KKK: Your Money for Your Hate | Episode 02 - Fandom Presents: Superman vs. the KKK

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The plan of the Fiery Cross is made up of
intolerant biggest Jim.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
They don't judge a man in the decent American way
by his own qualities. They judge him by what church
he goes to and by the color of his skin.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Most people thought of the Klan is these clowns in bedsheets,
but there were a lot more than that.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
One of the reasons that we talk about the Clan movies,
if you want to show racism, you pull out a fload,
is because it is a profoundly effective shorthand and it's
still quite frightening.

Speaker 5 (00:37):
Certainly in the nineteen twenties, the Clan of presenting themselves
as the arbiters of Americanism. They determine what Americanism is.

Speaker 6 (00:46):
And if you ask a clansman in the nineteen twenties
whether or not they stand for truth justice in the
American way, that's basically a Klan recruiting pamphlet.

Speaker 7 (00:58):
This is a podcast about two powerful opposing forces going
into battle with their clashing views on truth, justice and
the American way.

Speaker 8 (01:06):
Of course, we're talking about Superman and the Ku Klux Klan.
Like Villainy he battled in nineteen forty six in the
radio series The Klan and the Fiery Cross.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
She wish a burning cross, the symbol of the Klan.
It means those hate mongers are selected.

Speaker 9 (01:19):
You as that next victim.

Speaker 5 (01:20):
Chief leep and listeners know they can't.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
We've got to call a fire. The Parkmans come on,
shee pull out of their way.

Speaker 7 (01:26):
I'm Mark Bernardin and I'm Roth Cornett and this is
Fandom presents Superman versus the KKK. In this episode, we'll
demonstrate how a clan that lay fallow and defeated was
brought back to life in the nineteen twenties, becoming an
indelible part of our shared culture, and.

Speaker 8 (01:47):
How all of this was done using the power of
the media.

Speaker 7 (01:50):
We're reaching back to nineteen forty six, but keep in mind,
this battle over who gets to decide what is or
isn't American is far older than Superman.

Speaker 8 (02:00):
It's still going on today. This becomes clear when we
hear of this shooting of six Asian women in Atlanta
in twenty twenty one.

Speaker 7 (02:06):
Or the twenty seventeen Charlottesville Unite the Right rally that
resulted in the death of a counter protester.

Speaker 8 (02:12):
Or the deaths of nine black churchgoers at the hand
of an avowed white supremacist in twenty fifteen. All these
events stem from beliefs rooted in the founding of this country,
but those beliefs eventually took on a particular, now indelible form.

Speaker 7 (02:25):
In our last episode, we explored the tale of Superman's
origin in the nineteen thirties and how this iconic fictional
character came to represent truth, justice and what mark the
American way.

Speaker 8 (02:44):
Long before Superman was created, these other real life master
villains had their own definition of the American Way.

Speaker 7 (02:49):
Listen to this report from the nineteen sixty five CBS
special KKK The Invisible Empire.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
The Kuklux Klan was big business. Almost six million Americans
long to the Klan, and the organization was grossing seventy
five million dollars a year. Some forty thousand clansmen and
clanswomen crowded into Washington on August eighth, nineteen twenty five
to parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to help the Klan coffers.

(03:15):
A flag was used to catch money thrown in by spectators.

Speaker 7 (03:20):
So how did that happen? This cultural plague started in
eighteen sixty six, right after America's Civil War.

Speaker 8 (03:27):
The ku Klux Klan was created by a group of
former Confederate soldiers itching to return white Southern society back
to its former power and a romanticized version of what
it once was.

Speaker 7 (03:37):
They blamed newly freed African Americans for their loss in
the war, and what they perceived is their loss and position,
So they used violence to terrorize Black Americans who were
working to establish their own homes and businesses and farms.

Speaker 8 (03:50):
Listen to this written testimony from some African Americans from
Kentucky who wanted Congress to know what kind of terror
they were experiencing post Civil War from the KKK via
the Colored Coventions Project.

Speaker 10 (04:01):
Two Negroes beaten by Ku Klux September eleventh, eighteen sixty eight.
Two Negroes shot by Ku Klux at Sulfur Springs December
eighteen sixty eight. Ku Klux burn Colored Meetinghouse September eighteen
sixty nine.

Speaker 7 (04:15):
Here's Duke University historian Adrian Lentsmith.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
So when we think about reconstruction era of violence perpetrated
by the Klan and similar vigilante organizations, we have to
think about it as gorilla attacks on black citizenship. What
members of the clan did to convey that ranged from

(04:40):
what we call night writing, right breaking into people's homes,
attacking them in the middle of the night, sexual assaults,
physical assaults, murders. For some people who pushed the line
too much, it was very much politically and economically motivated.
But it happened like at the household and bodily level,

(05:03):
over and over again.

Speaker 7 (05:05):
When I hear that, it's so striking that this particular
brand of terrorism is so personal. It's so on the
body and violating of the body, the physical form, whether
it's sexual violence or something as horrific and personal as
tar and feathering. It seems so clear that the act

(05:28):
itself is unlike other forms of terrorism, which are horrible,
but this is so dehumanizing. But it's also to lay
claim on the body. It feels like to say I
still own you, and I don't know if you have
a take on that mark.

Speaker 8 (05:44):
The biggest takeaway for me is how long we've gone
not characterizing that as terrorism, you know, and the people
who commit crimes like that as terrorists, you know. It
seems as if in any other case, in any other arena,
we would to one hundred percent condemned this. As you know,
if not just straight up terrorism, acts of war. If

(06:06):
things like this happened to American citizens anyplace else on
the planet, we will just loose the collective might of
the United States military. But when it's happening here, when
it's committed upon citizens who pay their taxes, too often
a blind eye is turned to it.

Speaker 7 (06:20):
It's hard to imagine that level of violence had to
take place before the government became involved, and it took
way too long, but eventually they did, and that first
incarnation of the KKK was suppressed by the federal government
after the eighteen seventy one passage of the KKK Act by.

Speaker 8 (06:37):
Congress, And that same act has actually been used in
our era by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in a
lawsuit about the attempt to toss out votes in the
twenty twenty election.

Speaker 7 (06:47):
Yeah, the law allowed the federal government to intervene finally
with the military if necessary, to ensure that Black Americans
constitutional rights were upheld.

