Hiram Wesley Evans

For other people named Hiram Evans, see Hiram Evans (disambiguation).

Hiram Wesley Evans
Evans Washington, D.C. on September 13, 1926
Born	(1881-09-26)September 26, 1881 Ashland, Alabama
Died	September 14, 1966(1966-09-14) (aged 84) Atlanta, Georgia
Education	Vanderbilt University
Occupation	Dentist
Employer	Ku Klux Klan
Title	Imperial Wizard
Political party	Democratic Party (United States)

Hiram Wesley Evans (September 26, 1881 – September 14, 1966) was Imperial Wizard of the "second" Ku Klux Klan from 1922 until 1939. A native of Alabama, Evans attended Vanderbilt University and subsequently became a dentist. He operated a small, moderately successful practice in Texas until 1920, when he joined the Klan. He quickly rose through the Klan ranks, and was part of a group that organized the removal of William Joseph Simmons from the position of Imperial Wizard in November 1922. Evans succeeded him as Imperial Wizard, and sought to use that position to transform the Klan.

Although Evans had participated in the torture of a local black man as leader of the Dallas Klan, as Imperial Wizard Evans tried to move the Klan away from violent acts. He aimed to make the Klan a political force and feared that vigilante actions would harm this goal by causing bad publicity. He presided over the largest Klan gathering in history in 1923, which over 200,000 people attended. Evans' efforts notwithstanding, the Klan did encounter damaging publicity in the early 1920s, leadership struggles between Evans and other Klansmen hindered political mobilization efforts. Nevertheless, Klan-backed candidates saw some success in the 1924 elections. Evans moved the Klan's headquarters from Atlanta to Washington D.C., and organized a large march on Pennsylvania Avenue. The march, attended by about 30,000 Klansmen, was the largest march the Klan had organized. Klan membership, however, soon plummeted owing to scandals of Klan leaders and corruption of Klan-associated candidates.

Evans led the Klan during the Great Depression, an economic crisis that greatly damaged the Klan's funding. He resigned his leadership position with the Klan in 1939. The next year, he faced price-fixing charges in Georgia and was fined $15,000. Evans sought to promote a form of nativist, Protestant nationalism. In addition to his white supremacist ideology, he fiercely condemned Catholicism, Unionism, and Communism. He further argued that Jews formed a non-American culture and resisted assimilation, though he denied being an anti-Semite. Evans has been credited with shifted the Klan to a political focus and recruiting outside the south, but their political success and membership gains were limited under his leadership. Many of his political and religious views were attacked by contemporary commentators; he has also been accused of personal corruption and hypocrisy.

Early life and education

Evans was born in Ashland, Alabama on September 26, 1881. His father was a judge. As a young man, his family moved to Hubbard, Texas. He attended Vanderbilt University and became a dentist, receiving his licence in 1900. (There were later rumors that his dental qualifications were "a bit shady".) He established a small dentistry practice in Dallas, Texas. His practice was moderately successful; it provided inexpensive dental services in downtown Dallas. He described himself as "the most average man in America". He was average height and somewhat overweight, but was well dressed, a skilled speaker, and very ambitious. Evans joined the Freemasons, and eventually became a thirty-two-degree mason. He was a member of the Disciples of Christ church.

Early Klan leadership

Evans joined the Klu Klux Klan in 1920. That year, he left his dental practice of work for the group full time. (He worked for the second Klan, which was established by failed minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.) In 1921, Evans was elected to the position of "exalted cyclops" of the Dallas Klan No. 66. The "exalted cyclops" was an equivalent position to a kleagle. At the time that Evans was elected, the Dallas Klan had recently received a "self-ruling charter" from the Atlanta-based Klan leadership.

Evans was initially supportive of violence against minorities. He fondly remembered a witnessing the actions of a lynch mob as a child. After becoming involved in the Texas Klan, he sought to create "black squads" that would pursue vigilante actions about minorities. As leader of the Dallas Klan, Evans was part of a group of Klan members who kidnapped a black bellhop from a local hotel because they suspected that he was involved in pandering prostitutes. The group brutally beat the bellhop and burnt his face with acid. The next year, he was appointed the "great titan" (an executive role) of the "Realm of Texas". In Texas, Evans led a membership drive. As the Texas drive was a success, he was assigned responsibility of the national membership drive at he behest of Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke. The Klan headquarters made him the "Imperial kligrapp", a role similar to national secretary in which he oversaw thirteen states. He received a base salary of $7,500 and traveled throughout the states he oversaw, regularly meeting with local Klan leadership. Although he was not morally opposed to violence against minorities, as kligrapp Evans condemned vigilante activity because he feared it would attract government scrutiny and hinder potential Klan-backed political campaigns. He later took credit for a decrease in the amount of lynchings in the Southern United States in the 1920s. In the early 1920s, the Dallas chapter of the Klan was the largest in the U.S.

