Jul
19
The Klan and Progressivism
July 19, 2010 | 11 Comments
Michael Zak does what all too many on the left fail to do: crack open some history books and take a real look at the history of the Ku Klux Klan. Zak correctly notes that when the Klan was at its zenith during the 1920s, it was a terrorist wing of the Democratic party, and that since its inception, Republicans were at the forefront in trying to take it down.
It would have been far more truthful for the congresswoman to have admitted the fact that all those who wore sheets a long time ago lifted them to wear Democratic Party clothing. Yes, the Ku Klux Klan was established by the Democratic Party. Yes, the Ku Klux Klan murdered thousands of Republicans — African-American and white – in the years following the Civil War. Yes, the Republican Party and a Republican President, Ulysses Grant, destroyed the KKK with their Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
How did the Ku Klux Klan re-emerge in the 20th century? For that, the Democratic Party is to blame.
It was a racist Democrat President, Woodrow Wilson, who premiered Birth of a Nation in the White House. That racist movie was based on a racist book written by one of Wilson’s racist friends from college. In 1915, the movie spawned the modern-day Klan, with its burning crosses and white sheets.
Inspired by the movie, some Georgia Democrats revived the Klan. Soon, the Ku Klux Klan again became a powerful force within the Democratic Party. The KKK so dominated the 1924 Democratic Convention that Republicans, speaking truth to power, called it the Klanbake. In the 1930s, a Democrat President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, appointed a Klansman, Senator Hugo Black (D-AL), to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1950s, the Klansmen against whom the civil rights movement struggled were Democrats. The notorious police commissioner Bull Connor, who attacked African-Americans with dogs and clubs and fire hoses, was both a Klansman and the Democratic Party’s National Committeeman for Alabama. Starting in the 1980s, the Democratic Party elevated a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), to third-in-line for the presidency.
I have one quibble with all this. It focuses too much on the partisan aspect of the KKK and not enough on its ideological drive. After all, modern day Democrats could just claim that the Klan represented the conservative wing of the Democratic party. This would be an error.
While most members of the Klan held what would be termed conservative views on social issues, they were hardly purveyors of Burkean conservative values. In fact the Klan typified the Progressive/Populist movement to a tee: “conservative” socially but decidedly left-wing economically and politically. They supported government intrusion into the economy and were backers of the New Deal. Jesse Walker explains some of the areas of overlap between the Progressive movement and the Klan:
1. Progressivism had roots in the Protestant pietist tradition, and its partisans were frequently interested in reforming individuals as well as institutions. It’s a quick jump from there to the moral authoritarianism described in Charles Alexander’s books. Jane Addams, the Social Gospel activist who played such a big role in passing protective labor regulations and compulsory schooling laws, was also a critic of the “debased form of dramatic art, and a vulgar type of music” that a young person might find in the five-cent theaters, writing that it was “astounding that a city allows thousands of its youth to fill their impressionable minds with these absurdities.” Prohibition, that Klan kause kelebre, reached its height as a cause during the Progressive Era, complete with muckraking exposés of the “whiskey ring” and culminating with the passage of the eighteenth amendment in 1919.
2. Racism also had a foothold among the progressives. It might be tempting to argue that bigots like Woodrow Wilson, who introduced Jim Crow rules to the federal government, were merely progressive in some areas and reactionary in others. But the American eugenics movement was tied closely to the progressives’ drive for “scientific” reform, and its heyday covered both the Progressive Era and the ’20s. Politicians offered eugenic arguments not just for laws that banned miscegenation and allowed authorities to sterilize the allegedly unfit, but for restrictions on immigration from southern and central Europe.
3. The progressives and the Klan shared an interest in mandating public education and eliminating urban political machines. The civic-activist historians tell us that the rank-and-file Klansman’s interest in such reforms was frequently a sincere response to corruption and inadequate schooling, though it’s clear that their urban proposals owed at least something to their fear of immigrants, and that their education proposals were transparantly anti-Catholic. If the Klan’s motives were not purely nativist, then neither were the progressives’ purely benign: Just as the Klansmen sometimes shared the progressives’ hopes, the latter sometimes shared the Klansmen’s fears.
4. In the late 1910s the Klan was a small regional organization. In the early ’20s it was large and national. There’s a number of reasons why it made this leap, but the biggest may be the effects of World War I. This too marked a connection with progressivism.