Speaker 8 (06:55):
That law also resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of
hundreds of clan members, effectively shutting the organization down, But
in fact, the Klan never really went away. Their beliefs
about American born, white Protestant superiority had sunk their claws
in and remained waiting for the opportunity to re emerge.
So all the clan needed was a match to reignite
that organization.

Speaker 7 (07:16):
And that match came in the form of a movie
directed by D. W. Griffith. Birth of a Nation was
an innovation in cinema. It was in many ways, but
it was also a three hour racist tirade against Black Americans.

Speaker 8 (07:36):
It is a deeply hateful film that is deeply important
in cinema history. It was a pioneer of so many
of the of the techniques and so much of the
skills that would eventually be brought to bear on other movies.
And it's the iconography it that it builds. You know,
we have in recent times gotten very good but trying
to separate the art from the artist and with it

(07:58):
in the case of Birth of a Nation, it's about
separating the art from the subject of that art, and
it is. It is an incredibly well made movie about
incredibly hateful people.

Speaker 7 (08:08):
And before it was a culture changing movie, Birth of
a Nation was a best selling book and stage play
ah one.

Speaker 8 (08:13):
Of Hollywood's first attempts to squeeze ip Yes, that Birth
of a Nation is a silent film, and it conveys
its ideas mostly through indelible imagery, imagery that the Clan
would rally around for decades to come. And it's worth
noting that while it had the occasional black character, most
were really played by white men in blackface, and.

Speaker 7 (08:31):
The imagery and Birth of a Nation helped to cement
a fear based narrative that many white Southerners wanted to
perpetuate or already believed. For example, there's a scene where
a white woman jumps off a cliff rather than be
violently raped by a black man who's chasing her. And
I think it's pretty important to pull out that this
film is overtly utilizing certain tropes, but that we've seen
them subtly play out and insidiously play out in movies

(08:52):
and television for a century.

Speaker 8 (08:54):
The first iteration of the Clan drew on fantastic images
of his South that was robbed of its way of life,
and turn that story into violence against newly freed African Americans.
The plan of the nineteen twenties would build on that
fictionalized version of the South and use the media to
amplify it and to spread its message of hate across
the United States.

Speaker 7 (09:11):
It's also important to note that the Klan was and
is a deeply violent and hatredven organization, So how they
framed themselves in the media and obscured that fact was
crucial to their success.

Speaker 5 (09:24):
It's no coincidence that The Birth of a Nation is
released in nineteen fifteen and the Ku Klux Klan relaunches
in nineteen fifteen. You know these moments come together.

Speaker 8 (09:35):
That's Tim Rise. He teaches at the University of Saint
Andrews in the UK, and he wrote the book White Robes,
Silver Screens, Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan.

Speaker 5 (09:44):
On the one hand, the Birth of a Nation is
in effect an advertisement for the Klan. You have a
film that is popularizing that is showcasing not just clan values,
but the clan costume itself, the rights, the rescue, the
kind of ways in which this image is celebrated on screen,

(10:04):
and it's an image that is made for the cinema.

Speaker 8 (10:07):
Birth of a Nation was first shown in California on
February eighth, nineteen fifteen, and news of the cinematic phenomena
got around. It was the Star Wars of its time,
you know, if it was also about hate. Critics raved
about it. Millions of people packed into theaters all over
the country to see it, and keep in mind, it
was three hours long.

Speaker 7 (10:24):
Meanwhile, in Atlanta, a guy named William Joseph Simmons, a
failed preacher true story, who was already edging towards launching
a clan revival, sees the moment Birth of a Nation
was a phenomenon like you've been saying across the US,
and he'd been reading about it and essentially got more
inspired by it. So by the time it reached Atlanta
about a year after its premiere, he thought, why not

(10:46):
use this movie as a calling card for the real
life clansmen?

Speaker 8 (10:49):
So, okay, who is this guy who's deciding that Birth
of a Nation is the lightning ride he's been waiting for?

Speaker 7 (10:55):
Yeah, well, okay, let's talk about him. So before he
decides to revive the clan, Simmons worked as a Methodist preacher. Actually,
he was fired by the church for inefficiency and, according
to Rick Bauer's author of Superman Versus the KKK quote
moral failings, he tried his hand as a teacher and
even a garter salesman.

Speaker 8 (11:15):
I suppose somebody needed to sell those.

Speaker 7 (11:17):
Indeed, but he wasn't very good at it. He really
wasn't very good at anything. He was something of a
joiner as well. Fraternal organizations like the Elks and the
Masons were really big at the time, so Simmons joined
dozens of them. And again, according to Bowers, his dad
was one of the original night writers, so it's likely
that he grew up hearing these glorified versions of them

(11:39):
and the old South. So here's my take. He's got
several failed careers behind him, he's got a lack of
moral character, he's a joiner, and then he gets into
this accident that lays him up for a period of
time in which he really has in his mind this
epiphany about relaunching the KKK. So basically, he's this failed businessman,
kind of loser and reacher that feels bad about himself

(12:02):
and he has time on his hands, so he's looking
for something to give him a sense of hot self.
So what does he do. Well, he looks back at
this old, romanticized vision that his dat has provided for him,
and he decides to revive this group, devoted to the
idea of recapturing or preserving what he felt was lost
or threatened in the world. Birth of a Nation inspires

(12:22):
him to move forward with his research into the clan,
including getting his hands on some of the clan's original documents.
So by the time the movie rolled around to Atlanta
that December, he and his fellow clansmen are ready.

Speaker 8 (12:35):
I've seen the newspaper stories about the film's crazy popular
run in Atlanta. According to Rick Bauers, Simmons and his
KKK cronies marched through downtown Atlanta to the front of
the theater.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
And they had lined up klansmen outside the theater. So
as you left the theater after watching this, did he
the lines of men in hoods and robes with guns
and you realize, wow, that was fantasy, but any is reality.

Speaker 6 (13:01):
Something like the fiery cross or the pointed white hoods,
these kinds of emblems that are fundamentally baked into popular
thought on the clan at this point. Those are created
by Birth of a Nation. The Reconstruction clan didn't have
those things.

Speaker 8 (13:18):
That's Felix Harcourt, Assistant professor of history at Austin College
and sexas an author of the book Ku Klux Culture.
Of course, that culture has a k and when he
says those, he means the imagery that we now associate
immediately with the clan.

Speaker 7 (13:31):
Yeah, those images turn our blood to ice or boil
on site. But they were drawing from the media.