Early national leadership

William Joseph Simmons led the Klan until the early 1920s. A group of Klan activists, including Tyler, Clarke, D. C. Stephenson, and Evans, orchestrated a reorganization of the Klan that removed Simmons' practical control of the group. Evans gained control of the group, and at a November 1922 "Klovokation" in Atlanta, Georgia, Evans was formally ensconced as leader of the Klan.

As leader of the Klan, Evans supported the candidacy of Earle Bradford Mayfield for a senate seat from Texas. Mayfield won, demonstrating candidates could win high office with vocal Klan support.

A legal battle between Evans and Simmons ensued, but Evans retained control of the Klan. Simmons felt that Evans was insufficiently religiously idealistic. Leonard Moore speculates that Stephenson also played a role in Evans' elevation to leader, and suggests that he was given a leadership role in the Indiana Klan as a reward. As leader of the Klan, Evans appointed D. C. Stephenson as the kleagle and Grand Dragon of Indiana. Their relationship soon became acrimonious: Stephenson clashed with Evans over the amount of membership fees that he would receive as leader of the Indiana Klan and Evans' refusal to help fund the purchase of a school in Indiana. Stephenson believed that Evans deliberately thwarted his attempt to purchase a university because he sought to limit his power. Notwithstanding their conflicts, Evans promoted Stephenson to Grand Dragon of the "northern realm" in July 1923, a move that surprised Stephenson.

In August 1923, Evans was part of a Klan parade in heavily-Catholic Carnegie, Pennsylvania that was attacked by anti-Klan activists after they marched against the mayor's orders. He narrowly escaped injury as the group was pelted with bottles thrown from nearby buildings and a bystander opened fire on the group. The incident gave a fillip to the Klan's recruitment efforts, but increased the animosity that Stephenson felt toward Evans, who he saw as responsible for the incident. Stephenson soon left his official position with the Klan. Stephenson had been a skilled campaigner and demagogue, and he remained a well-known advocate of the Klan's platforms after being relieved of his official role in the group. Evans avoided publicly clashing with Stephenson, fearing it would hurt the candidacies of Klan-backed candidates. He was heavily involved in the candidacy of Edward L. Jackson, a member of the Klan, for governor of Indiana and was well respected by local Klan members. The Klan saw significant electoral success in that state in 1924. After this success, Stephenson showed further disdain for Evans and the Klan leadership. Moore writes that Evans paid particular attention to the Indiana Klan, as it was the largest state organization within the Klan and he sought to profit from it as much as he could.

Although membership in the Klan was limited to men, in 1921, several groups were formed for women who supported the movement. After Simmons attempted to create a women's organization, Evans created a women's group and sued Simmons for organizing his women's group under the name of the Klan. Evans won the lawsuit, leading to a public war of words with Simmons. Simmons' lawyer was soon murdered by Evans's press agent. (Evans denied complicity in the murder.) In 1924, Evans paid $145,000 to Simmons in exchange for a promise to abandon his claim to Klan leadership and cease his involvement with the group. Stephenson also formed a women's auxiliary group, to Evans' consternation. Evans and Stephenson each circulated allegations of sexual impropriety against each other. Stephenson was soon charged with the rape and murder of a young woman; he alleged that the charges were orchestrated by operatives loyal to Evans. In January 1921, Evans and a group of grand dragons expelled Clarke from the Klan. (Clarke had been critical of Evans' efforts to involve the Klan in politics.) Evans also clashed with Henry Grady, a judge from North Carolina who served as a Grand Dragon in the Klan. Grady had been seen as a potential successor to Simmons, but Evans revoked his membership after he dismissed as unconstitutional a bill that would have banned the Knights of Columbus. After he left the Klan, Grady leaked his correspondence with Evans to local media. The internal Klan conflicts that Evans oversaw were widely reported in the mainstream media.

Evans leading his Knights of the Klan on the parade held in Washington, D.C. on September 13, 1926

National organizing

After the negative publicity that resulted from the murder of Simmons' lawyer, Evans moved the Klan's national headquarters from Atlanta to Washington D.C. Under Evans' leadership, the Klan initially grew, and eventually reached record membership. He had high hopes for the Klan, saying in 1923 that he aimed to grow the movement to ten million men. That year, he spoke at the largest Klan gathering in history, a meeting in rural Indiana that saw over 200,000 people assemble on the Fourth of July.

