The daily worker. [volume], October 15, 1927, Final City Edition, The New Magazine, Page 4, Image 8

About The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
“Hegel says somewhere that upon the
stage of universal history all great events
and personalities re-appear in one fashion.
, or another. He forgot to add that on the
first occasion they appear as a tragedy; on
the second, as a farce.”
—Eighteenth Bruniaire —Marx.
* * *
ORIGINALLY the Ku Klux Klan was founded in
Pulaski, Tennessee in May, 1866. It was born out
of the attempt of the defeated Southern plantation
owners to retrieve some of the losses which they had
incurred as a ruling class as a result of the victory
of the Northern capitalists.
Immediately after the end of the Civil War groups
of “carpet-baggers” (Northern politicians) mostly
from the republican party which was the party of
Northern capital, took hold of the political machin
ery of the South. However, finding themselves un
able to cope with the rich of the South they had to
find and develop some new forces so as to utilize it
for the purpose of crushing the Southern land
owners to the wishes of the Northern capitalists.
The newly liberated Negroes gave them their op
portunity.
The Southern plantation owners in their struggle
to retain their former position and to drive the
Negroes back to as great a degree of slavery as
possible organized both secretly and openly. The
Ku Klux Klan was the most effective of all its
organizations because it did not follow the rules of
“democracy” laid down by Northern capitalism but
instead made its own code which, of course, came
nto sharp conflict with the federal government.
The constitution of the old klan states that its
purpose is to aid the widows and orphans of Con
federate soldiers, but this was only a symbol. It
limited its membership to those living in the South
ern states which participated in the secession move
ment against the North; it excluded from its mem
bership those who had fought on the Northern side
in the Civil War; it declared itself particularly to
be an organ for fighting the republican party and
taking away the control of the recently liberated
Negroes from that party; its salute was the salute
of the Southern Army during the Civil War.
Those writers who have written favorably of this
organization boast that soon after it began to func
tion effectively, the “hitherto unstable and increas
ingly independent labor element, particularly the
Negroes, were now under control.” The methods used
by the klan were extremely terroristic similiar to
■ those of the modem fascists but peppered with
American vigor. The contest between the Northern
and the Southern politicians grew very much sharper
as each representing the various sections of the
ruling class tried to use the existing situation for
their own benefit: the Northerners using as their
weapon the federal government, who on the surface
simply fought the terroristic acts of the secret so
cieties of the South, and the Southerners suing these
secret organizations.
By 1868, the situation become so sharp that the
federal government and a number of the state gov
ernments under the control of the republican party
proceeded to take action against the Ku Klux Klan.
Thus, during that year, in various states, laws were
passed making membership in the Ku Klux Klan
a crime against the state and imposing severe penal
ties. The movement to crush the klan become so
drastic that finally General Forrest, who was the
“Grand Wizard” of the klan, in February 1869 issued
a proclamation dissolving the organization. It is im
portant to note in this connection that the dissolu
tion of the klan did not mean that the Southern
landowners had been completely defeated. The is
sue had been, as raised in the South, whether the
newly liberated Negro shall be allowed to develop
to the point where he become a political force who,
by very fact of his great numbers, could overwhelm
the Southern capitalists. It was only after the
Northern capitalists had promised that it would not
permit such a condition by withdrawing its army
and recalling its imposed politicians that Southern
capitalism liquidated its “extra-legal” method. Thus,
in the dissolution order for the original Ku Klux
Klan the Grand Wizard said:
“The Invisible Empire has accomplished the
purpose for which it was organized. Civil law
now affords ample protection to life, liberty
and property. . .The better elements of so
ciety are no longer in dread for the safety of
their property. . .”
The official order of dissolution did not however
actually dissolve the klan. It continued to exist in
localities throughout the South until the Southern
landowners were absolutely assured that the North
ern ruling class really intended to permit them the
use of the federal government to protect their inter
ests against the new-born proletariat. By the end
of the 19th century the remnants of this Ku Klux
Klan had gone into complete oblivion. It was only
the most outstanding of a number of organizations
which had been created by the ruling class of the
South in defiance of the ruling class of the North
in order to maintain the specially severe conditions
of exploitation which were necessary to the South
ern landowners if they were to thrive.
The Km Klum Klan
By SAM DARCY
The modem Ku Klux Klan was organized in 1915
by Colonel Wm. Joseph Simmons, a Southern ad
venturer. The klan actually had no growth and was
merely a small sect. It had copied all the rituals,
costumes and other mummery from the original
klan. Its attempt to utilize the tradition of the klan
of the previous century was farcical, however, and
no one paid any serious attention to it. Where in
the nineteenth century the klar. did its tragic work
for a defeated class who did not have the machinery
of the federal government at their command, the
klan of the twentieth century was created to serve
the bourgeoisie who did have the federal state ma
chinery but yet wanted this extra-legal method to
maintain conditions of exploitation that even the
federal government did not dare to champion openly.