Speaker 6 (13:37):
And so when the clan is kind of revived in
Nineteeneen's nineteen twenties, it's building not on the realities of
the reconstruction plan, but on the fictions of birth of
a Nation. And by embedding themselves in that popular fiction,
they are able to use Birth of a Nation as

(14:00):
effectively a recruiting tool to say, look, here are the
heroes of this film, we are their successors, we are
the heroes of today.

Speaker 7 (14:11):
That was Felix Harcourt and here's Tom Rice.

Speaker 5 (14:13):
But it is more complicated than saying the Birth of
a Nation led to the resurgence of the clan because
the film came out in nineteen fifteen. By nineteen twenty,
the Klan had about four or five thousand members, so
you know, that's not insignificant, but it's not a huge organization.
Over the next four or five years, in the twenties,

(14:34):
the clan's popularity would go through the roof and they
would have kind of four or five million members.

Speaker 8 (14:40):
So, as Tom Rice says, it's complicated. This movie does
help sell both an image and an ideology, but its
influence on membership wasn't immediate.

Speaker 7 (14:49):
Matt Delmont, a professor of history at Dartmouth College, says
that Black Americans, however, were quick to notice the danger
in a movie that captivated so.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Many I think everyone recognized it was a landlord through
in terms of cinema, both the length, the scope, the
narrative tension that it created, and that's what made it
so concerning to so many Black Americans that they understood
the storyline that was being told in Birth the Nation.
The story is, of course about, from Griffin's perspective, the
way that Black Americans overreached after the Civil War, during

(15:18):
the era of reconstruction. They got too much political power,
and it's really a level letter in some ways for
the KKK.

Speaker 8 (15:24):
Groups like the NAACP protested whenever and wherever the movie
came to town, which sometimes resulted in the protesters being arrested.
In the meantime, William Simmons had officially registered the Knights
of the Ku Klux klan Ink as a secret fraternal organization.
He tried recruiting clan members with taglines like.

Speaker 7 (15:42):
A classy order of the highest class.

Speaker 8 (15:44):
No roughnecks, rowdies, nor yellow streaks.

Speaker 7 (15:47):
Real men whose oaths are in violet are needed. These
are terrible taglines.

Speaker 8 (15:52):
The worst.

Speaker 7 (15:53):
Clearly, you are such a good writer, like rewrite these cheeks.

Speaker 8 (15:56):
I think I will use my powers for good and
not evil. Y, thank you.

Speaker 7 (16:01):
You're absolutely right. I mean these are awful.

Speaker 8 (16:03):
You know, which it would explain why they didn't take off.
You know, five years past and Simmons had only recruited
a few hundred.

Speaker 7 (16:09):
Clansmen, but a lot was happening in those five years.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
The key events in the five years between the rebirth
of the clan and really the explosion of clan membership
are the First World War and the Great Migration.

Speaker 8 (16:24):
Adrian Linsmith says the upheaval inherent in these events set
the stage for the Klan revival that was about to
take place. So World War One is nineteen fourteen to
nineteen eighteen.

Speaker 4 (16:34):
And then connected to the war and spurred by the war,
is this great migration of African Americans out of southern
southern countryside into southern cities, and then out of the
South and into the industrializing North and Midwest. And with
that comes concern among many urban white people about whether

(16:59):
an influx of black migrants will somehow affect their own
stature and status based on place or based on kind
of what jobs they perform.

Speaker 7 (17:09):
Hand in hand with these big social and cultural upheavals
was extreme violence. Between late nineteen eighteen and nineteen nineteen,
there were ten major incidents of white mob violence against
Black Americans. So much violence occurred in the summer of
nineteen nineteen that it was dubbed Red Summer.

Speaker 8 (17:28):
So by nineteen twenty, enough white Americans were bent on
subjugating African Americans that you think Simmons would have had
an easy time recruiting people to join his new klan.
But Simmons wasn't the best salesperson, and by nineteen twenty
he hadn't been able to attract a lot of members
on his own. So he did what many modern businesses
looking to promote themselves would do. He hired a PR agency.

Speaker 7 (17:55):
It was called the Southern Publicity Association, run by Elizabeth
Tyler and Edward Young, Clark. I find this move and
these characters, I mean, I cannot stop thinking about them.
How they were able to effectively manipulate millions, turn hate
into a religion and an industry all at once, to
rally so many to the sun holy cause. And while

(18:18):
they were certainly aligned with the clan's messaging, they were sympathetic.
I guess I don't even think that's the right word.
But after thinking about this for over a year, my
take remains that they did this primarily, as Margie and
Fargo says, more so, for a little bit of money,
well a lot of money, actually. They were playing fools
for dollars, and damn to all those so many people

(18:39):
that they hurt and destroyed in the process.

Speaker 8 (18:43):
Okay, so let's go back to Rick Bowers for a minute.
He looked into Tyler.

Speaker 7 (18:46):
And Clark, he did, and what he wrote in the
book made my head explode. But before we head into
the truly vile waters of how they're effectively using the
tools of media to manipulate people, let's look at a
couple of things he wrote to describe Elizabeth Tyler and Edward.

Speaker 8 (19:00):
Okay, I'm quoting from the book. Tyler stood close to
six feet tall, swore like a sailor and usually dressed
in black, from her patent leather pumps to her broad
flowing cape. For good or ill, I think it's safe
to say that anyone who chooses to wear a cape
is at the very least a little.

Speaker 7 (19:16):
Bit extra mark. You're dangerously close to making me want
to admire the swagger, but I absolutely cannot in this case.
So Bowers describes Edward Clark as a spin doctor before
the term existed. He was particularly good at quote, turning
controversy into cash.

Speaker 8 (19:30):
He also said that Simmons saw a nostalgia romance and
dollar signs available in the resurgence of the clan.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
So when Simmons went to these publicity agents and said
what can we do with this? They immediately knew. They
knew that people across the country, not just the South,
across the country would go for this.

Speaker 7 (19:55):
Tyler and Clark understood that they could tap into something,
but to be successful they had to do two things.
They had to figure out how to grow the organization
and reach new members, and they had to figure out
how to make money.

Speaker 8 (20:07):
So Roth, I think we can demonstrate how Clark and
Tyler set up a way to both make money and
get new members.

Speaker 7 (20:13):
I'm all ears.

