But the decline of the Ku Klux Klan was just ahead. By 1926 when Evans tried to repeat the parade in Washington, only half as many marchers arrived and they were sobered by the news of political defeats in areas that a year before had been considered safe Klan strongholds.
Increasingly, the Klan suffered counterattacks by the clergy, the press and a growing number of politicians. Then, in 1927, a group of rebellious Klansmen in Pennsylvania broke away from the invisible empire and Evans promptly filed a $100,000 damage suit against them, confident that he could make an example of the rebels. To his surprise the Pennsylvania Klansmen fought back in the courts and the resulting string of witnesses told of Klan horrors, named members and spilled secrets. Newspapers carried accounts of testimony ranging from the kidnaping of a small girl from her grandparents in Pittsburgh to the beating of a Colorado Klansman who tried to quit the Klan. One particularly horrible story described how a man in Terrell, Texas, had been soaked in oil and burned to death before several hundred Klansmen. The enraged judge threw Evans' case out of court.
The next year, when the Democrats nominated Al Smith, a New York Catholic and longtime Klan foe, to run for president against the Republicans' Herbert Hoover, the Klan had a perfect issue which Evans hoped to use to whip up the faithful. But his invisible empire had melted from three million in 1925 to no more than several hundred thousand, and the Klan was no factor in Hoover's election. Americans had clearly tired of the divisive effect the masks, robes and burning crosses had on their communities. What was left of the Klan's clout disappeared as its old friends in office, sensing the new political winds, deserted the Klan in droves.
During the 1930's the nation wallowed in the Great Depression and the Klan continued to shrink. It became primarily a fraternal society, its leaders urging its members to stay out of trouble and the national headquarters hoarding its meager funds. After Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, the Klan began to complain that he was bringing too many Catholics and Jews into the government. Later they added the charge that the New Deal was tinged with communism. The red menace was used more and more by Evans and other Klansmen as their rallying cry, and communists eventually replaced Catholics as one of the Klan's foremost enemies. But only in Florida was the Klan still a factor in the 1930's. With a statewide membership of about 30,000, the Klan was active in Jacksonville, Miami, and the citrus belt from Orlando to Tampa. In the orange groves of central Florida, Klansmen still operated in the old night riding style, intimidating blacks who tried to vote, "punishing" marital infidelity and clashing with union organizers. Florida responded with laws to unmask the nightriders, and a crusading journalist named Stetson Kennedy infiltrated and then exposed the Klan, rousing the anger of ministers, editors, politicians, and plain citizens.
New Leadership
Evans was replaced in 1939 by James A. Colescott of Indiana, who led the Klan in the Carolinas--where unions were crying to organize textile workers--and in Georgia, where night riding resulted in the flogging of some 50 people during a two-year period--including an Atlanta couple who were beaten to death in a love's lane. An outcry from the citizens of Georgia and South Carolina brought arrests and convictions, and the Klan was forced to retreat.
In the North, the Klan suffered another reversal when some local chapters began to exhibit ties with American Nazis, a move Southern Klansmen opposed but were basically powerless to stop. The end cam in 1944 when the Internal Revenue Service filed a lien against the Ku Klux Klan for back taxes of more $685,000 on profits earned during the 1920's. "We had to sell our assets and hand over the proceeds to the government and go out of business," Colescott recalled when it was over. "Maybe the government can make something out of the Klan--I never could." Powerful social forces were at work in the United States following World War II. A new wave of immigrants, particularly Jewish refugees, arrived from war-torn Europe. A generation of young black soldiers returned home after having been a part of a great army fighting for world freedom. In the South, particularly, labor unions began extensive campaigns to organize poorly paid workers. The migration from the farms to the cities continued, with a resulting shakeup in old political alliances. Bigots began to howl more loudly than in years, and a new Klan leader began to beat the drums of anti-black, anti-union, anti-Jew, anti-Catholic and anti-Communist hatred.
This man was Samuel Green, an Atlanta doctor. Green managed to reorganize the Klan in California, Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama. But both federal and state bureaus of investigation prosecuted Klan lawlessness, and Green found that his hooded order was surrounded by enemies. The press throughout the South had become increasingly hostile, ministers were more and more inclined to attack the Klan and state and local governments passed laws against cross burnings and masks.
By the time of Green's death in 1949, the Klan was fractured by internal disputes and hounded by investigations from all sides in response to a wave of Klan violence in the South. Many Klansmen went to jail for floggings or other criminal acts. And by the early 1950's, membership in the invisible empire was at its lowest level since its rebirth on Stone Mountain in 1915.
These are some of their more outrageous viewpoints. For more information on the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Political Organization, visit their website at http://www.kukluxklan.org (Krazy Kristian Kooks!)