Baldwin: Local Klan enforced their version of law here

The idea of reclaiming morality following World War I was evident on the movie screen. In late December 1922, the Liberty Theatre on Roanoke's Main Street presented The Great Redeemer. The byline for the movie stated, "This is a great drama. Some of the worst men imaginable are pictured here, but all is well when Jesus is pictured as a living Savior. You will have to see it to appreciate it as you should." The movie was made in 1920 and was about a murderer and a thief imprisoned together. They found their lives changed forever when the thief's drawing of a crucifixion on the cell wall comes to life. It was such a success, both in sales and attendance, the same movie was shown again on January 15, 1923.1

But fanning the flames of the Ku Klux Klan across the South was a series of movies that prompted hysteria in order to give legitimacy for their Klaverns and actions. They provided forms of paranoia. In 1915, D.W. Griffith's movie, Birth of a Nation, was produced and shown around the country and in Roanoke. The film portrays the nation as torn apart by the Civil War while slaves and abolitionist supporters are seen as the force behind all of the destruction. The second half of the film portrays the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and introduces them as the would-be heroes. It has been described throughout the decades as a deeply disturbing movie.

In Birmingham, the movie was shown repeatedly during the 1930s while the Klan filled the streets and radio waves with warnings about social equality. On horseback and with printed flyers, Klansmen warned African Americans to stay away from communist meetings.2 (This era is vividly portrayed in the movie, The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker.)

In Hattiesburg, Mississppi, the Klan joined forces with the county law officers to rid that section of the state of dealers and manufacturers of spirituous liquors. Following the raids, the Klan requested that news accounts announce the "aid given" by the Klan.3

In his book, Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915 - 1946, Glenn Feldman provides, "In hamlets throughout the state, friends and neighbors listed former Klan members among their communities' top leaders."4 The Klan's masthead for their newsletter stated, "Once a Klansman, Always a Klansman." Their hope was if they were seen as a group of well-meaning men who kept order and racial stability, then they could continue to exist.

For this reason, the floggings in Randolph County during the summer of 1927 continued, and women were not spared the fifty lashings either. On the same Saturday night that Paran Baptist Church was planning a gospel singing, the Klansmen were putting on their robes and shining their shoes. The Georgia Railway and Power Company Quartet was considered the best in Atlanta, and they had motored just across the state line to the little white church. Admission for adults was $1.00 and only .25 cents for children. The following day, dinner on the grounds and an entire day of singing for the annual event was being publicized.

Meanwhile, eight miles north of Wedowee, 42-year-old Mrs. Luella Horn, a mother of four children, was taken from her home. Mrs. Horn was beaten my masked men who accused her of improper relations with a neighbor. She told Solicitor C. H. Vann, who just happened to be the brother of Klansman F. M. Vann, that she admitted, after several lashings by the men who forced her from her home, that she did have improper relations. She added the charges were false and her admission was made in order to save her life from further lashings. She pointed out that one of her four children, an eight-year-old boy, stood helplessly by while the men beat her.

Likewise, an African American man, Tom Garrett, and two black women were dragged from their house in the middle of the night and taken to the Roanoke baseball field. All three were accused of immoral conduct with each other. Mr. Garrett declared that the two women were both his sisters. Nonetheless, all three were ordered to strip themselves of all of their clothing. The two women were issued fifty lashings each, and Garrett was ordered to "run the bases" around the baseball diamond. The Klan members lined up along the base lines, and Garrett was pummeled with sticks and lashed with a leather strap as he passed each Klansman from base to base. All three of these victims disappeared the next day.

As the news whipped through rural towns and counties, paranoia set in across the area. Over in Franklin, Georgia, Mrs. Frances Thompson lived on the outskirts of town and was sleeping in the room across from her two small children when, around midnight, she heard men battering down her front door. She leaped from her bed and grabbed a pistol from the drawer of her Singer sewing machine. Trembling, she waited. When the bedroom door opened, she saw three hooded men and a flashlight shining in her face. She began firing the pistol. Two escaped, but one lay dead on the floor of her house. She testified that she did not know the men and she emptied the gun in the direction of the light.5

In all, eight Randolph County cases went to trial. Most likely, there were many other victims, but they were too scared to come forward. Some were threatened, some embarrassed. History will never know exactly how many floggings took place that year. No one ever went to jail for the floggings during the summer of '27. The decision was based on "insufficient evidence." None of the names of local Klan members were ever printed in The Roanoke Leader.

Of interest, it should be stated that Lowell Methodist Church pastor F. M. Vann, who at one time held the title of Exalted Cyclops of the Roanoke den, resigned from the order because of his revulsion for the violence. Afterward, he supplied information about Klan procedural policies on vigilantism to his brother, C. H. Vann, the county solicitor.6

Feldman states, "The Klan's success in blocking conviction of its members indicates that higher-ups knew how to cover up for their members—and knew what needed covering up."7

[More will be written on this subject in the forthcoming book, Fair to Middlin']

1 The Roanoke Leader, January 1923. p. 2.

2 Feldman, Glenn. Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama 1915 - 1949. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1999. P.279.

3 The Roanoke Leader, February 20, 1924. P. 4.

4 Feldman. P. 279.

5 The Roanoke Leader, May 21, 1927.

6 Feldman, p. 50.

7 Ibid.