Evans published instructions for local Klan leaders that detailed how to run meetings and recruit new members. He provided guidelines about speaking for local events, instructing leaders to avoid "raving hysterically" in favor of "[a] scientific... presentation of facts". He told local leaders not to allow members to bring their Klan regalia home from meetings; he hoped this would curb unauthorized violence. In addition, he sought to make Klan leaders perform background checks on applicants. He changed the way that Klan leaders were paid: he insisted that they receive a fixed salary rather than commissions based on membership fees. Although other leaders had lived in lavish Klan-owned properties, Evans lived in an apartment. Early in his leadership of the Klan, he dramatically increased the amount held in the group's treasury. He promoted the consumption of products made by companies owned by Klan members, and organized a boycott of Fuller Brush Company after Alfred Fuller criticized the Klan. As leader of the Klan, Evans sought to stop members of the group from engaging in violence and emphasized the difference between his organization and the original Klu Klux Klan. He felt that such actions would make it thwart the organizations efforts to become politically influential. However, his efforts to elect Klansmen to public offices in 1924 saw limited success, although there was a strong showing of Klan-backed candidates in Indiana. Evans saw that the Klan had gained respect and political influence in some local communities and hoped to replicate this on a national scale. The Klan also saw success by convincing the Republican party to avoid criticizing them; Evans was subsequently featured on the cover of Time. Significant discussion of the Klan took place at the Democratic convention, as well. At that time, the Klan had four million members. In 1925, the group also encountered difficulties after the murder conviction of D. C. Stephenson, a former Grand Wizard in the Klan, and corruption scandals of several Klan-friendly politicians. The negative publicity from these incidents led to a massive drop in Klan membership across the United States. In response to the troubles, Evans organized a large rally that year in Washington D.C. It was hoped that a large turnout would demonstrate the Klan's power. About 30,000 Klan members attended the event, making it the largest rally in the group's history. Evans was disappointed, however, as he had expected double the attendance at the event. Over the next several years the Klan's membership sharply declined.

Evans on the cover of Time, June 23, 1924

In June 1923, Evans formed a auxiliary group known as the Women of the Klu Klux Klan. He also formed Klan-themed groups for boys and girls.

In 1928, Evans opposed Al Smith's candidacy for President of the U.S., and boldly claimed responsibility for his loss.

Evans fiercely opposed The New Deal, describing it as a "great danger" to the nation. He argued that it was a Jewish policy that was dangerous to American freedom, reserving particular scorn for Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr.. In the 1930s, he fiercely condemned Communism and Unionism, reserving particular scorn for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. He felt that the C.I.O. sought to "flout law and promote social disorder". In the 1930s, Evans began to suspect that many government agencies had been infiltrated by communists. However, the Great Depression hurt the Klan's finances, prompting Evans to sell their former headquarters in 1936. In the 1930s, the Klan's public support vanished. Around that time, he announced his intention to retire from the Klan. Before leaving the Klan, Evans renounced his anti-Catholicism, pronouncing a "new era of religious tolerance". Chester L. Quarles argues that Evans repudiated anti-Catholicism owing to his desire to fight Unions and Communism and his fear of having too many enemies to agitate effectively. The Klan's former headquarters was later purchased by the Catholic Church, and became the Cathedral of Christ the King. Evans attended the building's dedication and spoke highly of the service, in a move that surprised many observers. His attendance at the event was his last significant public appearance as Imperial Wizard: he stepped down soon afterwards, having become deeply unpopular with members of the Klan, who felt that their former headquarters was now occupied by their enemies.

Political and legal issues

In 1934, Evans again encountered public controversy after it was revealed that he planned to travel to Louisiana to campaign against Huey Long, who was then planning on running for President in 1936. Long learned of Evans' plans, and condemned him in a speech at the Louisiana State Legislature. Long derided Evans as a "tooth-puller" and an "Imperial bastard" and warned of grave consequences should he follow through on his plans to publicly campaign in Louisiana. After Long's speech, Evans cancelled his plans to campaign in Louisiana.

Evans resigned his leadership of the Klan in June 1939. James A. Colescott became the next Imperial Wizard. Evans had previously promoted Colescott to chief of staff of the Klan.

Evans profited from his leadership of the Klan. He worked for a Georgia-based construction company in the mid-1930s, taking the job because of the dwindling funds available to the Klan. As an employee of the construction firm, Evans often sold products to the Georgia Highway Board; he politically supported Georgia governor Eurith D. Rivers, who had previously been employed by Evans as a paid lecturer, at the same time. In 1940, Evans was charged with price fixing by the state of Georgia. Ellis Arnall, then the Attorney General of Georgia, forced Evans to repay $15,000 to the state.

