Ku Klux Klan Holds Church Revivals Across Alabama to Increase Faltering Membership

 

Ad in the Evergreen Courant, April 4, 1927

April 7, 1927, Evergreen, Alabama — On this night the Ku Klux Klan held another of their “Revivals” that have been going on this year in other parts of Alabama. These gatherings were open to the public in large tents on the grounds of various churches. Tonight’s was on the grounds of the Evergreen Presbyterian Church.

The gatherings were not announced as recruitment for the Klan but were. Flyers announced that the gathering was for families and especially called for women to come and hear the speakers and lessons.

These lessons included “What is the Ku Klux Klan” and “The 5 Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and were taught by Dr. I. W. Stout, the Imperial Lecturer of the Ku Klux Klan, who did most of the speaking for each night of the revival.

The revival in Evergreen became one of the largest of 1927 and ran for nine days. Each night Stout spoke about issues he felt were facing the United States, The South, Negroes, Protestants and the Klan. He tried to impress up on the crowds, reported to be quite large by the Evergreen Courant, that Negroes were loyal to Klan was perhaps a bit shocking to the Negro if it was heard by one. This was not a new theme though as the 1920s Klan tried to project that they were good for the Negro by helping men find good wives and become married men and not animals.

Stout spoke against the Roman church as an evangelist first his passion was for the Protestant version of faith and that “Papists” held greater belief in their “Roman King” and the saints than they did Christ. Stout also spoke of no divisions within Protestantism, even if there were different denominations.

Stout’s strongest sermon was on the “5 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” Which was a misleading title for his sermon and pamphlet but was consistent with the religious teaching of the 1920s Klan. This sermon taught that the White Horse in the Book of Revelations was the Klan. They were honest and true and fighting for righteousness. The projection was that the Klan was the only defender of the Christian faith, the flag, and the bible. The White Horse’s symbol was fire, as was the Klan’s.

The revival was hoped to reverse the losses the Klan had from their national apex of influence in the early 1920s before the stories of corruption and murder began costing them members. The message had become even more strongly Christian and anti-immigrant as many Eastern Europeans had come in a second strong wave following the German loss in World War One and the economic depression that had already begun in Europe.

Still, the corruption was a difficult thing to deny even in Alabama, where Governor Bibb Graves was a former member. For most of early 1927, the Birmingham Police Department was involved in a bitter law suit from a former sergeant who had been forced off the force because of his Klan membership. There was also a nasty criminal libel case against the Age-Herald Newspaper in Birmingham. Governor Graves wasn’t a known member of the Klan until he resigned from the group, and then he and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black became known as the “Goldust Twins” in a prerogative manner by the Klan for using the political power of the Klan in the early 20s but abandoning them when success came.

As a secret organization the Klan never revealed their numbers but did say the revival increased their membership. There was no way to prove this even if the conservative southern newspapers had found a reason to do so I. W Stout left Alabama that May for the Ozarks, and later in 1927, he went to Wichita and was elected to the local school board. He died in 1952 at age 79.

 

Sources:

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/apr/07

https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=FC19240613.1.6&srpos=19&e=-------en-20-FC-1--txt-txIN-gunsolus------

https://www.newspapers.com/image/552961811/?match=1&terms=%22Ku%20Klux%20Klan%22

https://www.newspapers.com/image/538079191/?match=1&terms=%22I.%20W.%20Stout%22

 

Angry Racist Southerners Form Dixicrat Party To Oppose President Truman

 

Southern Democrats Convention At The Birmingham Municipal Auditorium.
Photograph by Marion Johnson, the Atlanta Constitution

July 14-17, 1948, President Harry Truman took to the podium at the National Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia and delivered a speech that marked a sea change in the Democratic Party and set a direction for the future. Truman spoke passionately about Civil Rights and the need to make America a nation of real equality.

The Democrats of the South didn’t like it. They didn’t like the inclusion of a party plank calling for Civil Rights changes. They had met on their own to decide to walk out of the convention during the state roll call to make their point.

So, on July 14 when the party began delegate roll call most of the Alabama delegation turned and walked off the floor. When the roll call reached M, Mississippi delegates all walked out. These were people committed to keeping segregation in place and enforcing Jim Crow.

This angered some of the high party bosses who were already concerned that Truman was vulnerable. These men saw little hope in a win for Truman without the Southern states in the pocket as they had been for decades.

Regardless, the party had taken a courageous step forward. On the other hand, the Southern states were determined to create something that would protect their way of life and something that in the 1960s would transfer the voting bloc to the Republicans in the “Southern Strategy”

Led by South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond and Arkansas Governor Benjamin Travis Laney these Democrats decided to call themselves the “States Rights Party” They met for their convention on July 17 in Birmingham, Alabama. While they did not identify as a real third party the intention was to draw enough votes from Truman and Republican nominee Thomas Dewey into through the election into the House of Representatives. Calling themselves “Dixiecrats” the breakaway Southerners nominated Thurmond as their presidential candidate and Mississippi governor Fielding L. Wright.

