FILM AND THE KLAN

In 1923, when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) urged the governor of Kansas to ban The Birth of a Nation in his state, it argued that the film “is largely responsible for the present day revival of the Klan.”Footnote ² The Klan had re-formed in Atlanta, Georgia in December 1915, barely a week before the city's premiere of The Birth of a Nation, but by 1920 the Klan still only had between four and five thousand members, which may suggest that the film's influence in the initial growth of the Klan has been overstated.Footnote ³ After the summer of 1920 the Klan grew nationally, adding eighty-five thousand members in the next year before reaching its loosely estimated peak of five million members in the middle of the decade. The Birth of a Nation, and film more generally, contributed strongly to this expansion.

Historians have noted that the growth of the Klan in 1920 coincided with the introduction into the Klan, in June, of two opportunist partners from the Southern Publicity Association, Mary Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke.Footnote ⁴ Tyler and Clarke manipulated postwar conservative fears around immigration, industrialization, bolshevism and social Darwinism, aggressively extending fears fostered during the war and the Red Scare of 1919, and presenting the hyphenated American (principally the American-Jew or American-Catholic) as a social enemy operating within America. They aligned the Klan with the fundamentalist movement, with prohibition, with local police authorities, and adapted the existing messages of the American Legion and the Protestant Church. The message offered was not new but the methods used to attract support and to develop this Klan identity often were.

The growth of the Klan cannot be credited entirely to two individuals, but Tyler and Clarke, who, as Nancy MacLean observed, had “mastered the art of modern propaganda,” did bring a modern business approach to this reactionary organization.Footnote ⁵ After 1920 the Klan began a rigorous recruitment drive, in which Clarke and Tyler initially hired more than two hundred Kleagles (or recruiters), the more ambitious of whom, as Kenneth Jackson suggested, “utilized Klan propaganda films.” The Birth of a Nation was one of these films, used as part of the Klan's “educational and entertainment program.” However, the attention afforded towards this single film has overshadowed a number of other films exploited by Kleagles, such as The Face at Your Window, a 1920 Fox film that was made with government support.Footnote ⁶

The Face at Your Window actually depicted the American Legion, but Imperial Wizard Simmons, the founder and leader of the modern Klan, wrote to William Fox praising the “wonderful picture” and Klan groups subsequently aligned themselves with the patriotic activities presented on screen.Footnote ⁷ The film served as a catalyst for Klan growth, with the King Kleagle in Tennessee writing to Klansmen throughout the state in May 1921 urging them to organize screenings of the film. “The system is to have each of your Klansmen take with them at least one man to see the show,” he explained, “and then at the finish produce an application and say: ‘Sign here.’”Footnote ⁸ This tactic was adopted in Portland, Oregon, where the film was staged in front of six thousand people at the city auditorium, while in Denver, in June 1921, the local Klan announced themselves to the community by dramatically riding through the town in the middle of the night and fixing notices to the local theatre, demanding the re-engagement of the film.Footnote ⁹

The Klan recognized the pedagogical value of film and the public interest generated by screenings. It exploited other mainstream films, such as the 1922 John Stahl feature One Clear Call, which featured the Klan as a moral group of law enforcers instigating the closure of a “gambling, dance and drinking place,” in order to promote itself as a legitimate, Protestant, American organization and to publicize local Klan groups.Footnote ¹⁰ However, the Klan, which produced national newspapers and managed publishing houses, was eager to control its own representation and to commercially exploit the growing interest in the organization. As early as March 1921, less than a year after joining the group, Edward Young Clarke had discussed plans with Imperial Wizard Simmons to produce an elaborate Klan propaganda film. The film, entitled Yesterday, To-day and Forever, was intended to serve as “up-to-date Ku Klux advertising,” and although there is no evidence of the picture making it beyond the planning stage, Klan leaders attempted to produce a number of films over the next five years.Footnote ¹¹ This article examines the Klan's experiences in producing, and exhibiting, two pictures, The Toll of Justice and The Traitor Within, assessing, in particular, the ways in which the Klan sought to promote and define itself through these films.

