Back to the Future: A Brief History of Previous Repression

by William Katz

“President Warren G. Harding, who warned about ‘racial differences,’ was formally inducted into the KKK while kneeling on the floor of the Green Room with his hand on the White House Bible.”

In the aftermath of World War I, the U.S. Justice Department arrested thousands of people as foreign “terrorists,” Congress enacted quota laws that cut immigration in half, and Tennessee criminalized the teaching of evolution. Today, scholars are not alone in detecting echoes of that bygone era in the Bush administration's justification of torture in its war on terrorism, crackdowns on immigration, pervasive wiretaps, and pandering to the Christian fundamentalist agenda.

The First World War – “the war to end all wars,” the “war to make the world safe for democracy”; – left the U.S. deeply disillusioned. Not only did the 1918 Armistice not produce peace or democracy, but out of the ashes arose Mussolini, Hitler, ethnic strife, and a new arms race. The Communist Soviet Union, a sixth of the earth's land, had emerged, and U.S. politicians found they could win elections by pushing the red alert button. By 1919, chaos reigned at home: race riots erupted in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and 24 other cities – and to the shock of white mobs, African American fought back and drove the invaders from their neighborhoods. Some 4,000,000 workers went on strike, including a general strike in Seattle, strikes in the steel and coal industries and a Boston police strike. Then a massive stroke incapacitated President Woodrow Wilson.

Wrenching change was in the air. Women, having won the right to vote, were in motion and determined to redefine their lives. Ordinary men, confronted by legions of females who didn't want to leave their wartime jobs, felt a foreign enemy had invaded their homes and disrupted their marriages. Younger women of the time smoked, wore short skirts and engaged in sexually suggestive dancing to jazz music. As for the automobile, an invention eagerly embraced by young couples, one judge called it a “house of prostitution on wheels.”; In the name of family values, Christian fundamentalists advocated for, and won, Prohibition – which, instead of popularizing sobriety increased alcohol consumption, turning nightclubs into illegal speakeasies and generating windfall profits for gangsters.

“One judge called the automobile a ‘house of prostitution on wheels."

Faced with a spate of bombings, some politicians warned that anarchists and Communists were about to seize city halls from Newark to Pasadena. But in reality, the greatest threat to Constitutional democracy came from U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. With one eye on the White House, he warned that an uprising of Reds was set to erupt on May Day and deployed Justice Department officers to arrest “foreign” workers in scores of cities. Palmer struck again on November 7, the second anniversary of the Russian revolution, raiding the homes, community centers and even schools of foreign workers. Few of the apprehended were charged with crimes, but 249 men and women (including fiery anarchist Emma Goldman) were summarily deported to the Soviet Union.

On January 2, 1920, Palmer's agents swept up 3,000 men and women in 70 cities. Presaging Guantanamo, the prisoners were held without bail, not informed of the charges against them, nor allowed to see relatives or attorneys. Many were denied food and water, some were beaten or tortured, and more than a dozen died in custody. Massachusetts Federal Judge George Anderson was appalled: “A mob is a mob," he declared, "whether made up of government officials acting under instructions from the Department of Justice, or of criminals and loafers and vicious classes.” The media were either silent or approving. The New York Times saluted the “intelligent vigor of the Department of Justice in hunting down these enemies of the United States.” By summer, Palmer would “point with pride and enthusiasm to the results of that work” and would call for establishing the death penalty as punishment for “dangerous acts” of peacetime sedition.

With the federal government leading the way, the generals' shoes for the fundamentalist campaign to defend America were filled by that historic band of citizens, the Ku Klux Klan. This newly-minted Klan, previously known for terrorizing African Americans in the post-Civil War South, now reached beyond its earlier mission to trumpet “100% Americanism” – that is, Biblical and family values. Klan halls featured an alter, a Bible, a flag and a minister who convened and adjourned gatherings with a prayer. "Imperial Wizards" unfurled a new hate list that included Catholics, immigrants, atheists, radicals, Jews, independent women, opponents of Prohibition, and trade unionists. Using the newest advertising techniques and spectacular outdoor night meetings, the Klan sold memberships for $10 and uniforms for $6 to upwards of four million people in all 48 states. The Ku Klux Klan became the nation's fastest growing organization.

“Palmer called for establishing the death penalty as punishment for ‘dangerous acts’ of peacetime sedition.” By 1924, the Klan claimed 75 Congressmen, the governors of Kansas, Indiana and Maine, Senators in Oklahoma and Colorado, and “a friend in the White House.” That summer 40,000 Klansmen paraded on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions voted down resolutions condemning them by name. In November, senators or governors from Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and Kentucky added their names to the Klan roster.

“Decent People, Have No Fear” was a Klan motto that belied reality. Acting as moral police, Klansmen listened in on phone calls, eavesdropped on conversations and read personal letters. They were self-appointed enforcers of church attendance, patriotism and women's subservience to their fathers and husbands. They applied the lash to women who had abortions, widows who remarried too soon, unfaithful husbands and disobedient teen-agers. While railing against the Pope, “Reds” and “aliens,” they mainly victimized fellow Protestants. Never had the country been more thoroughly policed.

In the chain of command, however, the Klan was trumped by a higher authority: the White House. President Calvin Coolidge wrote that “biological laws show us Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races.” President Herbert Hoover stated that recent immigrants “would be tolerated only if they behaved.” And President Warren G. Harding, who warned about “racial differences,” was formally inducted into the KKK while kneeling on the floor of the Green Room with his hand on the White House Bible.

As we ponder how the historical record will assess today's officials, let us take note: The mean, narrow-minded and spineless politicians who dominated the halls of power in the 1920s are not recalled as patriots but as promulgators of a dismal bigotry it took decades to reverse.

William Loren Katz is the author of forty books on American history, including The Black West and Black Indians, has been associated with New York University for more than thirty years. The editorial diligence of Jean Carey Bond brought this article to completion. The Katz website is WILLIAMLKATZ.COM