6,000 registered Democrats came to Birmingham to endorse the new segregationist party. This was the main plank of the party and their hope was by sending the election into the House they would be able to negotiate to support whichever candidate agreed to the continuance of segregation.

Somewhat surprised by the turnout for their quickly put-together convention in Birmingham, the party held another convention in Oklahoma City on August 14. At this convention, they adopted a very racist platform:

“We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, and the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home rule, local self-government, and a minimum interference with individual rights.”

This platform and campaigns targeting both Truman and Dewey as authoritarians who wanted to end the Southern way of life. Thurmond was able to win four states and 39 electoral votes. The Dixiecrat ticket won South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. These upset wins did take votes from Truman in what would prove to be one of the closest presidential elections in history. Though he still won he wasn’t as powerful in the party as most sitting presidents are and so when the party drifted back some on Civil Rights, he wasn’t able to stop them, still even with the moral high ground taken from him Truman still ended segregation in the military and set the tone for the next 20 years.

 

Sources:

https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/1948_States_Rights_Democratic_Party_convention

https://data.philly.com/conventions/1948-d.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1948-democratic-convention-878284/

Elizabeth Lawrence Scolded Children And Was Lynched For It

 

Birmingham, Alabama July 5, 1933. Lynching had become so common in the Jim Crow South by this day in 1933 that all the local Alabama news sources had apparently agreed it wasn’t even newsworthy.

Elizabeth Lawrence was walking home on the afternoon of July 5th when a group of White children began jeering her and pelting her with rocks. She did what any mother would do and reprimanded the kids for their behavior. There would be consequences for this verbal redirection of terrible children as a mob of White men showed up at the Lawrence home later that night and drug Elizabeth out of the house and lynched her for the crime of disrespecting White children who were disrespecting her.

Her son came home and found his mother and their burned-out home he went to the local sheriff and tried to report the crime and was warned on his way there by another Black man that the mob was still looking for him so he ran away and headed north.

The story of Elizabeth Lawrence wasn’t even reported until her son Alexander had made it to safety in Boston and spoke to groups such as the International Labor Defense. Even then no news paper in the South mentioned it. The crime of being a Black woman scolding White children was once again a mortal one, like 361 other victims of the mob in Alabama during the Jim Crow era.

Sources: 

https://crrjarchive.org/incidents/434

https://www.al.com/opinion/2018/04/new_memorial_ends_the_silence.html

The Rape Of Recy Taylor and The White Wall Of Injustice

Feb. 14, 1945, White men in Alabama were of the opinion that Black women were basically all whores to do what they felt like with, or rather one could believe that as on this day a second all White male grand jury voted unanimously to not indict six men for the gang rape of Recy Taylor a Black woman from Abbeville, Alabama.

On the night of Sept. 3 1944 Taylor was walking home from a revival meeting, with two friends near her own home when 7 men in a green Chevrolet pulled up to her and forced her into their car, one of the men, Herbert Lovett, had a shotgun he aimed at her two friends. They took Taylor to a remote wooded area and six of them raped her.

Her friends had already spread the alarm to her family and the Negro community so when the men threw Taylor from their car a search party was already looking for her. Disoriented from the assault Taylor, then 24 mother and sharecropper with her husband, wandered the roads looking for direction and safety.

Taylor’s friend Fannie Daniels had tried to find the sheriff but he wasn’t around so she was able to get the former chief of police Will Cook and Taylor’s father Benny Corbitt to go looking for her, they found her near the local highway at about 3 AM and took her back to Cook’s workshop where her husband and Daniels waited. Henry County Sheriff, George Gamble had also been found in the interim and was there. Taylor bravely recounted the entire experience, while she couldn’t identify the men the car was well known because of its color.

Sheriff Gamble knew who owned the car and went to pick him up. The young man was Hugo Wilson. When the sheriff brought him back to Cook’s store, Taylor identified Wilson as one of the rapists. Wilson was taken to jail and confessed to participating in the attack. He gave up the names of the other men including U.S. Army Private Herbert Lovett, Billy Howerton, Dillard York, Luther Lee, Joe Culpepper, and Robert Gamble. Wilson though insisted that because they paid her, their kidnapping and brutalization could not be considered rape. The sheriff released Wilson and never brought the other men in.