KLAN PRODUCTION

Although produced by different companies in neighbouring states, both The Toll of Justice and The Traitor Within purported to respond to a shared concern. The Klan newspaper, the Fiery Cross, explained that The Toll of Justice was “designed to counteract the poisonous propaganda circulated by alien enemies who have declared their determination to wipe out the Klan.”Footnote ¹² Roscoe Carpenter, a Klan lecturer in Indiana, and the secretary of Cavalier, the producers of The Traitor Within, explained during the summer of 1923 that Cavalier had recently been organized “to release pictures of a real American nature to counteract some of the anti-Klan pictures that are now being made and exhibited by the opposition.” A further report noted that Cavalier would produce pictures “which would counteract the influence of certain productions which had been found objectionable to the Klan.”Footnote ¹³

These “objectionable” productions were not modest independent anti-Klan films, but rather highly publicized pictures produced by the film industry. Cavalier was established in the spring of 1923, at a time when Klan groups were strongly protesting against Charlie Chaplin's The Pilgrim, a film that, according to the Klan, “ridiculed the Protestant ministry” and was part of a deliberate “systematic attack on Protestantism.”Footnote ¹⁴ Protests from Klan groups ensured that the film was banned in areas of South Carolina, West Virginia and Pennsylvania in April 1923, and at the same time Klan groups also objected strongly to Pola Negri's Bella Donna, in which “a white woman submits herself to an Egyptian Negro.”Footnote ¹⁵ These protests generated publicity for the Klan, and presented the Klan as a moral, racially pure Protestant group, protecting traditional American ideals. Yet these criticisms were part of a larger attack on the film industry and, in particular, on the Jewish influences therein. Klan newspapers emphasized that “Jewish producers starred Pola Negri in a revolting play called ‘Bella Donna’” and that again it was the Jewish producers who “prostituted” Chaplin's ability in The Pilgrim.Footnote ¹⁶

The Klan was happy, though, to endorse film as a medium and was certainly aware of the possibilities that it offered as a propagandist device. Searchlight argued that “with eight million students daily, the motion picture ought to be the greatest university in the world,” and these Klan companies emerged at a time when propaganda was being theorized more widely.Footnote ¹⁷ Walter Lippmann's 1922 book, Public Opinion, highlighted the growing interest in propaganda and political science as an academic subject, and argued that public opinions were increasingly shaped by the agencies of mass communications.Footnote ¹⁸ The Klan, for its part, acknowledged the significance of film as a tool for propaganda, both within its criticisms of the industry and in its own productions. The Rev. Oscar Haywood, the treasurer of Cavalier and a renowned Klan lecturer, explained to a Klan gathering in Indiana that “he did not urge Klansmen to stay away from the motion picture houses.” His problem was rather with “the motion pictures as an industry, which he said was 90 per cent. owned by Jews.”Footnote ¹⁹ A further article, subsequently sold as a Klan leaflet, entitled “Jew Movies Urging Sex Vice: Rome and Judah at work to pollute Young America,” emphasized the pedagogical function of film, in order to highlight the social threat posed by the Klan's Jewish and Catholic opponents.Footnote ²⁰ The Klan's criticisms of film thus helped to justify, and indeed highlight the need for, its own film productions, in educating Protestant Americans and in challenging “foreign” mainstream industry pictures.

The Klan's attitude towards the film industry strongly directed the production, promotion and exhibition of these Klan-made films. Both films were promoted as distinctly “American” and “Protestant,” while, by isolating themselves from the industry, they struggled to achieve widespread distribution, and evidently lacked professional expertise.Footnote ²¹ Yet there are important distinctions between the officially endorsed The Toll of Justice and Cavalier's The Traitor Within. Cavalier had as its major shareholder David Stephenson, the head of the extremely powerful Klan in Indiana. By 1923 a huge power struggle between Stephenson and the official leader, Dr. Evans, was threatening to pull the Klan apart, until, in May 1924, Stephenson attempted to remove the Klans of Indiana from the national organ.Footnote ²² These two Klan film companies thus appear to represent, at least in part, the different factions of the Klan.