With the end of the World War there came a tre
mendous industrialization and trustification of pro
duction—greater than America, and probably the
entire world had ever seen before. This did not leave
the South untouched but on the contrary introduced
manufacturing to so great a degree that now large
masses of Negroes were drawn away from the plan
tations into industry. Thus the proletarianization
of important sections of the Southern Negroes gave •
this hitherto apathetic mass new possibilities of or
ganization as a class for struggle against their
Southern masters for better conditions. This was
enhanced by the soldiers, both Negro and poor white,
returning from the war, who had had a conscious
ness of their power instilled in them by what they
had expei-ienced, and now began asserting them
selves.
The Ku Klux Klan in their propaganda utilized
these various dangers to the rulers / for stirring the
bourgeoisie and their agents to greater efforts to
suppress the lower classes. One news bulletin issued
by their “Exalted Cyclops” says:
“. . .not many months ago there was a
riot in the Negro district (Norfolk, Va.) caused
by Negro soldiers attacking a district police
station to release a Negro prisoner. . .He (the
police commissioner who had joined the Ku Klux
Klan) welcomed us. . .Our military company
is to be trained and 260 repeating rifles will be
turned over to us in time of trouble.”
In Mobile, Alabama, the workers in the govern
ment shipyards had gone on strike. -These events
were symptomatic of the conditions all over the
South. The steel strike was then beginning to ex
tend its scope into the Southern steel mills. This was
all utilized in the propaganda of the klan. Their
bulletins and newspapers and the speeches of their
leading figures are full of references to the threat
ening danger of an organized working class. Sim
mons says in one article:
“Americans do not realize that they sleep on
a Red Volcano’s edge.”
In the “Searchlight” the organ of the klan, an
article is printed in which they warn that the “Third
International of Moscow. . .is working to over
throw all the. . .governments of the world.”
This propaganda was not enough however. If the
klan was to mobilize the middle class as was its aim,
4
it had to raise some issues affecting its potential
members in their community. Thus it raised the
issue which was of long standing among the South
ern professional and business elements, of keeping
the Negro in a state of social and economic inferior
ity. The manifestations of increased consciousness
among the Negroes made such propaganda as this
very effective among these elements. The middle
class having always hid their unmoral sex life by
highly moral pretenses, now raised the cry of saving
the respectability of bourgeois family life (they only
threatened it!). The South being overwhelming-ly
protestant in religion and the middle class being
very bigoted in their protestantism, the klan also
raised the cry as to the danger of Catholicism from
Rome seizing the United States government. They
utilized for this purpose an alleged document issued
by Pope Leo XIII, in which he asserts that the
American continent belongs to him and his church
by virtue of its discovery by a catholic, Columbus,
and the time is soon coming when he will take
forcible possession, at which time “it will be the
duty of the faithful to exterminate all heretics found
within the jurisdiction of the United States.”
This propaganda against social equality for the
Negro, against the danger of a growing proletariat,
and for religious bigotry appealed tremendously to
the Southern middle class and there can be no doubt
but that large numbers were drawn into the Ku Klux
Klan and a still larger number influenced by its
propaganda. A careful perusal of the propaganda,
leaflets, booklets, etc. issued by the klan clearly
shows that it was all aimed to appeal to the eco
nomic interest and social priggishness of the petty
bourgeoisie of the South. The actual membership,
however, has been grossly exaggerated. In 1921,
the time when the organization was leaching its
height, a congressional investigation showed it to
have a total membership of 85,126 on its books while
the newspapers throughout the country were declar
ing it to have 500,000 to 700,000 members.
Until 1923. the organization increased its member
ship somewhat, but since then the organization dis
integrated through exposure of its mummery,
through internal factional struggle by leaders arid
groups cf leaders for power and through severe
attacks by other organizations. Today, it is safe
to say that their strength is approximately what
it was in 1921, about 80,000 members and this largely
confined to the South, and a small part in the West.
Actually the klan has failed to accomplish any
serious purpose. The bourgeoisie can thank the
American Federation of Labor far more than the
Ku Klux Klan for the poor condition of Southern
labor since it was the A. F. of L. that prevented th«
workers from being organized. The klan’s circus
methods of work attracted far too much attention
to the situation. The bourgeoisie of the present pe
riod in America have more subtle methods than the
crude weapon of the nineteenth century klan. The
klan will only serve as an emergency organization
for use when the workers defeat the present methods
of the bosses.
The bourgeoisie will at any moment that its es
tablished state machinery fails to function suf
ficiently smdothly strengthen such fascist organiza
tions as the Ku Klux Klan as “extra-legal” methods
of fighting the proletariat or sections of it.