Even though the sheriff appeared to have no intention of actually making arrests the rapists and other Whites still attempted to intimidate Taylor and her family, they firebombed her home and burned the porch and front room. So they moved in with her father and siblings. Her father began spending his nights in a tree with a shotgun watching the house only sleeping after the sun had risen.

The NAACP chapter in Montgomery heard of the terrible assault and treatment of Taylor and sent Rosa Parks to investigate the case. Parks interviewed Taylor, Daniels, and her son, Taylor’s husband, father, and Will Cook. Parks also came under surveillance by Deputy Sheriff Lewey Corbitt a distant cousin of Taylor who was White. Taylor followed Parks around Abbeville and drove by the older Corbitt’s home several times each day. Finally, Sheriff Gamble himself had decided he was not willing to allow outsiders to influence anyone, he stormed into the Corbitt home and told Parks to leave, “I don’t want any troublemakers here in Abbeville,” he said. “If you don’t go, I’ll lock you up.”

Parks returned to Montgomery and started promptly launched the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. The committee flooded the South with fliers “decrying white attacks on black women,” according to the Black newspaper the Chicago Defender.

A correspondent for the Defender, Fred Atwater, arrived in Abbeville and reported that the lawyer representing the suspects in the case had offered $600 to Willie Guy Taylor to silence his wife. “Nigger — ain’t $600 enough for raping your wife,” the story quoted the lawyer saying. The six defendants were willing to pay $100 each “if Recy Taylor would forget.”

She refused to bow and pressed charges against the men. A grand jury was brought together but they basically ignored the witness statements and on Oct, 9 unanimously voted to dismiss the case.

Nationwide outrage was building in the case and the NCCAP pressed with protests and letters, and they got the attention of Alabama Governor  Chauncey Sparks. Sparks made a statement on Dec. 18^th that he was ordering a full investigation of the matter. This was followed up by Alabama Attorney General William McQueen sending two of the lead investigators to Abbeville and interviewing everyone involved. McQueen stated there were no legal issues about this just because one grand jury did not bring back a case.

Despite these efforts when a second grand jury was impaneled, it was once again 12 White men and they did what White men did in the Jim Crow South and dismissed the case.

After this second failure to indict people began to move on to other events. While there were still groups attempting to keep the focus on Taylor’s case and they did raise some money by June there just was no longer any political motivation or will to continue.

No longer feeling safe or comfortable in Abbeville Taylor, her husband, and daughter moved to Montgomery for a few months living with Parks. They then moved to central Florida and worked in the orange groves. By 1960 Taylor and her husband had separated and in 1961 Mr. Taylor died. Tragically Taylor’s only child, her daughter, died in a car accident in 1967.

The case drifted into obscurity for decades until historian Danielle L. McGuire included Taylor’s story in her book entitled, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance” in 2011. The book led to the Alabama State Legislature issuing a full apology to Taylor:

“That we acknowledge the lack of prosecution for crimes committed against Recy Taylor by the government of the State of Alabama. That we declare such failure to act was, and is, morally abhorrent and repugnant, and that we do hereby express profound regret for the role played by the government of the State of Alabama in failing to prosecute the crimes.”

Taylor died in 2017

 

Sources:

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — a New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, by the historian Danielle L. McGuire. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/obituaries/recy-taylor-alabama-rape-victim-dead.html

https://www.thelily.com/when-recy-taylor-was-gang-raped-in-1944-no-arrests-were-made-the-naacp-sent-rosa-parks-to-investigate/

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/recy-taylor

 

The Lynching of Bunk Richardson: Am Innocent Man Murdered To Quench A Mob's Blood Lust

 

Feb. 11, 1906, Bunkie Richardson was a 28-year-old Black man who was in jail when a mob wanted blood, some thought he had participated in the murder of a White woman Sarah Jane Smith in July of 1905 but there was no evidence of this. The man who confessed to the murder did not mention Bunk Richardson when he indicated two other men helped him in the crime, also the confessed murderer had already been executed.

On the night of the original arrests, Etowah County Sheriff William Chandler had requested the state militia and received them to help stop a mass lynching and move the prisoners to the Jefferson County Jail. The mob that was unable to quench their blood lust that night roamed the town and burned down Black homes and killed another innocent Black man on the city trolly.

The two men convicted Jack Hunter and Vance Gardner never mentioned anyone Richardson and Hunter said he alone killed Smith. A third man was convicted but Sheriff Chandler and three local lawyers wrote letters to Gov. William Jelks, asking him to re-examine Johnson's case. Two lawyers went so far as to travel to Montgomery to lobby for the man's innocence.

Jelks commuted the third man, Will Johnson, to life in prison. This again enraged the people of Gadsden who had assembled to view Johnson’s execution on Dec. 9^th, 1905.

