Klan norms, values, and ideals continue to shape and influence state public policy
Jenks Public Schools, in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, suffered a significant budget shortfall in February 1922.
Approximately $9,000 suspiciously disappeared from the public coffers. Teachers’ salaries were in jeopardy and general operating expenses threatened to end the nine-month school year abruptly.
Under much pressure for accountability from the public, Jenks city officials held an emergency school board meeting to discuss a proposed option of ending the school year three months ahead of schedule. Twenty Klansmen in full regalia crashed the event held in the high school auditorium.
The secret organization members silently pushed their way to the front of the audience and issued Jenks Chamber of Commerce officials an ultimatum. The leader of the hooded group relayed a concise statement: “The Invisible Empire stands for law enforcement, right and justice, the protection of women, and a free public education.”
The Klan then publicly threatened the lives of those individuals who opposed their proposed education policy mandate. “We hope it will not be necessary to visit individually and personally,” said the ranking Klansman, “those opposing…let them beware. Eight thousand eyes are upon those who oppose nine months in Jenks.”
As the Klan members exited, as silently as they had entered, the crowd erupted into applause. A motion was immediately proposed for a nine-month school year with double the existing level of funding using a bond to scrape up the funds.
The Ku Klux Klan’s commitment to positioning itself as the vanguard of public education was apparent as this political issue prompted the official public debut of the Klan in Jenks, Oklahoma.
As a result, Jenks held nine months of school that year and the Klan would continue flexing its political muscles across the state.
Left-wing populists, socialists, immigrants and Blacks were not easily controlled during the early 20th century following the Great War. The Oklahoma Realm of the Klan, much like the national office, was heavily invested in post-war solutions to these social “problems.”
Through the vehicles of violence, intimidation and coercion, “moral and political reforms were the primary objectives of Klansmen.”
This second rise of the Klan, much different from its post-Civil War predecessor, can be characterized as a social movement powered by a violent, yet efficient, political machine emphasizing its brand of politics and law enforcement in order to implement its policy ideas.
During the 1920s Klan members across the country rallied around a collective consciousness, initially galvanized by Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans.
In July 1923, Evans took the stage at the first annual meeting of the revived Ku Klux Klan and cast himself and his fraternal order as the “embodiments of traditional mainstream ideas in American education.”
He could have rallied his followers around issues of increased immigration, uppity Black World War I vets, labor unrest, the ever-present “Catholic menace,” or the lack of Protestant values regarding enforcement of Prohibition. Yet, he chose public education reform as the leading, unifying cause for his inaugural address.
If you were a Klansman or a sympathizer, saving the nation’s soul from a variety of social problems including war, crime and declining morals required a return to fundamentalist ideals.
Mandating the compulsory reading of Bibles in Oklahoma’s public school classrooms was a main priority of the Progressive Era Ku Klux Klan and Women’s Ku Klux Klan. On January 16, 1922, in Hugo Oklahoma, the local Klan’s first appearance was in the form of a parade revealing its existence in the town.
Banners carried by the Knights of the Klan read, “we want the Holy Bibles in our public schools.”
The School Board Members’ Association in Pittsburg County demanded that the Bible be read every morning in classrooms in every school in McAlester.
The Henryetta, Oklahoma, Klan went so far as to hand deliver Bibles and threatening warning letters to each teacher in the county to read them every day with students. As a Protestant religious and social movement, the Klan sought to impose its beliefs on public schools, especially those with high concentrations of Catholic and Jewish students.
Textbook Battles
The social order is best served when every individual resides in their ”proper place.” Textbooks, guided by the “transcendental philosophy of rugged individualism and its condemnation of institutional restraints upon personal liberty,” legitimized the racial and class stratification of the South and the dominance of a small, elite class of white men. Fred Arthur Bailey, who studied hundreds of school textbooks following Reconstruction, asserted that textbooks operated on the ”assumption of human inequality,” a principle dear to the Klan.