Speaker 8 (20:14):
Okay, So let's sem in a club. Let's call it
a roller skating club because that's cool and disco, and
the club wants to expand. But we only want a
certain kind of skater, mind you, So membership has to
be by invitation only.

Speaker 7 (20:29):
Okay, I'm enjoying the seventies vibe. I think I see
where you're going.

Speaker 8 (20:33):
So the first thing I do is I call up
my buddy Bill, who's already in the skating club. Woop poop, poop,
poop poop, Bill, it's Mark. How you doing good?

Speaker 1 (20:41):
My gold sport?

Speaker 8 (20:42):
What's rolling skates?

Speaker 4 (20:44):
Man?

Speaker 8 (20:44):
Skates? Look, I'm trying to get some new members to
join our club. We're going to charge ten bucks for membership,
and for every new member you bring in, you get
to keep two dollars. Oh, I don't know, Marl benstn't
even following me a cappuccino. Fine, we'll make it three dollars.
But you know, we don't just want any They have
to come from upstanding skating families, go to only good skaters.

(21:05):
Where does the other seven dollars go? You know? I
get some of that for doing all the organizing and
the rest goes to club activities. We'll do things like
club picnics for the families. We'll have people come around
and speak on history and the benefits of skating. We'll
have to pay those biggers, of course. And by the way,
you've been in the club for a while and you'll
be recruiting new members, so you'll get a new title.
Let's call you. You're now a Big Wheeler.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Oh that sounds great.

Speaker 8 (21:29):
Keep in mind if you'd like to advance to the
next level. We do have higher levels of membership. They
come with higher dues and monthly fees of course.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Of course.

Speaker 8 (21:37):
Yeah, we should make skating vests.

Speaker 5 (21:39):
For everyone and maybe roll together in the Memorial Day parade.

Speaker 8 (21:42):
Actually, Bill, you'll have to buy your skating vest from
Big Wheeler headquarters.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Got your sport.

Speaker 8 (21:47):
I think my cousin in Texas might like to try
getting some new members.

Speaker 7 (21:50):
In his skating club.

Speaker 8 (21:52):
Send them my way, I'll get them set up. We
got a whole network of skating clubs around the country
and scene. So this has elements of a pyramid scheme,
a multi level marketing thing. It was kind of its
own thing, but it was definitely a money making enterprise.

Speaker 5 (22:09):
Right.

Speaker 7 (22:09):
So essentially, in this analogy, only certain people who all
agree on the importance of skating and want to network
and strengthen the idea of the importance of skating with
things like the same clothing and merchandise and speakers who
tell them that they're so right about their thinking about skating,
they get invited. That's some of the basics of the economics.

(22:30):
Not all we're going to get into that. But you know,
all of that is fine and innocuous when we're dealing
with skating. But skating does not have a fetied belief
system at its core. It's not out to destroy entire
groups of fellow human beings. So this level of recruitment
becomes really dangerous when we're talking about the Klan. Here's
Adrian lent Smith.

Speaker 4 (22:51):
There were people who were in the Clan, not necessarily
because they were particularly invested in its anti black or
anti immigrant, or anti Catholic or Jewish ideology, but because
it was almost like the Kiwanis club or fraternity. For
some folks. It really was a place where they could

(23:12):
express their deep and intensely felt sense of disaffection and
alienation with the nineteen twenties version of modern times, right
when family values felt under assault by you know, flappers
or the radio or an emerging consumer culture. For some people,

(23:33):
it was a thing to do because their friends were
doing it right. And then for some folks it was
a money making enterprise. For the people in the upper
echelons of the clan, you could take those dues and
line your pocket with them.

Speaker 8 (23:53):
So let's talk about how exactly Tyler and Clark turned
the plan into something all these different white Americans wanted
to join.

Speaker 7 (24:00):
So first and again, let's be clear in my mind,
they were in it for the money.

Speaker 8 (24:05):
Yeah, it seems so. Tyler and Clark signed this sweetheart
deal with Simmons where they received a significant percent of
the initiation fees. It came in from Newark Fruits.

Speaker 7 (24:13):
They insisted that members by the quote official robes, and
Clark established and owned a company that manufactured clan costumes
for four dollars each later two dollars each, and sold
them for six dollars and fifty cents.

Speaker 8 (24:25):
Yeah, that's the line in their pockets part that Adrian
Lentsmith just mentioned.

Speaker 7 (24:29):
Yep. And then it was a little like your roller
skating membership scheme. They used multi level marketing to create
something of a regional franchise system.

Speaker 8 (24:38):
Like Amway or Herbalife, but for hate.

Speaker 7 (24:41):
Local recruiters known as Kleigels signed up members who paid
ten dollars initiation fees, known as a cleek token. Keep
in mind that ten dollars in nineteen twenty one is
worth around one hundred and fifty dollars today.

Speaker 8 (24:54):
It's not enough to hate for free. See, the hate
really solidifies when you get paid for it.

Speaker 7 (24:59):
That's how you show commitment. So there were also monthly
membership dues. The colegals got to pocket some of that money,
but most of it went up the chain to state, regional,
and national higher ups that went by these crazy names
like the Grand Goblins, Dragons and Wizards. It's so dumb,
and it's so dangerous.

Speaker 8 (25:17):
And because many white Americans were kind of ripe for
this for all of those reasons we talked about. By
nineteen twenty one, Tyler and Clark's scheme resulted in over
one thousand active colegals, who in short order recruited millions
of members. Of course, we'll never know the real number
because the KKK was known for exaggerating its own membership,
and while you can't trust anything, they say, it's not

(25:39):
an exaggeration to say that the Klan grew like crazy
during this period. No matter the case, it seems like
Tyler and Clark got the money they wanted.

Speaker 7 (25:46):
Yeah, they seemingly became very rich. Basically, they got eight
dollars per member, but then they had to pay the
legals and the office staff, so really they only got
about two dollars and fifty cents per new member. However,
in the first year they took in what would be
the equivalent of eleven and a half million dollars today.

Speaker 8 (26:06):
Yes, and Simmons got rich to Tyler and Clark even
gifted him with a mansion and he called it Clan Crest.

Speaker 7 (26:13):
Gross.

Speaker 8 (26:14):
But along with this new member building money making structure
came a new message for the Klan. Felis Harcourt says
Tyler and Clark gave the Klan ideology, a new web
of ideas to lure people in.

