Newspaper Page Text
Q*uu. 1, 1994
GHOS T FRY by John Ryan Seawright
Nightshirts and Nose Rings:
More on Athens's Ku Klux Klan.
This week's column is an addendum to last week’s
review of Nancy MacLean’s Behind the Kiosk of Ouv-
ahry, a study of the Ku Klux Klan in the teens and
70s, a book based primarily on the records of the
Athens Klan.
MacLean dates the second Klan’s presence in
Athens (the first Klan was that of the ReconstruC'
tion era, a half-century earlier) from late 1915, one
month after its first meeting atop Stone Mountain.
Imperial Wizard W. J. Simmons came up the road
to Athens to recruit mem
bers. MacLean could find
no evidence that he met
with any success and dates
the second Klan’s first real
appearance in Athens to
1921.
She says: “No doubt [the
Klan] was outflanked by the
officially sponsored hysteria
of the war years. With...
‘slackers’ and government
critics branded as ‘trai-
ton’... the Klan lacked a
distinctive appeal" (p. 6).
Eight pages later
MacLean gives an example
of the fierce witch-hunting
atmosphere prevalent in
Athens (and the whole
country) during the First
World War. a public flag-
kissing ceremony reported
in Horace Patterson and
Gilbert Fite’s Opponents of
War, J9J7-J9I8. No details
of this ceremony are given other than the blood'
thirsty remarks made by three-term Athens mayor,
prominent businessman and K Ians man W. F. Dorsey.
(MacLean gives him the pseudonym “Wiley
Doolittle" in the text, but drops her guard and re
veals his surname in a footnote.)
The details of what transpired 76 years ago last
Monday night are worth recounting and shed a little
more light on the career of the second Klan in our
Classic City.
In 1918 James T. Norris had lived in Athens for
several years, working as a machinist at the Athens
Foundry making plows and machine parts. On the
evening of May 23 he was riding the streetcar, talk
ing with fellow passer^ers about current evens. The
government had just declared that most of the
country’s wheat would be reserved for military use
for the next 10 weeks, leaving civilians to make shift
with rye and barley flour and, gloomy prospect, po
tato meal. Norris had doubdess had a hard day at
work mourning the fluffy cat-head biscuits he would
be forgoing for the rest of the summer. On the street
car he loosed his ire, wishing aloud that “the flour
shipped to Europe would be sunk... and that all the
wheat growing for shipment would be burned up
before it could be sent "
Government-sponsored paranoia was running at
full tide; citizens were thoroughly indoctrinated in
the identification of gripers, slacken, spies, sabo-
teun and bearded anarchists. A concerned patriot
on the streetcar reported Norris’ treasonable out-
bunt to one of Athens’ vigilance organizations.
Norris was very shortly, in the words of the Athens
Dady Herald, "waited upon by a committee of citi
zens and asked to make an apology."
The citizens hauled Norris before Federal Judge
Walter Cornett in what is now Fint American Bank
across from City Hall. Norris denied having made
disloyal remarks, but when witnesses came forward
he admitted to his statements, still denying treason
able intent. On the very day that Norris made his
unpatriotic gripe Congress had passed the Overman
Bill, making such utterances serious federal crimes.
Fortunately for Norris, President Wilson had not yet
signed the bill into law.
Judge Cornett did not think
federal intervention neces
sary and agreed to let Norris
off the hook if he would
make a public apology.
Word went out across
town that James Norris
would beg public pardon for
his disloyal sentiments about
breads tuffs on the steps of
City Hall at eight o’clock
the following evening. A
crowd of 800 Athenians
gathered at the appointed
hour. As the town bell tolled
a silent procession came up
College Avenue: robed and
masked Klansmen (20 in
one account, 50 in another)
who lined either side of the
City Hall steps Directed si
lently by motions of their
captain’s sword, the
Klansmen unfurled banners
reading “The Climate Here
is Too Hot for Pro-Germans” and, more ominously,
"Only One Wealthy Resident of Athens Refused to
Give to the Red Cross ” James Norris then appeared
on the balcony, escorted by Professor J. K. Giles of
the College of Agriculture.
Norris read a long statement denouncing the Kai
ser, the Sultan, the King of Bulgaria, and all their
works. The gist of his mea culpa was the following
paragraph:
in token of my sincerity and to my humbleness in
rrkjkmg this apology I kneel before and kiss the American
Flag m the public presence of the duntitry of Athens,
Ga., and I swear that I will never give utterance to such
a statement ogam as I made in regard to flour.
Professor Giles then proffered a folded flag which
Norris knelt and kissed to the crowd’s applause
Former mayor and leading Klansman W. F. Dorsey
rose and spoke, promising that future gripers and dis
senters would not get off so easily. He suggested
branding on the cheek and forehead, insertion of
nose rings with which disloyal grumblers could be
led through the streets, and hanging without trial.
His proposals met with the citizens’ loud approval.
One might conclude from this episode that, far
from being outflanked by official hysteria, the Ath
ens Klan used the institutionalized paranoia of the
war years to bolster its legitimacy. The saintly scholar
Woodrow Wilson had suspended civil liberties and
raised snooping, informing and drumhead justice to
high virtues: Who dared blame the KKK for follow
ing his bespectacled Presbyterian example?
Next week: Opposition to the First World War
in northeast Georgia.
Cl994 John Ryan Scawrtfhc
CD
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