As the historian William Leuchtenburg and the economist Murray Rothbard have argued, Wilson’s wartime policies were an outgrowth, not a negation, of Progressive Era politics. During the conflict, government planners and “enlightened” corporate leaders replaced a relatively free market with a heavily regimented economy, while intellectuals hoped, in Leuchtenburg’s words, to adopt “the same sort of centralized directing now employed to kill their enemies abroad for the new purpose of reconstructing their own life at home.”
Jonah Goldberg discussed some of the nastier, racist elements of the Progressive movement in Liberal Fascism. Justin Logan also has taken a look at the links between the Klan and Progressives, and there is other literature that touches upon this phenomenon.
Long story short, the Klan were largely comprised of people we would term statists. This is not to say, of course, that all Progressives were racists or klansman, but the idea that the KKK was some kind of right-wing group is not anywhere near accurate.
Comments
11 Comments so far
Cranky – I know that this site doesn’t usually have a lot of back-and-forth in the comments section, but I really hope that you reply to this in some detail.
I’ve made a lot of the points that you raise in this article (although it never occurred to me that the KKK was related to Prohibition – thanks for that one). But any conversation about the Dems, GOP, and racism always veers towards the “Southern Strategy”.
The standard comment is that race dominated the southern conservatives (who happened to be Democrats), and when their party shifted in the 1960′s, the southern racists all became Republicans. My usual reply is threefold: that racism is if anything stronger in the North than the South; that the Southern Strategy was as much about getting the southern whites to vote against hippies as against desegregators; and that it’s still the D’s, not the R’s, who promote governmental racism. That’s a good rebuttal, but not a great one. Can you give me something better?
Pinky:
First off, I hope don’t scare off good comments here
I’m not that mean, am I?
But I think that the responses you have come up with are fairly good. While I don’t think we should completely whitewash the “southern strategy” as something that was free of any racial connotations, it certainly had a lot more to do with the culture in general.
Also, if the southern racists were turned off by the Democrats, why would they think they’d find a more welcome home in the Republican party? While I’m sure vote counters within the GOP establishment welcomed defections, it’s hardly the case that the GOP platform was any friendlier to the segregationists. Quite the opposite in fact. The national party platforms of the GOP regularly condemned elements of the Jim Crow south – the Klan, poll taxes, segregation in the military (hat tip to Don McClarey for providing that info). Also, the GOP voted for the Civil Rights Act in greater percentages than did the Democrat party (something like 80% plus support in both Houses from the GOP). So it could be true to say that racist conservatives switched from the Dems to the GOP, we’re missing some part of the narrative here.
As for this:
that it’s still the D’s, not the R’s, who promote governmental racism.
I think that is a great rebuttal, in fact. See this story. I would argue that considering the respective worldviews of conservatives and leftists, it is the latter that would be more prone to racism, or at least thinking in racialist categories.
As for the north/south thing, I’ve heard the same before. The way it has been explained to me is that southern racism is simply more overt. I am also reminded of a comedian (forgot the guy’s name) who joked that northern prejudice is much more specific. In the south whites will beat up blacks, but in the north you’ve got Italians beating up the Irish. All I’ll say is having lived in both the north and south, I think that northerners have little to boast about over southerners when it comes to race relations.
There might be something I’ve missed, so perhaps others can add something. I’d also throw in the caveat that I was born in 1977. So while I am a history buff and I think relatively well-informed, it’s not exactly the same as having lived through this period, so others who are a bit, ahem, more well-seasoned might provide a different perspective.
Here is the language from the 1932 and 1948 GOP platforms referenced above. Again, thanks to Don for the info.
From 1932:
For seventy years the Republican Party has been the friend of the American Negro. Vindication of the rights of the Negro citizen to enjoy the full benefits of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is traditional in the Republican Party, and our party stands pledged to maintain equal opportunity and rights for Negro citizens. We do not propose to depart from that tradition nor to alter the spirit or letter of that pledge.
This from the 1948 platform:
Lynching or any other form of mob violence anywhere is a disgrace to any civilized state, and we favor the prompt enactment of legislation to end this infamy.
One of the basic principles of this Republic is the equality of all individuals in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This principle is enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Constitution of the United States; it was vindicated on the field of battle and became the cornerstone of this Republic. This right of equal opportunity to work and to advance in life should never be limited in any individual because of race, religion, color, or country of origin. We favor the enactment and just enforcement of such Federal legislation as may be necessary to maintain this right at all times in every part of this Republic.