Speaker 6 (26:25):
Its Critics say that it's a group of hate filled
bigots very accurately, and the Klan needs to defend itself
against those charges, so they sell themselves as a pro organization,
pro American fundamentally, and the way that they are defining
American is within a very very narrow demographic that you

(26:50):
are white, that you were born in the United States,
that you are Protestant, and that you agree with the
Klan on various issues political, social, and cultural.

Speaker 7 (27:05):
Here's a mind twister. So Tyler and Clark realized that
to expand the market size, they needed to expand who
was excluded from this idea of being one hundred percent American.
So basically they created a structure where local leaders could
reach out into the bowels of their own communities and
locate the exact fear to prey upon. So in some places,

(27:29):
such as the South, they preyed on the fear that
white people had. Some white people had about being displaced
by Black Americans, but in other communities it was the
fear of losing jobs and positions to new immigrants, to
Jewish people or Catholics. Basically, they got more inclusive in
their hate. They franchised hate.

Speaker 8 (27:49):
Well, the hate is a renewable resource, Yeah, I mean clearly,
and Rick Bauer says that Tyler and Clark knew exactly
what buttons to push.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
Then you had a rabbit in a more moral blanket
that said, well, we're not really racist, We're really about
defending morals of good white Protestant people. We support womanhood,
and we're against drinking and carousing. And then underneath, of course,

(28:19):
was all the racism. We hate blacks, we hate Jews,
we hate Catholics, we hate immigrants, which was really a
huge part of the appeal, and the whole eerie, dangerous
part was also part of the appeal.

Speaker 8 (28:35):
This was like a thrill seeker club for hatred. And
this is how the nineteen twenties clan is different from
the original clan. They created a medium message that makes
them seem like, hey, we're just law abiding, hard working
American citizens. We're for family values and we just want
to protect that.

Speaker 7 (28:51):
Yeah, it sounds pretty familiar, pretty recent.

Speaker 8 (28:54):
Right, And as historian Adrian Lensmith points out, it's really
about defining America as being white Americans.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
So this is a plan that appeals more widely, in
part because by the nineteen twenties, the commitment to Jim
Crow and segregation is a national, not just a regional commitment.

Speaker 8 (29:15):
So for all of you who were snoozing in history class,
Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes and ordinances
that legalize segregation, which effectively gave white Americans the legal
right to treat Black Americans as second class citizens, and
that had big consequences.

Speaker 7 (29:29):
It met limited voting rights.

Speaker 8 (29:31):
Which millions of Americans are still fighting for.

Speaker 7 (29:33):
It met segregated and under resourced.

Speaker 8 (29:35):
Schools, which has a direct connection to job opportunities. Or
how about just the right to sit down on the
bus at the end of the day and rest retired
feet without worrying about being beaten or killed for not
moving to the back of the bus.

Speaker 7 (29:46):
And we really want to point out where the branding
matters here, because Felix Harcourt points out that these laws
they're able to move through because they're fueled by the
sense of how the world quotes should be.

Speaker 6 (30:01):
If you are a member of the clan, you fundamentally
believe that you have moral clarity. You believe that you
know what is right and what is wrong. And if
you ask a clans one in the nineteen twenties whether
or not they stand for truth justice in the American way,
that's basically a clan recruiting pamphlet.

Speaker 8 (30:21):
And I think that some of this has to do
with the narrative that first was born in birth of
a nation, and how narrative is important in getting people
to rally around things. You know, in their narrative was
we're not racist. We're just here to defend the moral
uprightness of America, and we're here to defend a women
and we're here to defend you know, what it means
to be white and Protestant in this country. The idea

(30:43):
that you could redefine truth justice in the American way,
depending entirely on the audience you were looking for.

Speaker 7 (30:48):
Yes, absolutely, And that's why we keep returning to that
phrase because it's key to note the context for how
a phrase is used. We have to be able to
discern that for ourselves, what is the person saying by that,
because they're also at this time inventing this idea of
coded language. They're saying, we're not racist, we're quote moral,

(31:08):
and that basically gives them free reign to insidiously insert
themselves all over our public sphere.

Speaker 8 (31:14):
Yeah, people don't want to believe they're racist, but they're
happy to believe they're just protecting themselves. They want to
believe that they're moral if you can give them a
way to do that.

Speaker 9 (31:23):
They do not admit that they are racist. They do
not admit openly usually that they are white nationalists.

Speaker 8 (31:30):
So there are a few definitions of white nationalists out there,
but the important thing to know is that white nationalists
believe that white people should maintain both the demographic majority
and dominance of the nation's culture and public life, and
that everyone else is inferior.

Speaker 7 (31:43):
And the Klan is just one white nationalist group. Today,
that definition applies to groups like the Proud Boys and
Area Nation.

Speaker 8 (31:50):
That was John Donovan. By the way, she's a research
director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public
Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, where she studies media manipulation
and disinformation Online. Here she is again.

Speaker 9 (32:02):
So, the KKK fashioned themselves as a civics organization, one
that was invested in becoming part of the community and
you know, bringing police officers into contact with UH school teachers,
into contact with journalists. Right. But they were almost like
a professional organization.

Speaker 8 (32:21):
The clan leaders reinforce these messages at picnics and barbecues
and conventions and parades. They even had Clan Day at
county fairs. Members could down their hoods and joined together
to hear speeches and sing songs overall.

Speaker 10 (32:33):
The USA, the fiery cross we display them the love.

Speaker 8 (32:40):
Clansmen's dollmad.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Will be forever to the Red, white.

Speaker 5 (32:47):
And Blue, and American's always remmen, that's what happens.

Speaker 8 (32:56):
You don't have any black people, How can you make it?

Speaker 7 (32:58):
Yeah, it's so bad, I mean, aside from just being
I mean I was getting a little nauseust listening to it,
but also noting musically it's truly terrible.

Speaker 8 (33:09):
Yeah, it's kind of tragic.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
So I'll cherish these bright fiery.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
Cus So from does at last dil Here's Felix Harcore again.

Speaker 6 (33:21):
Certainly, a big part of how the clan sells itself
is spectacle. Right, you can be a racist on your
own time, for free. What the clan sells is the
opportunity to be a racist in a big crowd, in
a costume, with your pockets filled with clan merchandise, at

(33:42):
a clan event celebrating the clan.

Speaker 7 (33:45):
The merch yikes. Those family picnics and clan conventions were
also places to buy your hoods and robes.

