Southern Illinois, perhaps more than any other location, had the best and worst of the U.S. labor movement competing for leadership of the class. The conflict between radical miners and the Klan for control of the Southern Illinois coal fields was complicated by the splits within the left union forces, the John L. Lewis leadership, race, language, nativity, and guns. A long, roiling civil war within mining communities lasted two generations as the many foreign-born miners resisted the Klan despite their leadership. This background to Bloody Williamson by veteran labor activist J. W. Johnstone was written as the 1924-25 Klan War, which took dozens of lives, began. While the mines are largely closed and union gone, Southern Illinois remains a seat of reaction.

‘The Ku Klux Klan and the Miners’ by J. W. Johnstone from the Daily Worker Saturday Supplement. Vol. 1 No. 365. March 15, 1924.

IN the mining industry the Ku Klux Klan is becoming a menacing factor that will have to be reckoned with in the very near future. They are making a bold bid for control of the miners’ union, notwithstanding that membership in the Klan is sufficient grounds for expulsion. It is generally taken for granted amongst the miners that the klan has already gained complete control of the Indiana district.

The recommendation of Van Bittner, speaking for the resolutions committee at the national convention, that the clause against the klan be stricken from the constitution, the open support given to the klan by Hessler, of Indiana, the fact that Lewis seemed willing to let it go over, forced many of the delegates to leave the convention firmly in the belief, that the Lewis machine, was either deadly afraid of the influence of the klan, or were actually members of it. This recommendation coming from the resolutions committee was made unquestionably with Lewis’ approval. It was his own hand picked committee, and every delegate knew that none of the committees reported on any question to the convention, without first consulting with Lewis.

Klan Is Not Molested.

This is what helps to make the klan a dangerous factor in the mining industry, and explains why no real organized expose of the klan has been made by the miners’ officials, altho the homes of their members have been invaded by the klan, and a veritable reign of terror is being carried on against the foreigner in many states, reaching a high water mark in the mining towns in southern Illinois. The Communists and even the mildest of progressives are hounded by the Lewis-Farrington machine, are boycotted in the mine, expelled from the union, because they want to make the United Mine Workers of America a real militant fighting force, but the klan is left free to carry out its work of terrorism and disruption.

The domination of the klan in Herrin, Johnson City, West Frankfort and other mining towns, is a standing challenge to organized labor of Illinois, which has not as yet been accepted. It is an open insult to the miners of Illinois whose members are mostly of foreign birth. As long as the klan is allowed unrestricted license to do as they please, it will be difficult to tell just who compose its members, but the morons and cowards who make up the klan, could very easily be exposed to the light of day, if an energetic public campaign was carried on against them, led by the miners’ officials and the Illinois State Federation of Labor.

The resistance against the klan in these towns is led by miners, in spite of the passive attitude of their officials. Senator Sneed, who is also an official of the miners’ union in the Herrin sub-district, should be leading the fight in that town, but he is afraid of his political job. Frank Farrington and John H. Walker should be leading a state fight against this gang of hoodlums, but it is not considered good politics to take this fight up. The fact that the three of them are miners, and it is the members of their organization that are the victims, seems to have no weight with them.

Declares Klan Members Cowards

The utter cowardliness of the klan members is shown, not only by the fact that they do their dirty work generally in the dead of night, hooded and in gangs large enough to insure safety, but that they are afraid to admit openly their membership, altho the organization is legal. Only a few of them come out in the open, such as Glen Young, and he has to get a big, fat fee for doing so, the rest of the cowardly crew sneak into the darkness of secrecy.

The smoke screen behind which these mental dwarfs work is prohibition. In reality they are being used as a white guard organization, and if the present congress passes any of the numerous anti-foreign born bills that are now pending before that body, the klan will be the secret service organization which will spy upon the foreign born workers and take upon themselves the regulation of their political and economic advancement.

That this is no idle forecast was shown in the election of delegates to the miners’ state convention in Illinois. The issues were clear, you were either for the Lewis-Farrington policies, or you were against them, and the progressive miners do not see any particular difference between Farrington, Lewis, and the klan. In one local union where two suspected klansmen were badly defeated, and where the majority of the delegates elected were foreign born workers, a notice was posted in the mine, stating “That interpreters were wanted to go to the state convention,” etc. A notice like this, appearing for the first time would have meant but little, but in the tense atmosphere of these southern Illinois towns, where everybody goes armed after dark, it took on a more significant aspect.

Trade Unions Oppose Knights.

In these towns everything is union, it is hard to find a non-union man anywhere. The entire official trade union movement is opposed to the Ku Klux Klan. Where then does the klan get its strength. It is led by the small business element, financed by all business groups, its purpose is to destroy the trade union movement, or reduce it to klan control. They are ably assisted by the weak-kneed passive attitude of the officials of organized labor, and have the active support of these damn-fool American born workers whose understanding of life goes no further than the A.P.A.’s of the early ’90’s. They do not see that the attack against the foreign born workers, under the slogan of a 100 per cent Americanism, is an attack on all workers in general, irrespective of the place of their birth, and upon the labor movement in particular.

How could the Ku Klux Klan in cities like Herrin, Johnson City and West Frankfort, etc., create a reign of terrorism, raid the homes of miners, place themselves above the law, arrest hundreds of men and women, herd them into special cars at the point of a machine gun, if they did not have at least the passive consent of union officialdom.

The effect of this attack upon the foreign born, instead of making citizens of them, really keeps them from becoming citizens. In actual practice the foreigner finds that he can get better protection from the foreign consul than he gets from either his union or the local law enforcing bodies, and the foreign consuls are advising their countrymen not to take out their citizenship papers, because in doing so they can get no protection from him or from the government that he represents. Strange as this may seem, yet it is true, as witness the vigorous protest of the French consul against the raids of the klan on the French colony in Johnson City.

Terrifying Effect of Secrecy.

Where are all those fighting miners that made such a glorious record for organized labor in the State of Illinois? How can they stand idly by and not accept this challenge. In the city of West Frankfort, which is 100 per cent organized, the fiery cross of the klan burns day and night in the center of the town, yet not a half dozen men are known publicly to be members of the klan. The terrifying effect of the klan upon the population is its secrecy and its ruthlessness. The average man does not care to take the risk in leading the fight against these monsters for fear of their vengeance, which is swift, brutal and extends to all members of the family alike.

The cause of this abnormal situation is the inaction of the leaders of organized labor. If instead of fighting the radicals or assisting to keep in office such tin horn politicians as Governor Small, they would start an organized public campaign against the klan, they could clean it out of Illinois within 48 hours. I doubt it there are a hundred workers in the entire state who would have the courage in the face of such a campaign to come out openly in support of the klan, and the miners have the power in their hands to force the business men to change their opinion about the Americanism of the klan. The miners must demand that their officials wage a fight against the Ku Klux Klan until it is driven from the coal fields of this state.

The Saturday Supplement, later changed to a Sunday Supplement, of the Daily Worker was a place for longer articles with debate, international focus, literature, and documents presented. The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1924/v01-n365-supplement-mar-15-1924-DW-LOC.pdf