Klan concerns over school textbooks held mainstream support as Klansmen and Klanswomen engaged in debates over “unpatriotic textbooks” with the general public.
Traditionalists attempted to gate-keep narratives of American Exceptionalism that exalted the Founding Fathers in American classrooms, while a new school of class-conscious historians, like Charles Beard, sharply criticized their economic motives. Supposed “unpatriotic histories” were products of a new school of revisionist historians who analyzed the darker human nature elements of American history.
The Klan charged full-force into what historian Jonathan Zimmerman coined “textbook wars.” Due to perceived scandals involving textbook salespeople who were accused of improperly capitalizing from public funds, the Invisible Empire felt the need to get involved.
The Klan would go so far as to purchase books for some school districts to use in their classrooms. Their use was non-negotiable. In some cases the Klan burned offensive textbooks while charging admission to the bonfire to raise money to buy replacements.
The Klan and its education reform allies, understood that a well-crafted historical framework “inoculated children against interpretations dangerous to the dominant class.”
Teachers who refused to join their local Klansmen or Klanswomen organizations were fired in Muskogee, Oklahoma, a Klan-dominated county in the 1920s. As a result of Klanish education policies, 20th century whites absorbed a veneration for Klanish views, an intense resistance to Black civil rights, and a deferential attitude toward charismatic, populist leaders.
Why does this matter today? During the early 1920s, the Invisible Empire’s objectives included the overt infiltration of American political, educational and law enforcement institutions. For a time they succeeded and dominated Oklahoma policy.
And even today, the Klan’s influence is evident in Oklahoma, where street names, buildings and schools are named after people with Klan affiliations, the Klan still has an underground presence.
At the heart of Trump country, Oklahoma is home to Bible-thumping political leaders who embrace nativist rhetoric right out of the Klan’s playbook and adopt conservative policies designed to keep Black Americans and other minority groups down.
The city of Tulsa refuses to provide any reparations to victims of the notorious 1921 Tulsa race massacre, instigated by the KKK, which resulted in the destruction of Black Wall Street and decimation of Tulsa’s Black community.
Oklahoma continues, meanwhile, to suffer from police brutality, high unemployment, racialized poverty, re-segregated schools, and mass incarceration. While the Klan, in its former incarnation, may have ceased to exist, Klan norms, values and objectives continue to shape and influence state-level public policy decisions.
For example, as the Tulsa Race Massacre centennial commemorations were being prepared in 2021, Oklahoma’s Republican-dominated state legislature passed House Bill 1775, which outlawed public school teachers from teaching how racism played a role in shaping American society. The chair of the Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education, Paula Lewis, characterized HB 1775 as “an outright racist and oppressive piece of legislation.”
Most recently, Oklahoma took another stance on teaching history in classrooms, as State Superintendent Ryan Walters issued a state-wide mandate that each Oklahoma school district furnish one Bible for each student in the state. This Bible will serve as a history textbook purchased by the state.
Recent developments generally raise questions as to whether the Invisible Empire was ever truly cleansed from power in Oklahoma. While I am in no way accusing any living policy makers of being Klansmen or Klanswomen, I do argue that Klanish norms, values and ideals continue to shape and influence state level public policy decisions.
Evidence abounds that Oklahoma must atone for the crimes committed by the Ku Klux Klan before and after the Tulsa Race Massacre. Oklahoma’s current policy decisions are evidence that these crimes are ongoing.
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About the Author
Anthony Cherry is a James Madison Fellow and received his Master’s degree in History at the University of Tulsa.
As a PhD student studying American History at Oklahoma State University, he focuses on the American West and War and Society. His current research interests include radical social, political, and education reform movements in Oklahoma history.
Anthony also teaches history at Holland Hall School in Tulsa. Before that he taught at Booker T. Washington High-School.
Anthony can be reached at acherry@hollandhall.org.
Excellent article, Some white folks were helpful during this time.
https://blog.nli.org.il/en/lbh-tulsa/