Speaker 8 (33:52):
Which again you could only buy from Clan HQ. You
weren't allowed to make your own. There was a Klutster's
nifty knife, a real one for one hundred percent Americans,
which could be bought for a dollar twenty five.

Speaker 7 (34:04):
Or a member could buy a brooch for his wife,
a zero con studded fiery cross, A.

Speaker 8 (34:10):
Larger cross that a man could wear on the watch
shiny displayed across his chest, costs two dollars and ninety cents.

Speaker 7 (34:16):
Okay, Yoda does not approve, But for only five dollars
you can yet allegedly allegedly, and this is important because
they're much liars. A fourteen carrot gold ring filled with
a ten carrot solid gold clan emblem on a fiery redstone.
And also for sale were phonograph records and player piano
roles with some of that terrible clan music you've been

(34:37):
gifted with.

Speaker 8 (34:38):
Here's another one. For their initiation ceremonies, they used something
called clan water, and this water also had to be
purchased from the national Clan headquarters. I mean they were
selling water.

Speaker 7 (34:49):
That is insanely and unnervingly ahead of its time, that
they were selling water. To expand on what Felix Harcore
was saying earlier, I would argue that these events may
have provided some kind of spectacle for lack of a
better word, and entertainment, but ultimately what they were about
was identity. They offered a sense of belonging and even

(35:11):
being better than which is a really dangerously easy thing
for a group like that to tap into when people
are feeling lost and small. Which isn't to excuse at
all the people that choose to join, but it's just
noting that that is what is on offer here. You
have a place in the world, and the costuming and

(35:32):
the accouterment they are a part of that.

Speaker 8 (35:34):
Yeah, I mean humans are inherently tribal and what is
the Klan insistence on robes and fiery cross jewelry, But
a way to unify as.

Speaker 7 (35:45):
A tribe that is the key time, right Like, that
is the key, that feeling of safety that's being offered.
But first you have to create a sense of threat,
right Like, First, they're making up this threat and that's
what birth does, right with scenes that imply that there
is some imagined, unreal threat from newly freed black Americans

(36:08):
that are just going about the business of living their life.
So they first create the illusion of a threat that
doesn't exist in reality, and then they say, and this
is what offers you safety from that threat.

Speaker 8 (36:19):
And the next step in that is spreading the news
of that threat. So and part of that engineering and
part of that machinery is involving journalists who played a
very big role in the clan success in the nineteen twenties,
and Harcourt says it gets back to those two pr people,
Tyler and Clark.

Speaker 6 (36:38):
What Clark and Tyler are very very good at in
nineteen twenty nineteen twenty one particularly is in staging clan
events and leveraging access to those events for journalists. Journalists
know that coverage all the big class initiation is going

(37:02):
to sell newspapers, and so if they want access to
that initiation, then Clarkentile is only going to grant that
access if they promise to cover that event in a
positive light. So they are able to think very effectively

(37:24):
about how best they can exploit the press's desire for
stories that will sell in order to enable the clan
to gain both the maximum coverage and the best coverage
possible in the press.

Speaker 8 (37:44):
Boy, that sounds really familiar.

Speaker 7 (37:46):
It does. It's you know, obviously much lower stakes, but
in entertainment journalism, which we've both been a part of.
You know, the studios are basically offering access to those
that they know that will write pastitively about their films.
In fact, you know, a couple of years ago the
La Times there was a big hub up because the

(38:07):
Disney wasn't going to allow the entertainment journalists and reporters
to view Disney films early and review them because another
segment of the paper was writing about a bunch of
problems around Disneyland and Anaheim.

Speaker 5 (38:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (38:20):
I was actually at The Times while that was happening,
and I remember those conversations, and it's it's a sliding scale,
I think for the studios who control the access right like,
they're the ones who have the keys to the people
that the journalists want to talk to, and you know,
they they will play ball until they don't want to,
until they decide that they don't need the press anymore.

(38:41):
But that idea of trading access for coverage is definitely
not a new one, clearly, and it's a thing that
has plagued journalism for a long time. Usually the bigger
the institution by I mean, you know, the La Times
or the New York Times or Time magazine, the less
they have to guarantee positive coverage simply because studios want

(39:01):
to have their stories in those papers. And then the
further sort of down the scale you go, the easier
those conversations are for the studios to have. And I
think that that's probably the dynamic that happened here, which
is the New York Times, you know, was not going
to guarantee positive coverage of the clan, so they didn't
deal with the Times. They just went to smaller newspapers

(39:22):
and smaller markets, and if you get to enough of them,
you get the same amount of coverage while guaranteeing and
controlling the narrative that you want out there.

Speaker 7 (39:29):
That's right, and you also get that local feel, right
like you get that trusted, local home ground, hometown feel.
And obviously what we're talking about in terms of studios
in Hollywood's it's again it's like pretty low stakes ultimately,
but it illustrates the reach of the clan and this savvy,
like the really scary savvy of Tyler and Clark and

(39:51):
what they were doing. And Felix Harcourt explains a little
bit more about that.

Speaker 6 (39:56):
It is the exact same model of access journalism. The
Clan is that you see around the Hollywood studio system,
or that you see around something like the White House
Press Corps and DC correspondence. It is a matter of
leveraging journalists hungry for saleable news in order to shape

(40:17):
what that news looks like.

Speaker 8 (40:19):
So, to put a fine point on this, this kind
of access journalism happens in part because of journalistic competition.
If a rival newspaper covers the clan picnic and your
paper doesn't, you run the risk of losing eyeballs to
that other paper. So you can send reporter out so
you don't miss out on the coverage that you believe
the public wants.

Speaker 7 (40:34):
And there's another important twist to this, which is that
Tyler and Clark they're not worried about bad press as
long as the more mundane clan at the County Fair
events getting And so.

Speaker 6 (40:44):
When we're looking at the kinds of stories that get
printed about the Clan, it's not necessarily that the story
itself is positive, but that they have successfully manipulated the
paper into covering an event that reflects positively on the clan.
So it's not that it's saying that the Clan's a

(41:05):
good organization. But if you're saying this clan picnic attracted
this many thousands of attendees to kind of enjoy the day,
you are effectively normalizing the clan as a popular part
of everyday culture.

Speaker 8 (41:22):
And it wasn't just journalists who help the clan image
become popular. They put in place their own media machinery.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
We have a huge number of clan newspapers emerge in
the early twenties and these papers are circulated and handed around.

