Sounding the tocsin on the emergence of the ‘Second Klan’, the editors of the Messenger appeal to labor, the left, immigrants, and all those in the Klan’s sights to urgently push back.

‘An Open Letter to America on the Ku Klux Klan’ by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen from The Messenger. Vol. 2 No. 12. December, 1920.

FELLOW AMERICANS:

In addressing you as fellow Americans we include all persons residing in the United States. We speak upon grave matters concerning which no liberty lov- ing person can be indifferent.

Some months ago it was announced that the Ku Klux Klan was reorganizing in the Southern States. Many so-called “respectable” citizens sponsored the move. Various Southern governors and members of southern alleged civic bodies could be found among the roster. Governor Bickett of North Carolina refused to join, but replied to the invitation with a strong condemnation of this vicious organization. The ugly undercurrent of this criminal stream, however, was too powerful to be checked by anything other than a strong dam of counter organization, along with widespread publicity. The puny dykes of incoherent individual opposition were swept away by this black recrudescent tidal wave of southern barbarism.

Votes for women–Negro as well as whites–gave to the new organization a pretext parallel to the excuse for its predecessor after the Civil War–votes for Negro men. The members of the Ku Klux Klan began night riding. They burned cotton supplies. They paraded in their gruesome dress. They lynched and killed. They murdered, according to a report of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, forty Negroes in Florida who were attempting to vote at the presidential election, Nov. 4th.

The tendency of crime like disease is to propagate, if unchecked. Therefore, drunk with power, this savage society has announced its intention to organize throughout the North, East and West. Indeed an interview in the New York World of November 27th from the Imperial Wizard, Col. Wm. Joseph Simmons, announces that an Order will be set up in New York City. Simmons also goes on to say, “Recently great and favorable interest in the character of the work of the organization has been manifested in various states of the North and West, among which are Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Nebraska, the Dakotas and especially California.” (Watch this reference to California, the hot-bed of anti-Japanese prejudice and race baiting.)

A word next about the early Ku Klux Klan. It was so criminal, barbarous, and disgraceful that Congress passed the Force Bill by which it was vigorously and speedily suppressed. The memorial to Congress called attention to the fact that not only had Negroes been massacred and murdered, but that more than one thousand white men, known or suspected to have been sympathizers with the Union Cause or the North, were foully murdered as “dam” Yankees. When their cases were called for trial in court, they were represented by one of the ablest attorneys in the United States (Johnson). We say represented because after hearing the evidence he refused to defend those Southern Huns. Instead he delivered a diatribe against these criminals whom he represented and threw them upon the mercy of the court, summing up as follows:

Sinclair’s Aftermath of Slavery states:

“Their leading lawyer was the noted and learned Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, who, after hearing the evidence, much of it confessions by the Ku Klux themselves, his honest nature revolting, refused to make a plea for his clients, but left them to the mercy of the Court, saying: “I have listened with unmixed horror to some of the testimony which has been brought before you. The outrages proved are shocking to humanity; they admit of neither excuse nor justification; they violate every obligation which law and nature impose upon man; they show that the parties engaged were brutes, insensible to the obligations of humanity and religion.”

This is the same Klan of criminals, the same clan of political prostitutes, the same order of ossified and fossilized tyrants, the same barbarous band of southern bourbons, the self same clique of clay eating crackers, the same counterfeit knights of Sir Galahad, the same murderous marauders and yeggmen masquerading as Americo-Americans–who are offering a discarded and discredited and derelict organization of the past to the World’s great new day.

Not only is this Ku Klux Klan opposed to the Negro; it is also opposed to Labor. Under the guise of building up an organization to suppress the Negro race, it hopes to appeal to short-sighted labor to remain dormant and still while it perfects its machine against both. Only recently was the Ku Klux Klan used against the miners in Alabama. And all of these so-called Americo-American organizations are generally, if not invariably, used against Labor. It is true of the American legion. It is true of the Loyal Legion and many other patriotic fakirs. Most anti-Negro groups are also anti-labor. Surely most people remember that Congressman Blanton of Texas was as anti-labor as he was anti-Negro. Most southern Congressmen are. Burleson, Palmer, Daniels, Wilson–all are anti-Negro, and anti-labor, too.

