By Associated Press
White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., Dec. 16—The 14th annual conference of governors ended today with a spirited discussion of the Ku Klux Klan. Many of the executives then prepared to leave for Washington to accept President Harding’s invitation to discuss prohibition enforcement with him at luncheon Monday.
An executive committee consisting of Governors Cox of Massachusetts, Hardee of Florida, and McCray of Indiana was elected. Former Governor Townsend of Delaware was re-elected treasurer, and Miles C. Riley of Madison, Wisc., secretary. Governor McCray invited the governors to confer next year in Indiana, suggesting French Lick Springs. Selection of the next meeting place was left to the executive committee.
The Ku Klux Klan discussion developed after an address in which Governor Allen of Kansas declared the organization was doomed to die and expressed hope that the efforts of the attorney general of Kansas to oust the klan from that state on the ground that it was operating without a charter would be successful.
Mr. Morrison’s Reply
In response to a description by Governor Allen of incidents which he argued supported his assertion that the klan was flouting the law, Governor Morrison of North Carolina said that although (lines unreadable) . . . for violence in his state. He asked Governor Allen whether the klan ever had endorsed manifestations of lawlessness or had done anything ?? them.
Governor Allen replied that every member of the organization believed he was doing noble work. When lawlessness developed, he said, the klan would disavow it and then give $50 to a “loose-mouthed preacher who would then thank God for the klan.” He said he was ashamed that the Boy Scouts in St. Louis had not rejected a gift of $25,000 from the klan, so that “they could claim 100 per cent Americanism.”
Governor Olcott of Oregon asked if Kansas had sent troups to suppress the klan during the railroad strike. Mr. Allen replied that he was ready to do so but that such action did not become necessary.
Governor Olcott then asked what means Governor Allen thought would prove most effective in curbing the society, and the Kansas executive said he favored filing the names with state officials and refusing to grant charters to the organization.
Charter in Indiana
Governor McCray at this point said he had found that a charger had been issued to the klan in Indiana a month before he knew it, but that the klansmen had been quiet in his state. Governor Allen commented that in his opinion the klan was not here to stay, but he urged that it be kept in mind that it was a “clever and invisible form of government.”
A writ being sought in Kansas Supreme court, he said, would make disappear “the blazing cross and the pasture parties, where the men mask themselves and put on a fantastic ceremony in the open field and terrorize an entire neighborhood.
“In Kansas we are seeking to expel the klan from the state,” Governor Allen said. “I note by the press of the country that some misapprehension exists as to just what we mean by expelling the order, and the thought has been expressed it is the intention of the state to drive out of the state the members of the klan.
“This is not at all what the action before the Supreme court pre-supposes. Before the law of Kansas, every organization doing business within the state must be chartered. The Ku Klux Klan has a charter under the law of Georgia and the action now pending in the Supreme court of the state is for the purpose of securing a writ forbidding the klan to do business hereafter in Kansas.
Against the Mask
“The essence of our opposition to this organization is not in the fact that it fights the Catholic church or expresses its antipathy to the Jew or the negro, but in the fact that it does this under the protection of a mask and through the process of terrorism and violence. “It is incredible that this country should have passed through its baptism of heroic devotion which was called into action four years ago only to sag back now into this most lamentable species of disorder.
‘Much human life has been sacrificed to the cause of Christian civilization, as America interprets it. I could take you to a place I know in France where the crosses rise row on and row, and after a while we would stand before a cross which marks the resting place of James Fitzsimmons. The record is that he was the first member of the American Expeditionary Forces to give his life in the combat area of Toul. If I had the power to reincarnate him, I would say: ‘James Fitzsimmons, you think you are 100 per cent American,’ and I imagine he would look at me with some surprise and say: ‘I never thought much about that; I was born in America and when they told me this war was for the defense of our ideals and our civilization I didn’t wait for selective draft. I hurried on to offer my life for the defense of the principles which America had adopted as her own.’
“If I should say, ‘You are not a 100 per cent American, there is an emperor of the invisible government at Atlanta, Ga., who declares you cannot be 100 per cent American because you are a Catholic,’ I dare say he would say to me, ‘They never told me anything like that when I stood in line with my gun, waiting to go over the top.’”
Speaking of the appeal made by organizers of the klan along lines of what they call 100 per cent Americanism, he said:
“In many places the appeal to creed has brought into the organization some excellent men who believe that they are addressing themselves to a real problem when the draw lines of religious prejudice.”
Sketching the progress of the klan, he continued:
“It grows very rapidly when it strikes a community and it requires about a year of experience to convince its best members that the organization has no real place of usefulness in America. It arouses the intenseist bitterness.
“In some communities, where I am acquainted with its activities, friends of a life time have become estranged, families have been divided, men become suspicious of their neighbors, bigotry and intolerance have thrives, poison pens and serpent tongues have been busy spreading scandals. Women and children have been taught to believe that their neighbors of a different religious faith are plotting their destruction.
“The old American spirit of enterprise, co-operation and neighborly good will pass away under the blight of its bigoted teaching and the spirit of religious intolerance, hatred and suspicion enters into every civic activity from the deliberations of the chamber of commerce to the political primaries. Sermons of hate are thundered from pulpits, where, in other years, was taught the doctrine of great commandment.”
After referring to specific crimes of violence alleged to have been committed by members of the klan in the south and the far west, he said:
“The organization is as dangerous to the Protestant as it is to the Catholic, the Jew or the negro. It exists only when the authority of the government has been broken down and destroyed. It brings chaos and hatred and menace to every law abiding citizen who may fall victim of the private quarrels and animosities of the men who hide their identity behind a mask.”
From the front page of the Greensboro Daily News, Dec. 17, 1922
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