he enlisted the services of Clarke and Tyler, klan membership increased from 5,000 to almost 100,000.

The House committee questioned the imperial wizard during 3 days of public hearings on the ku klux klan in October 1921. The committee lacked authority to administer oaths and its hearings predated by several years the peak of klan strength in the United States. In addition to hearing Members of Congress who had introduced resolutions against the KKK, the committee received an account of investigations conducted by staff members of the N.Y. World, and by a U.S. postal inspector, and heard contradictory accounts of the klan purposes from Imperial Wizard Simmons and one of his kleagles (organizers) who had defected. Charges by the other witnesses that the klan was making "millions" out of spreading racial and religious hatred and being credited with acts of violence in many States were blandly denied by the imperial wizard.

THE KLAN AS A NATIONAL OPERATION

By 1924, the Knights activity had extended to the four corners of the Nation. States such as Maine, Oregon, and California housed units of the hooded order, which attained an overall membership of between 3 million and 5 million. While historians differ on total membership, they agree that the klan rolls were larger in certain Northern States (Indiana and Ohio for example) than in any State south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Activities of the Knights varied from State to State, and within various counties of the same State. Murders committed by hooded bands were reported in some areas in the early 1920's, while in other areas the klan's public image was confined to ceremonial parades and rallies with the distinctive burning of a wooden cross, and intense "politicking." Dynamitings and bombings were also reported, but the most common form of violence attributed to the modern klan was kidnaping of persons who were then flogged and/or tarred and feathered.

Although victims did include Negroes attempting to register other Negroes to vote, historians have observed that many of the persons singled out for punishment by the hooded order were men and women of white Protestant stock allegedly guilt of violating some "moral" law. Repeated incidents are cited of the flogging of persons because they allegedly gambled, dealt in liquor, peddled dope, or deserted a

spouse.

Among the more "refined" forms of intimidation practiced by the modern klan were boycotts of businesses owned by Catholics or Jews, and campaigns to oust Roman Catholic public school teachers and persons of Catholic or Jewish faiths holding elected positions. Meanwhile, klansmen entered politics and used the labels of both major political parties to put klansmen in local sheriff and police departments, courts, and State legislatures. Klansmen allegedly served as Governors in three States, as attorney general for another State, in addition to obtaining seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Represenatives before the klan's fortunes declined in the last half of the 1920's.

In the mid-1920's, a number of States had adopted antimask laws in an effort to curb klan violence; one State also introduced laws mak

ing even threats by a masked person a felony, and requiring a registration of klan membership. Convictions for vigilante activity became more frequent than acquittals in some areas. Meanwhile, klan leadership was engaged in internal struggles over power and division of rich financial rewards (Colonel Simmons himself had been ousted from the wizardship by a Texan, Hiram Wesley Evans, in a power play in November 1922). The publicity given to the venality and immorality of certain klan leaders was costly in terms of membership. By 1928, the invisible empire was estimated to have shrunk to 200,000 or 300,000 members.

THE INTRODUCTION OF ANTICOMMUNISM

During the 1930's the greatly reduced empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan picked up an additional alleged purpose opposition to communism. By June 1939, when James A. Colescott of Indiana succeeded Evans in the office of imperial wizard, a "primary" aim of the Knights was "mopping up the cesspools of communism in the United States."

In actuality, the Knights introduced a practice-continued by klansmen to the present day-of exploiting American antipathy to a totalitarian system of government in order to advance the klan's basic objectives directed against certain American minority groups. This conclusion is inescapable in view of the misdirection of much of the klan's fight against communism. Klan propagandists, for example, issued warnings to the effect that Communists advocated racial equality. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, then conducting voter registration drives, was unjustly accused by the klan of being a Communist organization, and the public was told to beware of the Congress of Industrial Organizations on the grounds that the CIO was "teaching and practicing communism" by trying to place white workers on a level with the Negroes. Klan distortions and falsifications of Communist problems can be understood only in the context of the klan's avowed program of opposition to registration of Negro voters, appointment of Negroes to "any official capacity in connection with government affairs," and other threats to "white supremacy."

Jews and aliens were also attacked on new grounds of alleged ties with the Communist Party. Only Catholics were credited by the klan with having their own conspiracy, independent of Moscow, to "capture the Government of the United States," and "destroy America."