Moreover, just as the spirit of mob violence which permeated the nation and atrophied its conscience, from long practice in lynching during the war–so this Ku Klux Klan will not be limited to cruelties to Negroes. Even now it is vaunting its Americanism, the forerunner of all kinds of Trojan Horse frauds and labor attacks.

Again, this Ku Klux Klan threatens religious liberty. Already Georgia (its seat), Florida, the back door to Georgia, and Alabama have passed anti-Catholic laws. These night riders are burning Catholic churches, persecuting the priests and threatening the very life of the Catholic church in the South. Very shortly this rabid anti-Catholic spirit will result in the lynching of Catholic priests, laymen and nuns; their churches and convents will be burned down; their communicants run out.

Next, this Ku Klux Klan is anti-Jewish. Most reading people remember the tremendous anti-Jewish sentiment created by Tom Watson of Georgia not many years ago–a sentiment which resulted in the unjust lynching of Leo Frank. It was probably due to the vision and the memory of the Jewish merchants of Birmingham, Alabama, which recently caused their refusal to join the anti-Catholic crusade, despite the threats of boycotting their businesses.

The Ku Klux Klan is anti-foreign. It divides the people into national rivalries, intensifies national prejudice the passing of which should be desired and is desired by every thinking and liberty loving person. In very truth, this Klan feeds on the manna of race prejudice. It thrives in the South; finds its next most responsive chord in California–both of which are the seats of black and yellow races–the Negro and the Japanese.

Lastly, this Ku Klux Klan is a menace to American traditions and professions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty like other social plants, is dependent upon its environment. It grows in certain soils and dies in others. It may be starved or stimulated according to what it feeds upon. Destruction of life, liberty and property, denial of civil, political and religious liberty, the subversion of the constitution to prevent Negroes from voting, vetoing the laws in an actionable sense, oppressing labor, inciting to violence–these are against avowed traditions of America, at least.

In very truth, we are confronted with the question whether we shall have the Black and Tans of Ireland here in America. Shall we import the Black Cossacks of the Czar? Do we want to try a little of Horthy’s white terror of Hungary? Do we need Attila and his Huns? Shall the Black Hole of Calcutta be repeat- ed? Shall Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo be revived? Do we want the Amritsar of India? Do we seek to outdo the Turk’s massacres of the Armenians? Shall we countenance the subjection of women in the world’s period of expanding democracy by denying Negro women the vote? Shall we permit the rise of the Inquisition in America as against either Catholics or Protestants? Shall we open our door to pogroms on the Jews? Shall we sit idly by while out Japanese relations are so complicated that by murder of a few men of a different hue our beloved country will be pushed into war, destroying the lives of our young men, making veritable stumps of our young manhood, and sending them on their journey of life armless, legless, maimed and mutilated?

We believe all good Americans are opposed to the foregoing contingencies. We believe they are ready to condemn this Ku Klux Klan spirit. We believe, however, that they have not taught seriously of its consequences.

We are, therefore, as the executive secretaries of the Friends of Negro Freedom, calling upon the labor movement of the country officially to condemn it. We call upon the American Federation of Labor, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, International Ladies Garment Workers, United Hebrew Trades, Socialist Party Branches, the Socialist State, National and Local executive committees, Debs and Stedman, the Fur Workers, United Cloth and Cap Makers of North America, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Brotherhood of Painters, United Mine Workers, the Railway Brotherhoods, the State Federations of Labor and all central bodies, like the Central Trades and Labor Council of New York, to condemn this Ku Klux Klan.