Speaker 8 (41:37):
We haven't heard from this guy in a bit. That's
Tom Rice, a historian at St. Andrews in the UK.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
We have clan radio broadcasts, we have clan films, we
have the clan buying up cinemas and theaters. We have
clan putting on local productions which would include initiation ceremonies
at the end.

Speaker 7 (41:55):
So we talked about how successful Birth of a Nation
was when it came out in nine teen fifteen, and
how that film inspired the resurgence of the KKK. Well,
it follows that clan leaders would decide to make their
own inglorious films. And what's interesting is that even though
scholars think only a few people watch these films, the
clan was still able to use them to get their

(42:16):
message out. Here's Tom Rice again.

Speaker 5 (42:19):
So, for example, when the clan produced their own films,
it's not just the production of the films that are important,
because actually not that many people see the films. It
is equally the adverts for the films that go in
the local papers or that are put up on stations
around town. It is the ways in which the clan

(42:39):
is able to kind of present itself within the community
to promote its own values. So a poster for a
clan film like The Toll of Justice would contain lines
like protect our country of filth and protect clean womanhood
and all these kinds of ideals that the clan felt
were important and they were positioning themselves. So they were

(43:01):
kind of using the media in lots of different ways.

Speaker 8 (43:05):
But it's important to remember that behind all of these
movies and newspapers and picnics, behind all this behavior that
they successfully normalized, is the reality of clan violence during
the time.

Speaker 7 (43:16):
Here's Adrian lent Smith again.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
Part of that is also kind of the showmanship of it, right,
the costumes, the pageantry, the symbols, and the secret coded
way of communicating the burning crosses which speak right, like,
if we think about the clan as performers, they're incredibly
effective performers and because of that, effective communicators, which means

(43:39):
that they can then appeal to people who are drawn
in by that, and they can convey their terror to
the people that they mean to frighten.

Speaker 7 (43:48):
And people were justified to feel that fear. They meant
to frighten them, and they should have been frightened because
in September of nineteen twenty one, The New York World
ran a story a day for three weeks disposing the
clan's actions and intentions.

Speaker 8 (44:02):
And here are a few of the headlines, Masked violence,
mostly in Texas. Subtitle activities were hid under pretense of
assisting officers of law enforcement.

Speaker 7 (44:11):
Men and women tarred and feathered in fifty cases acknowledged
or attributed to Ku Klux.

Speaker 8 (44:17):
How the Klan's books balance. Then there's a list that
includes things like killings four, branding with acid one, floggings
forty one, kidnappings five.

Speaker 7 (44:27):
This series ran in a number of newspapers around the country,
and finally, in October of nineteen twenty one, a Massachusetts congressman,
rightly alarmed by what he read set up a hearing
he hoped would turn into a congressional investigation. And here's
where Tyler and Clark were correct. Even bad publicity worked

(44:47):
for them, right.

Speaker 8 (44:48):
Because the newspaper revealed the secrets of the Klan, those
who had yet to be invited to join its ranks
were curious. So we can see where this is headed.

Speaker 7 (44:56):
The newspaper made the mistake of printing a Klan application
as part of of its evidence, and so people apparently
cut it out and mailed it in with their ten
dollars initiation fee.

Speaker 8 (45:05):
Which is precisely why William Simmons, the Imperial Wizard, was
able to sit there and smile while he was called
before a congressional hearing.

Speaker 7 (45:12):
And it's absolutely heartbreaking. I mean, even if you just
located in our story. Superman chooses journalism as his alter
ego Clark Ken's job because he believes that journalists, by
exposing corruption and malevolence, that they can do some good
in the world. And yet even in our research, we've
seen that even talking about the Clan can accidentally encourage

(45:34):
recruitment if you're not very, very careful, and we always
have to keep that in mind.

Speaker 8 (45:38):
However, the World's coverage does contribute to some infighting at
the national level of the clan, and as a result,
Tyler and Clark were forced out. Then, in November nineteen
twenty two, Simmons is ousted. A Texas dentist by the
name of Hiram Wesley Evans takes over as Imperial Wizard.

Speaker 7 (45:53):
And let's not forget how the words branding and marketing
they used inspired this violence, including the nineteen twenty one
Tulsa massacre. If you remember, another comic book based television show,
twenty nineteen's Watchman, created for HBO by Damon Lindeloff, brought
the massacre into the wider scope of public consciousness because

(46:14):
many just hadn't been taught about it in depth in school.

Speaker 8 (46:17):
Yeah, And speaking to Damon Lindelof, and he was very
candid about mentioning this in the press and on various podcasts,
including another one that I happened to help co host,
that he knew nothing about it, you know, And part
of the reason why he was motivated to tell the
story he chose to tell in Watchman was precisely because
he had never heard of it. How he couldn't have
heard about such a tootemic moment in American history that

(46:40):
had been effectively just brushed under the rug and sort
of paved over, sort of got his eye up, and
he decided to put it in his show. And while
much of the audience, you know, watched the premiere episode
of Watchmen, thinking that that scene said in Tulsa was fiction,
many Black Americans knew that it was fact because that

(47:03):
knowledge gets passed very often from parent, child or discovered
when doing the research into a history left out of
public school curriculums.

Speaker 7 (47:09):
Mark I just wanted to pick up on that a
little bit because I remember being on Twitter the night
that that episode aired, and it really exploded because it
highlighted something that wasn't widely known. Seemingly by the reactions
that we saw that now there's a million articles about
how it's not taught in school and it should be
and it can change the world in that way. And

(47:31):
I think when we think of later in our next episode,
we'll be looking at the Superman Radio show, it was
trying to do something along those lines. But if we
think about Tulsa as situated in that time period and
we really look at the grand scope, it was a
part of this wave of terror that was happening. Felix
Harcourt says, Evans and the other clan leaders denied that

(47:55):
the organization was behind any of the violence. In fact,
they had their own twisted reasoning for how they contributed
to the decline in violent acts such as lynchings.

Speaker 6 (48:05):
So you do actually see a drop in lynchings, for example,
over the course of the nineteen twenties, even as the
clan grows, and the clan actually tries to take credit
for that.

Speaker 7 (48:19):
And this is important. Not only do they credit themselves
for decline in violence and completely disavow what they're inciting,
but added to that is that Harcourt says that they've
effectively infiltrated official organizations.