Evans died in September 1966 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Views

As leader of the Klan, Evans advanced a nativist, white supremacist ideology that cast Protestantism as fundamental to American patriotism. To Evans, whiteness and Protestantism were equally valued, and sometimes conflated. He argued that the Klan existed to support the "uncontaminated growth of Anglo-Saxon civilization". He believed that white Protestants had the right to govern the U.S. owing to their descent from the original colonists. Under Evans, the Klan supported a mix of right and left-wing policies. Although he borrowed numerous concepts from the writings of Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, his ideological positions have been described by Thomas Pegram as "Too much of a patchwork to be considered an ideological system". He believed that a only slight majority of Americans were of acceptable ethnic and religious background.

Evans attempted to appeal to white Americans by casting the Klan's platforms as science-based ideas. He argued against miscegenation and Catholic and Jewish immigration by arguing that they were threats to ensure genetic "good stock". He believed that African Americans were inferior to whites, and could not "attain the Anglo-Saxon level". He condemned miscegenation. (Support for clear racial divisions was then common among white Americans.) Evans also realized the power of fear to attract new recruits to the Klan, and sought to cast their opponents as dangerous people. He argued that immigration had resulted in a stacked deck against white Americans. However, he supported immigration of those he deemed "nordic", which included several northern European ethnicities, but excluded southern and eastern Europeans.

Although Evans lived in parts of the Southern U.S. with very few Catholics, as Klan leader he vigorously criticized Catholics. Evans justified his opposition to Catholicism on the grounds that the Catholic Church sought to take control of the United States government. He believed that Catholicism was inherently "monarchical" and undemocratic. He argued that Catholics should be barred from immigration to the U.S. because their faith affected their "mental nature", to the extent that it caused widespread poverty in majority-Catholic countries. Evans' statements about Jews were sometimes contradictory. Evans argued that he was not an anti-Semite, but nevertheless maintained that Jews were more materialistic than other Americans and did not contribute to or assimilate into American culture. He applauded Jews for being "mentally alert" and "law abiding", but argued that they refused to integrate with other Americans. He also cited Jewish involvement with the "motion picture industry", jazz, and "sex publications" as reasons to stop Jewish immigration. Historian Bryan Edward Stone of Del Mar College describes the approach to Jews of the Klan under Evans' leadership's as "ambivalent at worst but generally respectful". However, Stone notes that the Evans' Klan was a clear threat to the status of Jews in Texas.

Evans opposed immigrants on political grounds as well, arguing that they would promote ideologies such as anarchism and communism, and were threats to national unity. David A. Horowitz compares Evans' writings about the lack of morals in American society as akin to a jeremiad.

Evans bemoaned commercialism, and attributed it to the effects of liberalism. He admitted that many Klan members were of rural, uneducated backgrounds, but argued that power should be given to those he described as "the common people of America". He also focused on recruiting people who worked in media or education. He supported capitalism, and sought to form ties between business leaders and the Klan. However, he also condemned corporate greed, alleging that the desire of wealthy elites for cheap labor had resulted in immigration, which he decried.

Evans also wrote about education in the United States. He cited the nation's illiteracy rate as evidence that American public schools were failing the country. He blamed low teacher salaries and lack of regulation of child labor as key obstacles to educational reform. The creation of the Department of Education was also backed by the Klan under Evans' leadership. It was hoped that improvements in public school would help "Americanize the foreigners" and thwart the recruitment efforts of Catholic schools.

Legacy and reception

Horowitz credits Evans with changing the Klan "from a confederation of local vigilantes into a centralized and powerful political movement". Under Evans' leadership, the Klan became more active in Indiana and Illinois, rather than solely focusing on the Southeastern United States. Although the Klan did not accomplish the political goals he had sought, Evans saw several Klansmen elected to high offices. In the mid-1920s, the Klan was frequently discussed by political commentators. At that time, Senator Oscar Underwood, then running for president, decried the Klan as "a national menace".

Evans' ideology was criticized by numerous contemporaries. He encountered criticism early in his career in Dallas. David Lefkowitz, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, attacked Evans' assertion that Jews did not assimilate, arguing that Jews were patriotic Americans and emphasizing shared American experiences of American Jews, such as military service in World War I. James W. Johnson, leader of the NAACP, challenged Evans' white supremacy by stating that "all races are mixed". The Dallas Morning News publisher George Dealey and Atlanta journalist Ralph McGill also boldly attacked Evans.

Evans' personal integrity has also been questioned. William D. Jenkins maintains that Evans was "personally corrupt and more interested in money or power than a cause". During Evans' leadership, the New York Times described the Klan leadership as "shrewd schemers".

Bibliography

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