We next call upon other organizations, and individuals to condemn the Ku Klux Klan. We call upon the United Labor Education Committee, the Young Democracy, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, the Friends of Irish Freedom, Friends of Freedom for India, the National Consumers League, the Farmer-Labor Party, the Women’s International League for Peace, the Non-Partisan League, the Cooperative League of America, the Workmen’s Circle, the Forward Association, the Jewish Socialist Federation, the Inter-church World Movement, the Teachers’ Union, the Civic Club, the City Club, the Single Tax Society, the Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A., the Union League Club, white and Negro churches of all denominations.

We call upon the radical and liberal press in particular to write editorials of exposition and condemnation. We appeal to the Nation, New Republic, Freeman, Searchlight, New York Call, Jewish Daily Forward, Milwaukee Leader, Jewish Times, Seattle Union Record, Butte Bulletin, the New Majority, Liberator, Good Morning and other radical and liberal organs to sound the tocsin.

Yet he who would be free must himself first strike the blow. Hence we urge Negro civic organizations, fraternal societies, etc., to denounce this Ku Klux Klan. Let the following ones speak–the Pythians, Odd Fellows, Elks, Masons,. Universal Negro Improvement Association, N.A.A.C.P., National Urban League, the St. Lukes and Alpha Phi Alpha.

Besides we call upon the other so-called American press which claims to stand for the best in American traditions, such as the New York World, the New York Globe, the New York Tribune, the Boston Transcript, the Springfield Republican, the Hearst papers to condemn this American anarchy.

We call upon president-elect Warren G. Harding to make special mention of the anti-American and criminal character of the Ku Klux Klan in his inaugural address and to recommend in his first message a Congressional Committee to draft legislation for its complete annihilation and its speedy extirpation from the American continent.

We also call upon the state and municipal bodies, aldermanic chambers, and city councils, legislatures and assemblies, to draft state and municipal legislation to supplement that adopted by Congress.

With respect to labor unions and the Socialist Party we urge that they adopt resolutions prohibiting their members joining the Ku Klux Klan under pain of expulsion.

We would request all bodies adopting such resolutions or laws and all papers writing such editorials to send copies of same to the Friends of Negro Freedom, 2305 Seventh Avenue, New York City, for codification and further publication.

Colonel Simmons calls himself the imperial wizard of an invisible empire. The day of empires has happily almost passed. The Romanoffs have gone. The Hapsburgs have fled. The Kaiser is in exile. The Czar of Bulgaria is no more. The premiers of the powers that made the Peace of Versailles have all been repudiated and overthrown save Lloyd George. All of which is the adumbration of the new day–the passing of reaction-the decay of empires–the renaissance of the spirit of political, economic and social democracy. Secret forces, invisible empires, wizards and witchcraft–these are dying echoes of yesterday–not the nascent voice of to-morrow.

Verily mankind is exchanging old worlds for new–new worlds in which race prejudice cannot thrive, religious bigotry cannot flourish, national hatreds cannot survive, and class antagonism will cease to be. The new world is a world of brotherhood in which the Black and Tan will be unknown, the white terror vanished, the Black Cossack’s unwelcome, the Amritsars and the Black Hole of Calcutta only vestiges and relics of sunless climes, the Ku Klux Klan a byword and a hissing, condemned and not condoned.

This is a true American program, and we urge in the name of the Friends of Negro Freedom, that Americans respond to the call ere it is too late.

The Messenger was founded and published in New York City by A. Phillip Randolph and Chandler Owen in 1917 after they both joined the Socialist Party of America. The Messenger opposed World War I, conscription and supported the Bolshevik Revolution, though it remained loyal to the Socialist Party when the left split in 1919. It sought to promote a labor-orientated Black leadership, “New Crowd Negroes,” as explicitly opposed to the positions of both WEB DuBois and Booker T Washington at the time. Both Owen and Randolph were arrested under the Espionage Act in an attempt to disrupt The Messenger. Eventually, The Messenger became less political and more trade union focused. After the departure of and Owen, the focus again shifted to arts and culture. The Messenger ceased publishing in 1928. Its early issues contain invaluable articles on the early Black left.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/messenger/v2nRN-12-dec-1920-Messenger.pdf