We favor the abolition of the poll tax as a requisite to voting.
We are opposed to the idea of racial segregation in the armed services of the United States.
Hey, some blogs have chatty threads, some don’t. No biggie.
“Also, if the southern racists were turned off by the Democrats, why would they think they’d find a more welcome home in the Republican party? While I’m sure vote counters within the GOP establishment welcomed defections, it’s hardly the case that the GOP platform was any friendlier to the segregationists.”
There’s something really important in those sentences. I’m going to have to ponder it a little more. Thanks for the reply!
I always heard the North-South racism dichotomy described in these terms:
Southerners didn’t mind blacks getting close as long as they didn’t get too high**; Northerners didn’t mind blacks getting high as long as they didn’t get too close.
* “getting close” refers to social interaction and living in close proximity
** “getting high” refers to rising up in station (i.e. knowing their place)
Not bad. My take on it has always been something like the Edna St. Vincent Millay quote about loving humanity and hating people. Many Northerners are proud of being superior to those lousy Southern bigots, but are perfectly happy without black people around.
As a Southerner (raised in Birmingham, AL and attended college in Atlanta, GA) who now lives in the north (or mid-west, depending on how you want to classify Western PA), I’ve had many people here ask me about racism in the South, and my answer is always the same:
In the South, “racism” (or more accurately, I think, prejudice in the sense of “superiority”) is just a “part of the culture,” if that makes sense. It doesn’t excuse people’s behavior, nor does it undermine very real problems, but in many ways I don’t think the opinions are as deeply rooted in hatred and a desire to do real harm.
Contrast this with what I’ve observed where I now live (and this has actually been echoed by people I’ve known who’ve spent considerable time both in the North and South), where I think much of the prejudice is an outright reflection of hostile race relations rather than culture, where there is ill will and anger and the feelings are very real.
So it’s been enlightening to see these sentiments echoed here, that my observations aren’t isolated.
Incidentally, just the other night, I was talking with some people about this very issue – people who I think to a certain degree do hold real “kneejerk” prejudices – and one of them said something to the effect of, “Of everyone here, the one who’s least racist is a guy from the South”…as if that were akin to being a needle in a haystack.
I’ve lived in the South all my life, except for the last 5 years in northern Ohio, and my views of the difference between Southern racism and Northern racism have been confirmed.
The major difference is that the type of widespread cultural racism as has been commonly practiced in the South is hardly all that widespread or common anymore.
I don’t know how to say what I want to say without sounding like a dummy but I’ll give it a shot anyhow.
I don’t see much racism where I live. I only see social classes clashing. The middle and upper classes don’t “like” the lower class because there is an impression the lower class is where it’s at because they want to be or don’t try hard enough. For example, they don’t sacrifice to get an education, don’t work the long hours, find it easier (or a better financial advantage) to line up for food stamps than get a second job. I’m not ignorant enough to say true black\white racism doesn’t exist *I* just don’t *see* it (or notice it) very much (if at all).
Or perhaps this is just a window into my personal prejudices…
I’m not ignorant enough to say true black\white racism doesn’t exist *I* just don’t *see* it (or notice it) very much (if at all).
It’s quite possible you don’t see it because it’s not there. It’s not necessarily a bad fault to have, but sometimes we can be a little too hard on ourselves. In other words, just trust your instincts. If you honestly don’t perceive a lot of racism in your day-to-day life, maybe it’s because it really isn’t there.
Or maybe it’s because you’re really a bigot.
Just kidding of course. On a more serious note, it is possible that we’ve become so over-sensitized to racism that we do in fact miss it when it really occurs. It’s a bit of the boy who cried wolf phenomenon. Just because racial hucksters constantly engage in false accusations of racism doesn’t mean that there are not in fact situations where racism comes into play. I think we should be able to rely on our own common sense to make the determination.
A more multicultural region will tend to have more social segregation based on cultural preferences which is highly correlated with race. The North is probably more economically diverse as well which adds to the tendency to segregate along class lines which is also highly correlated with race. But I think this type of segregation is amoral, or at least not as malicious as the type of racism that aims to keep racial minorities down. Slaveowners interacted with blacks more than abolitionists.