The Knights' position was spelled out in its official publication, The Fiery Cross, and other klan documents supplied to the Special Committee on Un-American Activities by Imperial Wizard Colescott during a third congressional inquiry into the klan.

Colescott appeared before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities on January 26, 1942. The special committee had been receiving sporadic testimony regarding ku klux klan activities since 1938 when it included the klan in a broad investigation into "Nazi, Fascist, and antiracial" organizations. The testimony had been

5 The special committee had reported that, although only some of the antiracial organizations were tinged with Nazi or fascistic activity, they fell within the committee's purview because advocacy of racial and religious hatred was as "un-American" as advocacy of class hatred. (H. Rept. 2, Jan. 3, 1939, p. 10.)

largely confined to alleged cooperation between klansmen and Nazi elements in such areas as Los Angeles, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey. A rally of the Knights held at the German-American Bund's Camp Nordland in New Jersey in August 1940-which put klansmen and pro-Nazis on the same speaker's platform-drew principal attention in the committee's hearings. Colescott subsequently disavowed the rally which he had initially authorized. In defending his organization before the special House committee, Colescott produced klan literature demonstrating that Nazism and fascism were among the foreign "isms" officially opposed by the klan.

During the 1930's and early 1940's the press had continued to report cases of kidnapings and floggings by klansmen-although much more sporadically than in the preceding decade. For example, a series of approximately 30 floggings in the suburbs of Atlanta, Ga., culminated in March 1940 in a fatal whipping and a grand jury investigation. Nine klansmen were subsequently convicted on charges involving kidnaping and flogging. Following a line taken by earlier Wizards Forrest and Simmons, Colescott told the House investigating committee in 1942 that terrorism was contrary to klan principles. Klansmen found guilty in the aforementioned Atlanta flogging case were banished from the klan, Colescott maintained.

In view of the continuous terrorism practiced by members of klan organizations, such disavowals of violent intentions on the part of klan leaders are no more credible than Imperial Wizard Colescott's testimony that the Knights had "no fight with any minority group." Unwilling to divulge the exact strength of the klan, Colescott nevertheless admitted that by 1942 the Knights had "very few paid-up members"; that the strongest realm had shifted from the North to the State of Florida; and that the national treasury had received less than $10,000 in dues and initiation fees during the previous year. From his testimony, it was apparent that the invisible empire had dwindled to less than 10,000 members by World War II.

The organization known as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc., "officially" dissolved itself at an imperial klonvokation (national convention) held in Atlanta, Ga., on April 23, 1944, after the U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue filed a lien for $685,305 in back taxes which the Knights presumably should have paid during its days of greatest financial success.

LOCALIZED KLAN OPERATIONS, 1944-60

Klansmen were relatively quiescent throughout World War II. Dr. Samuel Green, an obstetrician who was head of the Atlanta klavern of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan until its formal dissolution in the spring of 1944, had attempted to keep the klan alive as a "local" project. He assumed the title of grand dragon of an Association of Georgia Klans organized on May 21, 1944. It was not until October 1945, however, that his organization emerged into public view with what was heralded as the first public cross-burning since Pearl Harbor. Klan activity had been continued in Florida by a Miami unit. In September 1944, a Ku Klux Klan of Florida, Inc., was chartered. In September 1946, incorporation papers were filed by a new Alabama organization known as the Federated Ku Klux Klans, Inc.

When Dr. Green sought in the spring of 1946 to make use of the Georgia charter of the old Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the klan leader was blocked by a charter revocation suit instituted by the State of Georgia and by a lien for back taxes filed by the Internal Revenue Bureau. Dr. Green thereupon proceeded to extend the operations of his unchartered Association of Georgia Klans into the additional States of Tennessee, the Carolinas, Alabama, and Florida.

The U.S. Department of Justice was already investigating the revival of klan operations in seven States by the spring of 1946. Included were the States of California and New York, which shortly thereafter revoked the klan charters in order to block further activity in those areas.

