DEFILING the CROSS

 By RANDOLPH BEDFORD

Accepted as regular happenings in the U.S.A. are the initiation of members of the Ku Klux Klan—conducted by night with the fiery cross lighting up the masked white figures in nightgowns and conical cap. In Tulsa (Oklahoma) one night 1020 new members were initiated at an open-air ceremonial that lasted for hours.  They were admitted into Tulsa Klan No. 2 before a fiery cross 70 feet high and 20 feet. long, in the presence of 30,000 spectators, who came to the initiation-field in 10,000 automobiles.
An aviator with a fiery cross beneath his plane flew over the scene, back and forth. There were another 580 proponents, but  their initiation was adjourned, with another 1,000, who were initiated at a neighboring town. The initiated swore great oaths and kissed the American flag, and then apparently they were duly authorised to officiate at Tar and Feather Parties.

OUTRAGES AVENGED.

At Beaumont (Texas) these Tar and Feather Parties are common. Two doctors, Paul and Scott, were stripped, beaten, tarred and feathered on the one night. In Inglewood (a suburb of Los Angeles) the Ku Kluxes considered that a Spaniard was running a still; which is not considered an offence by anybody but prohibition officers, and not by them except in rare cases. A hundred "knights," sans peur et sans reproche, abducted the Spaniard and his brother, illtreated his wife, compelled his two young daughters to dress themselves before the crowd and drove a near-by family into the cold of a winter's night. Among the Klansmen were a policeman and two of his deputies. The hundred knights were routed by one man, the Marshal, Frank Woerner, who shot the Klansman policeman and seriously wounded the two Klansmen who were deputies.

DONATIONS AND DOPE.

At Station (Texas) and at Colfax (Texas) two Catholic priests were flogged for establishing parish schools. At their best, as in Knoxville and Chattanoga (Tennessee), the Ku Klux activities are greatest in probing into domestic affairs, and in issuing absurd warnings to persons they please to censor. In Sacramento they enter churches, making money presents to the ministers, and leave letters, of which this is apparently the formula, accompanying the usual fifty dollars: "The unknown eye hath seen and we appreciate your work for the betterment of social and political conditions and the spiritual uplift of mankind. Back of this donation stands our whole organisation an unbroken phalanx. With God and right as our foundation we have nothing to fear in the erection of our spiritual structure."

BRANDING AND BURNING.

Klansmen came to a Sunday school at Knoxville and left 25 dollars, "to prove that we love religion and children." The next night they drove a Labor Union secretary out of the town and demanded dismissal of a deputy sheriff, who immediately resigned.
The Ku Klux at Freeport (Long Island) are only mouth fighters. The Klan "Evangelist" made a speech cursing the movies, which, he said, made Protestant ministers to appear "hypocritical, elongated and shrivelled up, and Rabbis as loveable and kind." Of course, Jews control moving pictures, and this may be their form of subtle propaganda. A youth of Chambersburg (Virginia) accused by the Klan of being a disobedient son, was kidnapped, stripped and beaten and branded on the cheeks with the letter "K." A race riot in Texas was followed by the burning three negroes at Mexia and the hanging of one; and at Carthage, a battalion of national guardsmen had to be sent with machine guns to guard the trial of three negroes charged with criminal assault. Yet the K.K.K. had sweeping victories at the Texas primary elections, combining with the prohibition and church votes.

MINISTERS FLOGGED.

At Pelham (Georgia.) the Rev. B. Temple, a cripple, was taken by the Klansmen, just before daylight, laid face downward and flogged. Another minister, the Rev. D. Waters, on the same day, was similarly treated.  On the same day a negro at Macon (Georgia) was taken from gaol and lynched; and a U.S.A. Congressional inquiry into the K.K.K. this winter was suddenly blocked and abandoned, allegedly "at the behest of Wall-street interests."
The K..K.K. claims hundreds of thousands of Freemasons as its members, but the heads of the Masonic Lodge in America indignantly deny the charge. The K.K.K. is probably lying again, but it is indisputable that the Klan is active in Southern Government.

TERRORISING OFFICIALS.

Newspapers from Georgia report, "A big Ku Klux lobby attended the opening of the State Legislature at Atlanta to-day." A Ku Klux editor is being sent to Europe to set up a Klan auxiliary there. For just as the American prohibitionists desire to make the world "dry" as America is not, because there is much plunder in reform, so the wowsers of the Ku Klux Klan are out to proselytise the reactionary millions and bigots of Europe at four dollars each initiation fee, and a profit of three dollars on the mask, nightshirt, and regalia.
The Governor of Georgia asks that the Klan be made illegal, which, under existing law, it is already. The Georgia Governor says that the State police are afraid of the Klan, and on the facts that the Klan is almost never prosecuted, it would seem that State Attorneys-General are afraid also.

