Published July 11, 2021
By Joseph Newkirk
The
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) first formed in the former Confederate States of America
following the end of the Civil War in 1865. This clandestine group espoused
white racial supremacy and opposed Reconstruction by violently terrorizing—and
sometimes killing—emancipated slaves and impeding their newly-acquired legal
and political rights. Enforcement of federal laws and the work of
“carpetbaggers” who traveled from Northern states to help unify the country
largely suppressed these vigilante tactics by 1871.
The KKK’s second wave arose in 1915 and
this time targeted Roman Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. With the United
States weary of World War I and the ensuing flood of immigrants, mostly
Catholics from southern Europe, the Klan found new enemies to bond its members.
Although occasional physical violence occurred, the KKK now largely used
political ploys and psychological terror.
Organized in Stone Mountain, Georgia, by
William Joseph Simmons, the Klan rapidly grew through skillful marketing and
the spectacular success of the movie Birth of a Nation. This film directed by
D. W. Griffith glorified the KKK as saviors from Reconstruction’s “Northern
Invasion” and protectors of white women’s purity against the threat of freed
black slaves.
Birth of a Nation ran for several weeks
in Quincy to sold-out audiences.
Although Union Veterans of Soldiers and Sailors Home and the local
Censor Board condemned the movie, the city’s Mayor William K. Abbott found no objections
to its blatantly false depiction of American history. In 1921, a KKK lodge
formed in Quincy “emphasizing simon-pure Americanism as its central principal.”
The local “Klavern,” as the KKK called
its chapters, met in Bowles Pasture on North 12th Street near Spring
Lake and at Grace Methodist Church on 4th and Lind Streets. Meetings
and cross burnings also took place in an open field one mile south of 36th
and State Streets. A year after the Quincy Klavern began, about 2,700 men had
been “naturalized,” as the KKK termed its initiation, with the King James Bible
opened to Romans 12 and the initiate’s hand on the “Kuran,” the Klan “Bible.”
Klaverns sprang up in most other Adams
County towns, and huge ones relative to population in Hannibal, Palmyra, and
Bowling Green, Missouri. Quincy formed a
Women’s Ku Klux Klan, and the Hannibal Klavern started a junior group designed
for children to carry Klan traditions and practices into the next generation.
The KKK called itself the Invisible Empire and never publicly revealed members’
names, but every Memorial Day hooded Klansmen raised a flaming cross and
performed a secret ritual for fallen comrades in Quincy’s Woodland and
Greenmount Cemeteries.
Protestant ministers were the strongest
supporters and most vocal spokesmen for the KKK. Rev. Robert Van Meigs, pastor
of Quincy’s Central Baptist Church, who called himself a Klan adviser,
delivered a series of sermons reprinted in Quincy papers about the Klan’s
stance on social issues. In the Quincy Daily Journal of November 19, 1923,
Meigs stated the Ku Klux Klan “Hates some obvious characteristics of certain
elements of Catholics, Jews, Negroes, and foreigners, and that they are seeking
the elimination of the dangerous element to the salvation of the good, thus
contributing towards the preservation of true Americanism.” Meigs urged the
Klan, with what he called its God-given mission, to change its name to
Protestant Princes and stop wearing masks and hooded robes because Catholics or
Jews could don similar garb and commit atrocities and blame them on the KKK.
In 1924, New York Governor Al Smith
became the first Catholic to make a serious bid for the presidency. The local
KKK rallied in West Quincy’s Sherman Park and hoisted a fiery cross while
denouncing Smith as anti-American and Catholics as unworthy of public office
and full citizenship.
As reported in the Quincy Daily Journal
of March 13, 1923, Quincy Klan’s members circulated literature among the city’s
businesses stating their group’s “sublime lineage” and “divine origin,” and
declaring that a Smith victory would leave “Jesuits, Jugs and Jews” controlling
the country. They also participated in a regional pageant in Hannibal’s Robel
Park chronicling the history of the KKK and attended a mass meeting in Bowling
Green on August 5, 1924, estimated at 8,000 people.
Trying to inflame more contempt for
Catholics, the Klan also circulated a bogus Knights of Columbus initiation
oath. In part it read: “I will wage relentless war against all Protestants and
Masons…rip up the stomachs and wombs of the women, and crush their infants’
heads against the walls, in order to annihilate their execrable race.”
Quincy Knights of Columbus Council #583’s
Public Relations Committee, headed by Dr. Henry P. Beirne, vehemently denied
that members took this oath or intended to overthrow the United States
government. He further dismissed as an egregious lie that Catholics had
conspired to assassinate Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Rev. John
J. Driscoll of Quincy’s St. Peter Church stated that Catholics gave spiritual,
and not political, allegiance to Rome, and that Catholics were the first and
last Americans to die in World War I—an overt sign of patriotism.
The 1920s resurgence of Ku Klux Klan
collapsed—but not totally disbanded—across the nation, and in Quincy, by the
decade’s end. Indiana Grand Dragon David Curtiss Stephenson, who had spoken at
local meetings, shattered the Klan image of upholding law and order and
traditional American values. In 1925, a jury convicted and sentenced him to
life in prison for kidnapping, raping, torturing, and murdering a white woman,
Madge Oberholtzer. This scandal, along with mounting opposition by Catholic
churches, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and
Temple B’nai Shalom hastened the Klan’s demise.
During its waning days, a speech in
Quincy by Springfield, Illinois Klan leader W. W. Moore reminded followers of
their successful effort to earlier pass the Johnson-Reed Act in Congress. This
1924 bill severely limited immigration from Italy, Greece, and Eastern Europe,
and banned all immigrants from Asia. Johnson-Reed endured for 41 years as a
national law before its repeal and remains one of the most contentious legacies
1920s Ku Klux Klan.
Sources
Coyne, Kevin.
“The Knights vs. The Klan.”
Columbia Magazine
, Nov. 1, 2017. Accessed
May 7, 2021.
www.kofc.org
Gordon,
Linda.
The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the
American Political Tradition.
New York City: Liveright Publishing, 2017.
“Klan
Organizer Who Visited Quincy Had Planned City Lodge.”
Quincy Daily Journal
,
Sept. 19, 1921, 3.
“Klan Speaker
Gives Address North of City.”
Quincy Herald-Whig,
July 28, 1927, 14.
McGee, Brian
Dr. “History of Anti-Catholicism in the United States.” Presentation at St.
Rose of Lima Church Men’s Fellowship,Quincy, IL May 27, 2021.
“Minister
Would Have Klansmen Abandon Masks.”
Quincy Daily Journal,
Nov. 19, 1923, 3.
“Priest Defends
Catholicism and Scores Klan in Sermon on ‘Intolerance’ On
Sunday.”
Quincy Daily
Journal,
Dec. 3, 1923, 7.
“Quincy
Knights of Columbus Answer Evans’ Article on Klan.”
Quincy Daily Herald,
Oct.
26, 1923, 7.
“Quincy Pastor Believes ‘Hood’ Weakens Purpose of Ku
Klux.”
Quincy Daily Herald
, Nov.
19, 1923, 4.