Among complaints admittedly under investigation by the Justice Department were attempts by masked bands in Georgia to prevent Negroes from voting. From California in 1946 had come reports of the burning of a fiery cross in front of the store of a Catholic merchant. In Tennessee, a Jewish proprietor closed up shop after an intimidating klan cross-burning. In Georgia and Florida, complaints were received that Negroes were beaten or threatened with violence for engaging in union activity. Floggings of whites and Negroes by hooded night riders, who frequently charged their victims with some alleged "moral" offense, were reported periodically in the States of Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida throughout the years 1946-49.6

The decade ended with almost simultaneous outbursts of klan violence in four States. Violence in Florida during the spring and summer of 1949 included arson against both Negro and white homes, in addition to the usual flogging. Klansmen in Tennessee at the same time were reportedly responsible for a series of lashings, invasions of churches, and armed intimidations. In northwest Georgia, in April, a sheriff turned seven Negroes over to klansmen for flogging. Most publicized of the klan outrages were a series of terroristic acts, including kidnapings and floggings, which occurred in the counties around Birmingham, Ala., beginning in the spring of 1949. A subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, conducting hearings on civil rights proposals, interrogated several Birmingham area newsmen who had interviewed men and women threatened with violence or beaten by men in klan regalia. Most of these victims were white persons charged by the klan with offenses such as nonsupport of family, whiskey selling, etc."

By mid-August 1949, a fatal heart attack had deprived the Association of Georgia Klans of its grand dragon. The organization declined rapidly thereafter, as new klans and leaders began emerging in various States. A splinter Original Southern Klans, Inc., had been created in southern Georgia in 1948. In 1949, Florida klan leader Bill Hendrix introduced his Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. A Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was formed in Alabama that same year to compete with the Federated KKK. It was the creation of an Association

A Federal grand jury report of Mar. 25, 1953, to the judges of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division, described floggings which had been administered in central Florida by members of a "sadistic and brutal ku klux klan." virtually every year since 1943. The jury said it was reporting only those incidents which were admitted to by one or more klansmen.

Public hearings, Subcommittee No. 3 of House Judiciary Committee, 81st Cong. 1st sess., June 29, 1949.

of Carolina Klans in 1949, however, that set the stage for the most notable instance of klan terrorism in the early 1950's.

The Association of Carolina Klans under Grand Dragon Thomas Hamilton was credited with a 2-year wave of violence in North Carolina and South Carolina beginning in 1950. The violence and the klan itself were finally extinguished in 1952 when a number of klansmen were convicted in Federal court on charges of crossing State lines for kidnaping and flogging purposes and when the State of North Carolina undertook mass prosecution of floggers. The grand dragon was also jailed after pleading guilty to a State charge involving the beating of a Negro farm woman.

Reports from Florida and Georgia indicated that klansmen there were also continuing to assault and flog during the early 1950's. By the time Hamilton was convicted in North Carolina, however, most of the klan organizations which had sprung up in the 1940's were either extinct, or dormant, and relatively little activity was reported for the next few years. The next resurgence of the night-riding fraternitygenerally attributed to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision of May 17, 1954, on public school segregation-was destined to be directed by a new array of wizards and dragons and a new set of klan organizations.

THE KLAN UPSURGE AFTER 1954

The most successful klan operation of the late 1950's was masterminded by a paint sprayer employed in an Atlanta auto factory, Eldon Lee Edwards.

Edwards actually quietly organized his klan in 1953. In September of that year, he published and copyrighted a slightly revised version of klan ritual which had been written by Simmons for the old Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Edwards then used the organizational title, U.S. Klans of Georgia, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. It was not until the autumn of 1954, however, that Edwards began openly recruiting through the usual public rallies and cross burnings. His organizers were soon spreading out into such States as Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Texas.

Exploiting the Supreme Court decision of May 1954, Edwards proclaimed that the "white supremacy" objectives of his klan included "maintaining segregated schools at any and all cost." His printing presses ground out the traditional "hate" literature not only against Negroes but also against Jews, Catholics, and "foreigners."

On October 24, 1955, Edwards obtained a charter from the State of Georgia to do business as an alleged "social and charitable" enterprise. Reflecting his proclaimed conviction that times were ripe for a national klan, the title of the incorporated organization was altered to U.S. Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc.

This committee found no evidence that the U.S. Klans actually managed to organize branches in more than nine States. Early organizational efforts in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas were later supplemented by forays into Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas. Evidence that these efforts were at

8 An exception was the Association of Florida Ku Klux Klan, which was organized by William J. Griffin, of Tampa, in July 1953 and was disbanded by him in August 1955.

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