At the trial for the men convicted of the murder Richardson was mentioned as having known one of the killers and was seen on the railroad tracks in Gadsden where the murder happened.

Thus, Bunk was in jail waiting to appear before a grand jury for his participation but there was nothing to connect him to the crime. Not even the papers of the time produced any, they tentatively endorsed the lynching or at least did not condone it.

On the night Feb 11 30 men stormed the unprepared jail and demanded Richardson. They overpowered the sheriff and jailer and took Richardson. They drug him through town beating and kicking him. They took him to the railroad trestle over the Coosa River and looped a rope around his neck and threw him off.

When word got out of the lynching Richardson’s cousin Earl Williams who was a well-known stone mason and business owner gathered his family and left town, they never returned leaving behind a thriving store and laundry.

No one was ever charged with the murder of Bunk Richardson or with the intimidation of his relatives.

 

Sources:

https://www.al.com/news/anniston-gadsden/2016/12/1906_gadsden_lynching_memorial.html

https://www.gadsdentimes.com/story/news/local/2016/08/21/gadsdens-dark-past-speakers-give-detailed-account-of-negro-clearance/25610873007/

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=116817

 

Christmas Assault Leads To New Year Lynching

Jan.3, 1901 Louis McAdams was witnessed having an argument with White storekeeper J.M. Ray and pulled a knife on the man and slit his neck in front of the store in Wilsonville, Alabama. This act incensed the White people of Shelby County. Ray was badly injured but survived, McAdams whatever the reason for his assault did not.

McAdams was arrested in the town of Childersburg on Jan. 2nd for the attempted murder and when the sheriff’s deputies were transporting him back to Wilsonville was intercepted by a mob of 100 White men all brandishing weapons. The threat was too much for the two deputies who immediately surrendered their suspect. About four miles from Wilsonville the mob hung McAdams in a tree and unloaded 50 guns into the body.

The deputies went on to Wilsonville and the sheriff and coroner were notified of the lynching. It was reported that the mob all wore masks and so no one could be identified. There was no further report on J.M. Ray in the Alabama newspapers either, he apparently survived or after the hanging, no one cared. The papers of Alabama held the mob as quiet and dignified adding that they dispersed quickly after justice was served.

 Sources: 

https://www.newspapers.com/image/882782733/?terms=%22J.M%20Ray%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/55228334/?clipping_id=115760383

History Snapshot: Gaslighting The Public To Excuse Lynching

Dec. 27, 1889, Lynching was so common in the Jim Crow South that it often barely made it into the paper and even then, it was just a few lines. The story was nearly always the same as well, White Woman Attacked. This time it was a remote part of Tuscaloosa County in Alabama. The woman was the wife of a farmer named Fowler and the suspect was one Bud Wilson. Mr. Wilson was arrested by two deputy sheriffs fifteen miles from Tuscaloosa, and while en route to the jail the party was overtaken by an armed mob of 50 men and hung from a tree while they riddled his body with bullets. The newspapers tried to make the mob into heroes for saving Mrs. Fowler from a black man who was known to be a “notoriously bad character and was wanted on several charges,” no one was ever charged in Wilson’s death.

Sources: 

https://www.newspapers.com/image/812814585/?terms=%22James%20Fowler%22&match=1

https://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/2317

https://www.newspapers.com/image/272949225/?terms=%22James%20Fowler%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/812814585/?terms=%22Bud%20Wilson%22&match=1
 

Black Man Hung For Stealing A School Lunch

 

Dec. 22, 1896, A poor black man was apparently lynched for being hungry in Woodstock, Alabama on this day, however, newspaper accounts can’t seem to get the poor man’s name right. It might have been George James as reported in several Kansas and Illinois papers, of Charles Jones in other papers and on the Lynching Memorial in Birmingham, Alabama he is listed as James Joseph.

Regardless the man, we will call him Mr. Joseph per official record, was hung in Woodstock by a White mob for supposedly bothering a 17-year-old white girl named Fannie Smith on her way to school and asking for or trying to steal her lunch. This is a part of the story that is confirmed in all newspaper accounts. Some accounts say her dress was torn though. When Mr., Joseph was caught by the mob miles from Woodstock he confessed to stealing the girl’s lunch but denied any other behaviors. The mob took him to see the girl who stated he was the man and that he had only grabbed her lunch.

In Alabama, during the years of Jim Crow though this minor crime was considered worthy of the death penalty and Mr. Joseph was hung in front of the local store. There was no investigation or inquest, and no one was ever charged for his murder.

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/87835301/?terms=Lynched&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/82463537/?terms=%22George%20James%22&match=1

https://www.al.com/news/2018/04/alabamas_racial_lynching_victi.html

https://fpsudbury.org/w111p/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Lynching-Victims-1860-1950.pdf