lynching and the resurgence of the klan - 20th

8/8/2019 Lynching and the Resurgence of the Klan - 20th

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The Return to Normalcy

Immigration Restriction and theResurgence of the KKK


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Continued Immigration Restriction and Nativism Problem with immigrants: Believed that they brought bad values

into the country including alcoholism, poor work habits, foreignculture and ideas

Wanted to put in place quotas on certain groups to pick and choose whichimmigrants we admit to the country.

WWI propaganda had successfully stereotyped foreigners as radicals = prompta resurgence of nativism

Red Scare ( Communism): Fear of the Communist threat becamereal in the years after the Russian Revolution and the rise of Lenin.

See immigration leading to the proliferation and spread of

Communism in America

Associate union activity with Communism and anarchism

There were a number of violent strikes in 1919 (3,630 strikes

& lockouts involving 4 million+ workers in 1919 alone!)

Fear of Communism fed off of Americans fear &

resentment of immigrants


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Immigration Restriction

In the 1920s, Congress established annualimmigration quotas that favored Anglo-Saxons

but kept out blacks, Asians, South-Eastern

Europeans, Slavs, Jews.

For example, while 34,007 people were allowed

to come from England, only 3,845 people were

allowed to come from Italy, only 124 fromLithuania, and only 2,248 form Russia. Also, no

African country could send more than 100

people.


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Immigration Act of 1924

Restricted new arrivals to just twopercent of foreign-born residentsaccording to the Census of 1890, whenthe number of "new" immigrants wasrelatively small.

It all but eliminated the flow ofimmigrants from southern andeastern Europe, and it effectivelyexcluded all immigration frommost of Asia until World War II.

By 1928 immigration had declinedto about 300,000, and just over ahalf million new arrivals enteredthe U.S. during the entire decadeof the 1930s.


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The Sacco & Vanzetti case April 15, 1920, a paymaster and his guard

were robbed of $16,000 and murdered in

South Braintree, MA. Shortly after, NicolaSacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (avowedanarchists) were arrested and indicted by agrand jury.

Witnesses identified the 2 as the killers

(saw crime committed through factorywindows).

20 witnesses put Vanzetti at his fish stall atin Plymouth the time of the murder, whilethe Italian consul in Boston said Sacco was

with him at the time of the murders aswell.

Police who arrested the 2 said they wereguilty b/c they had drawn their guns when

the officers approached = evidence ofguilt


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The case

Judge Webster Thayer not accommodate poorlanguage skills of the 2 men and repeatedly

allowed the prosecution to mention the 2 were

revolutionaries & anarchists.

Evidence was weak and circumstantial, stolen $was never traced to either men, neither had a

criminal record, both were employed

Convicted by the jury, who were instructed by thejudge to do their duty like the boys in France.

1921-1927 numerous motions for new trials

turned down by Judge Thayer


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June 1927, Governor gave in and ordered aninvestigation stay of execution granted and

public outcry increased.

Committee did not recommend a new trial instead called attention to the brutality of the

crime Led to more bombings in NY, Philadelphia, Baltimore

Homes of Governor Fuller and Judge Thayer wereguarded around the clock their mail was filled withdeath threats

Known anarchists and radicals were placed undersurveillance and all public meetings in support of the 2

men were banned


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U.S. SupremeC

ourt refused to intervene b/c they said theydidnt have jurisdiction in the case

August 23, 1927 the 2 were executed at the CharlestownPrison


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A Brief History of the Ku Klux Klan

The KKK originated in the South in the post-ReconstructionEra (1860s-1870s)

Goal was to protect white womanhood and white culturefrom African-Americans and white northerners

Klan was deemed a terrorist organization in the 1870s by

Congress Achieved its goal of white supremacy in the South after

which point it largely disappeared

Revived in 1915 by William J.Simmons, a preacher who was

inspired by DW Griffiths film

Birth of a Nation


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Resurgence of the KKK Almost 5 million members nationwide

by the mid-1920s

Located all over the U.S. (no longermerely a southern phenomenon)

Morrisville, VT cross burning in1920s

Sudbury had its own KKK branch inthe 1920s!

Members were native-born, whiteProtestants

"respectable," middle-classAmericans, both urban and rural,from coast to coast and from Southto North. In fact, Midwestern statesharbored the largest number ofKlansmen, particularly the state of

Indiana


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Responding to rapidly changing society, KKK: Hoped to stop the rapidly changing society by increased activism

Focused on defending white, Christian civilization, promoting community activities,

enforcing morality, and combating corruption and concentrated economic power

Wanted white supremacy (specify who is considered to be white) and maintenance ofracial purity (continued to oppose blacks)

Responding to the increased migration of blacks to the North for work/opportunity and thechanged attitude of black WWI veterans

Wanted to stop immigration Believed it was leading to the mongrolization of American societyevidenced by the

proliferation of jazz, etc.

