An American and Nothing Else: The Great War and the Battle for National Belonging

Wake Up America! The Postwar Surge in Racial Violence

As soldiers returned from Europe in 1919, they encountered a nation feverish with victory as well as escalating nativism, white supremacist backlash, anti-labor violence and Red Scare repression. Home front national defense groups had adopted harsh tactics of vigilantism at the local level, targeting immigrants, racial minorities, trade unionists, and other leftwing activists. As an extension of this rightwing reactionary Red Scare mania, violent white nationalist outfits were on the rise—most notably the second wave of the Ku Klux Klan.

Sheet Music: Wake Up America and Kluck Kluck Kluck

“Wake Up America and Kluck! Kluck! Kluck!” Walter B. Seale. Harmony by Adger M. Pace, Arrangement by A.M. Pace. Lawrenceburg, Tenn: James D. Vaughan, 1924. James Weldon Johnson Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Why You Should Become a Klansman

Pamphlet: Ku Klux Klan (1915–). Why You Should Become a Klansman: Of Interest to White, Protestant, Native Born Americans Who Want to Keep America American. United States: ca. 1924.

The second Ku Klux Klan saw a spike in popularity during the war years, recruited from a broad nativist base and glorified by the immensely popular 1915 film Birth of a Nation. By 1919, the KKK had added nearly 100,000 members and boasted numbers nearing four million by 1924. Their white supremacist platform of antiblack racism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Communism organized itself behind a masked cry of “100% Americanism.” In 1919 alone, Klansmen gathered publicly over 200 times in 27 different states.  

The second Klan succeeded because its aims and ideologies reflected mainstream, white American views at the time. Its leadership also embraced mass culture, circulating materials through catalogues and music, mass rallies and picnics, newspapers  and pamplets. This pamphlet, "Why You Should Become a Klansman" (c. 1924), supplies its answers through series of suggestions: “If You Are a White Man,” “If You Are a Native-Born American,” “If You Are a Protestant,” “If You Believe in Law and Order,” “If You Believe in Real Fraternity,” “If You Believe in the Public School System,” and “If You Believe in Good Citizenship.”

Pamphlet: Menace of foreign immigration

Pamphlet: T. F. Hensley. The Menace of Foreign Immigration to U.S. El Reno, Okla: El Reno Klan No. 15, KKK. [1924?]. Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Though often recalled in popular memory as "kooks" operating in the shadows at the margins of society, the Klan of this era had mass appeal, even positioning itself as family friendly and an avenue to achieve politial power. Many of its leaders were or became prominent public figures in their local communities. Travis F. Hensley, for instance, who authored this pamphlet, helped to found the Oklahoma Press Association and the Oklahoma Historical Society. Hensley, owned and published several newspapers and ran a bookstore, which provided textbooks for local schoolchildren. Twice elected mayor, he went on to serve in the state House of Representatives and ended his career a state senator. He remains a member of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame to this day.

Sheet Music: Ku Klux Blues

“Ku Klux Blues.” Clarence Krause and Al Mars. Dallas, Tex., Thomasville, Ga: Krause & Mars; Chicago: Rayner, Dalheim & Company, [ca. 1921].

Sheet Music: Ku Klux Kismet

“Ku Klux Kismet: March.” Mary Gue. Arranged by Walter Ardrell Riggs. Aransas Pass, Tex: W.A. Riggs, [ca. 1924].

Pamphlet: Negro Suffrage

Hiram Wesley Evans served as imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1922 until 1939. In this position, Evans recruited and expanded Klan activities beyond the South and into the Midwest and industrial cities. He also organized one of the largest public gatherings in Klan history—an estimated 40,000 Klansmen parading in Washington D.C. in 1925.

Dr. Hiram Wesley Evans. Negro Suffrage: Its False Theory. Atlanta, Ga: American Printing and Mfg. Co., [192-?]. Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

For Black veterans, these dangerous developments fueled further disillusionment and bolstered the spirits of militancy and self-defense. However, such widespread violence also amplified the risks: Black veterans became specific targets of racial violence after the war, with many publicly assaulted and at least 11 servicemen lynched in 1919 alone.