HIRAM WESLEY EVANS

Hiram Wesley Evans was a Texas dentist and the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which boasted a nationwide membership of 3 million. He published this defense of the Klan in The North American Review, a leading journal of opinion. Like fascist movements in Italy and Germany, the Klan focused on racial identity. For the KKK, real Americans were those of Nordic (north European) descent; all others were “aliens,” including those of southern or central European ancestry (Italian, Spanish, Polish, Czech, etc.) and those with Jewish or African forebears.

We are a movement of the plain people, very weak in the matter of culture, intellectual support, and trained leadership. We are demanding, and we expect to win, a return of power into the hands of the everyday, not highly cultured, not overly intellectualized, but entirely unspoiled and not de-Americanized, average citizen of the old stock. …

This is undoubtedly a weakness. It lays us open to the charge of being hicks and “rubes” and “drivers of second-hand Fords.” We admit it. Far worse, it makes it hard for us to state our case and advocate our crusade in the most effective way, for most of us lack skill in language. …

To understand the Klan, then, it is necessary to understand the character and present mind of the mass of old-stock Americans. The mass, it must be remembered, as distinguished from the intellectually mongrelized “Liberals.“

These are … a blend of various peoples of the so-called Nordic race … which, with all its faults, has given the world almost the whole of modern civilization. … These Nordic Americans for the last generation have found themselves increasingly uncomfortable. …

Finally came the moral breakdown that has been going on for two decades. … All our traditional moral standards went by the boards or were so disregarded that they ceased to be binding. The sacredness of our Sabbath, of our homes, of chastity, and finally even of our right to teach our own children in our own schools fundamental facts and truths were torn away from us. … One more point about the present attitude of the old-stock American: he has revived and increased his long-standing distrust of the Roman Catholic Church. … [which is] the chief leader of alienism, and the most dangerous alien power with a foothold inside our boundaries. …

The Ku Klux Klan … is an organization which gives expression, direction and purpose to the most vital instincts, hopes, and resentments of the old-stock Americans, provides them with leadership, and is enlisting and preparing them for militant, constructive action toward fulfilling their racial and national destiny … a definite crusade for Americanism! …

There are three of these great racial instincts. … These are the instincts of loyalty to the white race, to the traditions of America, and to the spirit of Protestantism, which has been an essential part of Americanism ever since the days of Roanoke and Plymouth Rock. They are condensed into the Klan slogan: “Native, white, Protestant supremacy.”

SOURCE : Hiram Wesley Evans, “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” The North American Review 223 (March 1926): 37–39.