Opposed to Catholics, Jews, immigrants Feared Catholics allegiance to the pope and increasing participation in govt.

Feared Jews allegiance to Palestine and purported control of international banking

Wanted to promote Protestant religious values (anti-Catholic, family values, etc.)

Committed to protecting the "purity of White Womanhood," the KKK physicallypunished those who engaged in immoral behavior, public indecency and drunkenness,wife beating, gambling, adultery, and the failure to support one's family.

Supported women's suffrage since women could help restore and preserve morality andtraditional values by voting for Klan agendas and political candidates.


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Klansmen were typically white males between 20 and 40 yearsold, and quite often white-collar and middle-class professionals.

The vast majority of Klansmen were clerks, small businessmen,

farmers, teachers, law enforcement officials, and skilledcraftsmen and even included some members of the clergy.

The WKKK, or women's auxiliary, began in 1923, and a JuniorKlan formed in 1924.


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KKK Women & Youth


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If a white girl reported that a colored man had made improper advancesto her - even if the charge were unsupported and based on nothing morethan a neurotic imagination - a white-sheeted band might spirit theNegro off to the woods and "teach him a lesson" with tar and feathers or

with the whip. If a white man stood up for a Negro in a race quarrel, hemight be kidnapped and beaten up. If a colored woman refused to sellher land at an arbitrary price which she considered too low, and aKlansman wanted the land, she might receive the K.K.K. ultimatum - sellor be thrown out. Klan members would boycott Jewish merchants,refuse to hire Catholic boys, refuse to rent their houses toCatholicsR.A. Patton, writing in Current History, reported a grim seriesof brutalities from Alabama: "A lad whipped with branches until his back

was ribboned flesh; a Negress beaten and left helpless to contractpneumonia from exposure and die; a white girl, divorce, beaten intounconsciousness in her own home; a naturalized foreigner flogged untilhis back was a pulp because he married an American woman; a Negrolashed until he sold his land to a white man for a fraction of its value."

Frederick Lewis Allen was a popular and biting commentator of the era. The following is his critical description of the Ku Klux Klan.

Excerpted from Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's(New York: Harper and Row, 1931): pp. 49-50.


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The KKK gained a tremendous amount of power and influence in the 1920s

Elected a number of Klansmen to political office.

This included state officials in Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Oregon and Maine

The KKK managed to elect members to the position of senator in 10 states and 11 togovernorships

Seized political control in a number of states

KKK organized a mass March on Washington

August 8, 1925 40,000 Klansmen marched on the Capital


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The following account is drawn from James Cameron's book,A Time of Terror:

Thousands of Indianans carrying picks, bats, ax handles, crowbars, torches, and firearms attacked theGrant CountyCourthouse, determined to "get those goddamn Niggers." A barrage of rocks shattered thejailhouse windows, sending dozens of frantic inmates in search of cover. A sixteen-year-old boy, JamesCameron, one of the three intended victims, paralyzed by fear and incomprehension, recognized familiar

faces in the crowd-schoolmates, and customers whose lawns he had mowed and whose shoes he hadpolished-as they tried to break down the jailhouse door with sledgehammers. Many police officers milledoutside with the crowd, joking. Inside, fifty guards with guns waited downstairs.

The door was ripped from the wall, and a mob of fifty men beat Thomas Shipp senseless and draggedhim into the street. The waiting crowd "came to life." It seemed to Cameron that "all of those ten tofifteen thousand people were trying to hit him all at once." The dead Shipp was dragged with a rope up tothe window bars of the second victim, Abram Smith. For twenty minutes, citizens pushed and shoved fora closer look at the "dead nigger." By the time Abe Smith was hauled out he was equally mutilated. "

Those who were not close enough to hit him threw rocks and bricks. Somebody rammed a crowbarthrough his chest several times in great satisfaction." Smith was dead by the time the mob dragged him"like a horse" to the courthouse square and hung him from a tree. The lynchers posed for photos underthe limb that held the bodies of the two dead men.

Then the mob headed back for James Cameron and "mauled him all the way to the courthouse square,"shoving and kicking him to the tree, where the lynchers put a hanging rope around his neck. Cameroncredited an unidentified woman's voice with silencing the mob (Cameron, a devout Roman Catholic,

believes that it was the voice of the Virgin Mary) and opening a path for his retreat to the county jail and,ultimately, for saving his life. Mr. Cameron has committed his life to retelling the horrors of hisexperience and "the Black Holocaust" in his capacity as director and founder of the museum with thesame name in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Under magnification, one can see the girls in this photo clutchingragged swatches of dark cloth.

After souvenir hunters divvied up the bloodied pants of Abram Smith, his naked lower body was clothedin a Klansman's robe-not unlike the loincloth in traditional depictions ofChrist on the cross. LawrenceBeitler, a studio photographer, took this photo. For ten days and nights he printed thousands of copies,

which sold for fifty cents apiece.

lynching and the resurgence of the klan - 20th

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