690
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2017-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

By 1923 he was the leading Klansman of the West and a member of Hiram Evans’s close circle. His office door said only “Frederick L. Gifford,” and in the anteroom candidates for office and Klan workers waited to see the Exalted Cyclops. He “is naturally an exceedingly busy man, and has to conserve his time. The job of running an entire state is a big one,” the Voter pointed out.12 His powers extended into the national political theater: Portland mayor George Baker appeared at a Klan banquet in support of Gifford’s plan to run for US Senate.13

A third Oregon Klan figure, this one less disciplined and more explosive, was Lem Dever, editor of the Klan’s Oregon newspaper, the Western American. Having worked for the federal government’s American Committee on Public Information, a World War I propaganda agency, he became a publicity expert and practitioner of black psywar. (He was responsible for the false oath attributed to the Knights of Columbus, mentioned in chapter 3.) To some extent he represented the pro-worker side of the Klan, promising in his paper that he would not accept advertising from open-shop (that is, anti-union) businesses and pledging his support for the AFL. At the same time, he was one of the few Klan leaders to promote anti-Communism, which he fused with racism, writing in the paper that “he had personal knowledge” of Lenin’s plans “to lead the colored hordes of the world in battle against America.”14 The Western American was stocked on newsstands, and Dever promoted it with a sales contest that offered a Reo touring car valued at $1,895 as the prize. He defamed the major Oregon newspapers as “pope-bossed, Jew-kept.”15 He used his paper to terrorize individuals, as when he defamed a Greek American for late rent payments and rejoiced when the man fled town. After a few years a feud with Gifford led Dever to quit and denounce the Klan, but not to reject its ideology or methods.16

Two other Oregon KKK leaders, both ministers, stood out for their oratory. Reuben H. Sawyer was a representative of Anglo-Israelism; formerly a European evangelist for that sect, he founded a lively Anglo-Israelite church in Portland. This orientation made Sawyer one of the few Oregon Klansmen to prioritize anti-Semitism. His rhetoric was unusually foul: “The Klan is opposed to all groups and races which are not white. . . . It is repugnant to a true American to be bossed by a sheenie. And in some parts of America the Kikes are so thick that a white man can hardly find room to walk.”17 From 1921 to 1924, he devoted himself to Klan work.18 (We will meet him again as titular head of Oregon’s female Klan group.) Then there was James R. Johnson, another evangelical, even more rabid in his anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. His speeches literally called for murder: “There is only one way . . . to convert a Catholic priest. . . . Kill the son of a gun.” Fellow Klansman Lem Dever

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.