RECORD LYNCHINGS.

Emmet Clark, of Fort Worth (Texas) stripped and flogged by the Klan "because he didn't take his wife out oftener," could never get prosecution for his assailant. The lynchings in Southern States were 52 in 1913; 52 in 1914; 69 in 1915; 54 in 1916, 38 in 1917; 64 in 1918, 83 in 1919 and 39 in 1920. In nine cases out of ten the Ku Klux victims are white, and there have been no prosecutions. For the first time in the history of Georgia the leaders of the mob that lynched two negroes at Mt Macintosh were indicted; and eight K.K.K.'s are indicted at Atlanta, for negro lynching. At Mer Rouge (Lousiana) the Klansmen murdered two hard working men, Richards and Daniels,after flogging them. Their bodies had been cut up and sunk with heavy weights in a lake. Weeks after their disappearance the police and military made a close search for the bodies—martial law having to be enforced during the search in order to protect the police. Divers were employed, and the Klan placed and fired a thousands pounds of dynamite, thinking to explode the lake floor and cover the bodies. Instead the explosion brought the bodies to the surface. But no prosecutions followed.

JURY THREATENED.

At Winder (Georgia) the Grand Jury indicted certain Klansmen, and the Klan threatened the jurymen with death. The foreman of the Grand Jury then armed himself and publicly called on the Klan to come out and fight in the daylight. But there was no reply. The military were called out to protect the Grand Jury, Governor Hardwick saying there "had never been a time of greater anxiety in the State, many men parading the street with sawn-off shot-guns to welcome the Klan."
In Little Rock (Arkansas) the Klan killed one man and wounded four; and at Smackover tarred and feathered five.

RIVAL TO K.K.K.

The K.K.K. has even entered Harvard University, and a student, a former Klansman who left the Klan when he found out its real nature; has been ordered to leave the University.
The North-Western States have a rival to the K.K.K. in the Royal Riders of the Red Robe, with headquarters at Portland (P. Oregon). It is working through the churches, declaring war on the Jews, Negroes and Catholics; and is bossed by a "King Regent," who discovered the easy money K.K. graft is.

OPPOSITION

The women K.K.'s of Georgia a number of imitator organisations. "The Terrible Ladies of the Invisible Eye" have headquarters at Fort Worth (Texas). So far they has distinguished themselves by kidnapping Mrs. J. C. Tatim by night and stripping and tying her to a tree, whereupon four women flogged her.
The "Betsy Ross Council" is an offshoot of the Invisible Empire, and is destined, according to its own statement, to "embrace all the Protestant women of the world." I don't know who Betsy Ross was, but the methods of her council tell me that she's no lady.

BIGOTRY AND INTOLERANCE.

If the K.K. was simply a grafting proposition to relieve fools of 30 dollars or so, it could be passed over. But it deals in bigotry and intolerance for dollars and votes, and wherever these are dollars and intolerance and votes in any one place it will pay for the Klan or a variant of it to start business. In politics it is always anti-democratic as the wowser vote always has been and ever shall be. To defeat Labor in Oklahoma, the Klan and the prohibitionists coalesced, and failed.
The Rev. Silas Newton, of Oklahoma, boasts of having 17 Klansmen in the U.S. Senate; and said, in defending the masking of Klansmen that "their strength lay in secrecy." The Klan has a footing in Canada, where it special amusement is the burning of Catholic churches—a number of Catholic churches, including one very old cathedral, suffering destruction by fire in November and December, 1922. Other fine buildings have been burned since.

ORDER OF CRUSADERS.

England has already got its beginning of the Criminal Wowser organisation in the Order of Crusaders—a mixture of Fascisti and the Ku Klux. The Chief Custodian is Col. Gee, a former Tory member of Parliament, recently defeated for Woolwich; and the dress of the order is a black habit, white surplice, red cross, riding-boots, sword and spurs.
With the Ku Klux established in New York, the Fascisti in Italy, the Order of Crusaders in London, and the Wowsers of Bavaria breathing fire and slaughters against the Jews, Hebrews are apparently in for a bad time.

Truth (Perth, WA : 1903 - 1931), Saturday 18 August 1923, page 5