July 4, 1923: 100,000 Klansmen celebrate in Kokomo

I posted a Twitter comment today where I said:

Been reading about the rise of the Indiana Klan in the 20s (membership rose to 250k). I see plenty of parallels to the Trump movement.

I wanted to elaborate. First of all, I think we all have some fairly specific images when we think of the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t think your average Hoosier Klansman probably fits that image very well. Don’t get me wrong — I think we should still be horrified by the popularity of the movement and what it says about Indiana. But, I don’t think it’s probably fair to impose our present day images on the Hoosiers that joined up.

For one thing, the message was a little more subtle. Klan recruiters like D.C. Stephenson were paid a commission on every new recruit, so they had a tendency to sell whatever the listener wanted to buy. Their primary message was Patriotism and Protestantism. God and country have always been big sellers.

That said, historian James Madison tells us that the Klan’s vision of Patriotism and Protestantism tended to be expressed in negative terms. They were  pretty easily used in an “us” versus “them” kind of way. And the Klan always likes to punch down against less privileged members of society.  In 1920s Indiana, they were defending against “threats” to god & country like Roman Catholics, the foreign born, Jews, blacks, and the old White Cap enemies: the immoral such as adulterers, gamblers, and drinkers.

Your average white, protestant male (sound like any modern day candidate’s constituency?) was pretty ripe to be sold on the movement. The message I get from several history books is that the electorate was pretty simply exhausted by the social change of the past decades. Advance in technology, immigration, the Progressive movement, and very significantly, World War I had changed the social landscape dramatically. The folks on top of the heap at the beginning of that process — even people who are generally pleasant and do not harbor great stores of ill-will toward others — will tend to tire of the change first since it’s not necessarily bringing them any individual benefits.

The 1920s Klan grew like wildfire. Starting from essentially nothing in 1920 and, by 1925, including something like 30% of native-born white men. On July 4, 1923, the Indiana Klan held a rally in Kokomo, Indiana at which D.C. Stephenson was inducted as the Grand Dragon. The rally is considered the largest in the nation’s history, attended by something like 100,000 Klansmen and their families. Doug Linder describes some of the event as follows:

That night, Stephenson, in his newly-won golden orange robe and hood, enjoyed the conclusion of the “Konklave in Kokoma.” A Klan parade, with robed high Klan officials on horseback and a dozen floats wound its way through town.  “Onward Christian Soldiers” blared from a forty-piece marching band.  When the parade was over, the crowd moved to Foster Park and sung hymns such as “The Old Rugged Cross” around a sixty-foot high fiery cross.  Fireworks streaked through the nighttime sky. Stephenson soaked it all in.  He was, he thought, soon destined to be the most powerful man in Indiana.

Now, it wouldn’t be long before Stephenson fell hard and took the Klan with him. (He kidnapped and raped a woman, leading to her death.) But, on that night, he and the Klan were on top.

What brought them there was a change-weary, aggrieved native-born, white male, protestant population. It was a minority of that demographic, but a substantial one coupled with a majority that did not push back hard enough against them. The public statements were often framed in a way that allowed them to plausibly deny the hateful subtext (perhaps even to themselves). Linder, once again:

In fact, Stephenson’s speech that day was entitled “Back to the Constitution.”  He denounced political corruption, American imperialism abroad, and called for an end to deficit spending.  He ended his hour-long, enthusiastically received talk with the cry, “Where there is no vision, the people perish!”  All in all, there was scarcely a phrase in the speech that would embarrass a major party candidate today.  There were better places than a huge rally attended by media from several states to deliver the KKK’s anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Jewish message.

Stephenson and Trump have the narcissistic demagogue thing in common. If Trump is not successfully opposed, I predict a parallel trajectory with Stephenson — a scandal with roots in his hubris followed by generations-long shame that so many generally decent citizens supported him.