Speaker 6 (48:35):
There is a strong argument to be made that there
is less vigilante violence committed by the clan in the
nineteen twenties than the kinds we see in the post
reconstruction period or the civil rights period, largely because the
clan is so effectively able to mobilize state violence on

(48:59):
their behalf, whether that is through local policing, whether that
is through the newly created immigration agencies, whether that is
through prohibition agents. They are able to achieve those violent
ends under the guise of state authorization.

Speaker 8 (49:22):
It is worth noting the lineage of the Clan and
sort of slave patrols during reconstruction and even pre Civil War,
and how local police and local law enforcement agencies were
outgrowths of those arms of ultimately state enforced racism.

Speaker 7 (49:45):
And the movement to get the Clan embedded in our
institutions became very, very overt So under Hiram Evans, he
actually shut down the multi level marketing scheme. It stops,
and he moves the Clan HQ from Atlanta to DC
so that he can redirect the Klan's focus to politics.

Speaker 8 (50:04):
He and his clan posse do things like setup shop
in New York and Cleveland during the Democratic and Republican
conventions in nineteen twenty four.

Speaker 7 (50:11):
Evans was also influential enough that Time magazine put him
on the cover in June of nineteen twenty four.

Speaker 8 (50:18):
It is worth pointing out that if you're on the
cover of Time magazine, it speaks to a wide acceptance
of the organization. It is not like the article was
an expose a on the Klan, just the opposite. It
treated him like Bill.

Speaker 7 (50:29):
Gibbs and the Klan's political power was very real.

Speaker 8 (50:33):
Yeah. That same year, Evans and Klan pushed for the
passage of a nineteen twenty four immigration bill that imposed,
quote is based on national origin. Immigrants coming from southern
and Eastern Europe were curtailed under that law, so places
with big Catholic and Jewish populations.

Speaker 7 (50:47):
And all this media attention put a spotlight on the Klan,
and for a long time they actually really benefited from that.

Speaker 8 (50:53):
But as any celebrity can tell you, the spotlight can
have a downside if there's any hint of a scandal,
and the KKK had a couple of big ones. The
New York World had reported that Tyler and Clark were
far from being upstanding members of the Klan. In nineteen nineteen,
they were arrested and convicted of disorderly conduct after Atlanta
police raided a brothel where they were caught in their bedclothes,
not to mention it with a bottle of whiskey. Keep

(51:14):
in mind, Tyler and Clark were both married to other people.
When news of their sex campaid came to light in
the New York World series wasn't exactly a good look
for the supposedly moral upstanding clan.

Speaker 7 (51:24):
Then came the downfall of another clan leader, David Curtis Stephenson,
who had fueled the huge growth in membership in places
outside of the South, including Midwestern states like Ohio and Indiana.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
And that was due in part to a guy named
Stevenson who was the clan's Midwest organizer.

Speaker 7 (51:43):
That's Rick Bawers again.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
And he knew how to give speeches, he knew how
to influence politicians, He really knew how to grow the membership.
So everybody is getting rich from this.

Speaker 7 (51:53):
But Stevenson turned out to be a violent criminal. In
nineteen twenty five, he kidnapped and brutally raped a twenty
eight year old woman, his assistant, and we want to
be really clear, he brutalized her. There were bite marks
all over her, she was mauled, peten, and ultimately she

(52:14):
did take her own life. But because of what he
had done, he was charged with her murder and he
got sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 8 (52:23):
This followed on the heels of Tyler and Clark's pass Shenanigans.
So despite all their hypholatin claims about moral clarity, the
KKK leadership during this time is anything but morally upright,
and that became their achilles heel.

Speaker 7 (52:34):
Here's Rick Bowers.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
So the thing about the clan that ultimately does them
in is that when you know pun intended, lift up
the sheet, you see the self serving, money grubbing, manipulative
people who are preaching this law and order, moral judgment

(52:55):
philosophy and at the same time living the life that's
the opposite of that.

Speaker 8 (53:00):
By the late nineteen twenties, the clan was imploding and fast.
People started shedding their membership. But and this is very important,
they didn't shed the flame of the clan ideals from
their hearts and minds.

Speaker 7 (53:12):
And that is perhaps the biggest and scariest legacy of
the clan. Even those who hadn't joined the clan learned
what they needed to from reading about them in newspapers
and seeing ads for their films, and hearing about them
on the radio.

Speaker 8 (53:25):
So this evil lies in wait, ready to rear its
head again, and it does.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Catogs Pap the Sunshine Serial presents say advent yours of Superman.

Speaker 8 (53:37):
In our next episode, we'll discover how Superman went from
a figure in a comic strip to a money making
icon that began to sell not just merchandise.

Speaker 7 (53:44):
But ideas, and how he became part of an overall
government and industry campaign to in essence invent an American way.
This podcast was hosted by Mark Bernardon and Roth Cornett.
Created and executive producer by Roth Cornette, with executive producers
Max Dion and Michael Chang, with producers and writers Nancy Rosenbaum,

(54:06):
Loretta Williams, Teru Bratch, Michelle Dunn, Eileen gal Billy Patterson,
Gordie Loehen Roth Cornette, and Mark bernardin. Our audio engineer
is Brett Boehm. Our researchers are Lauren Schwen and Elana Strauss.
Our fact checker is Stephen Crichton. Recording was done by

(54:27):
Forever Dog Productions and Voice Tracks A very special thanks
to Caleb Schneider, Sasha Parol Raver, Brett Weiner, Eric Eisenberg,
Sonny Benson, Anne Brasher, Shanna Whitlow, Joe Starr, alvitaal Ash,
Dina Crowder, Danielle Radford, Spencer, Gilbert ln Harris, and Paige Chew.

(54:51):
On the next episode of Superman versus the KKK.

Speaker 5 (54:53):
Hop about the sky.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
Look, it's a fart, it's a fight, It's.

Speaker 8 (54:56):
Superman almost running a big very beginning.

Speaker 7 (55:03):
Superman's a multimedia machine.

Speaker 8 (55:04):
I think Superman was effective as a brand because it
did appeal to not just children, it appealed to adults. Certainly,
Superman was co opted, he was used for propaganda, so
it actually I read somewhere that one in six Allied
soldiers had a superhero comic as they were fighting

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KKK: Your Money for Your Hate | Episode 02

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}KKK: Your Money for Your Hate | Episode 02