Initially, though, both companies played down their links with the Klan. Roscoe Carpenter, secretary of Cavalier, stated that “the pictures we propose to produce will be on Americanism and not touch the Ku Klux Klan at all,” while C. and S. Pictures claimed that The Toll of Justice “is not strictly a Klan picture, and that it will be offered as a regular photoplay, and not as Klan propaganda.”Footnote ²³ However, in the final week of production, after the director, Corey Cook, had quite literally distanced himself from the production by moving to Egypt, the Klan became “sole owner and producer” of The Toll of Justice, with the picture now listed as a Miafa Pictures production.Footnote ²⁴ Miafa, which stood for “My Interests Are for America,” was a popular Klan slogan, and when the film made its public premiere in Newark in December 1923 the local press reported that “The picture [was] directed by the Ku Klux Klan and taken by Klansmen.” A poster for this screening advertised the film as “a Ku Klux Klan picture.”Footnote ²⁵ Local Klan groups also staged Cavalier's first (and only) film The Traitor Within, after it was advertised for distribution within the Klan newspaper, the Fiery Cross. The Decatur Review noted that, at a local screening, “members of the Klan in full regalia acted as ushers,” and that electric crosses were placed on the stage.Footnote ²⁶

Although both films were presented as Klan productions, seeking to “counteract” industry features, in narrative and thematic structure they borrowed heavily from established genres. The Toll of Justice appears remarkably similar to the earlier women's serials, and contained an “air plane battle in mid-air” at a time when mainstream cinema was exploiting the popular interest in aviation.Footnote ²⁷ Posters for the film noted the “all star cast” and emphasized “mystery, action, thrills,” and “Love, thrills and excitement.”Footnote ²⁸The Traitor Within, while more blatant in its propaganda as it presented the increasingly political Klan within “an American city on the verge of a mayoralty election,” was also advertised in Klan newspapers as a “well-sustained love romance around which are builded the features interesting to Klansmen.”Footnote ²⁹ Both films, in initially appealing to non-Klan audiences, appeared to conform to industrial expectations in their narrative structure, yet they differed from mainstream film, both formally by presenting actuality footage within a fictional framework, and also through the promotion, which highlighted a direct political agenda for these films.

An advertisement for The Traitor Within emphasized that the film offered the “True Story of the Ku Klux Klan,” while the Fiery Cross reported that The Toll of Justice was “designed to acquaint the uninformed public with the true principles of the organization.”Footnote ³⁰ Another film made in Oklahoma during 1922, The Mysterious Eyes of the Ku Klux Klan, had promised to show the “true belief of the Ku Klux Klan” and “the inner workings of the K.K.K.”Footnote ³¹ This constant emphasis on presenting truth and reality strengthens the pedagogical function of these films for the Klan, but also ensures that they are presented to the public as authentic “Klan” productions. These films are thus invaluable in showing how the secretive Klan wished to present itself on a national level to Klansmen and (as the phrase “uninformed public” suggests) non-Klansmen alike.

KLAN REPRESENTATION

Both The Toll of Justice and The Traitor Within sought to redefine the Klan, by directly confronting popular misrepresentations of the group. In The Toll of Justice the central villain, Haskell, concocts a plan to frame the Klan for a murder that he has committed. Haskell, whose drinking den and “underworld” activities are heavily opposed by the Klan, forces two of his desperate customers to get him two Klan costumes in exchange for drink and drugs. In a series of flashbacks, the audience discovers that Haskell and his weak-willed accomplice Saunders dressed up in the Klan costumes and carried out the killing. Haskell shifts the blame onto the “real” Klansmen, telling the policeman, “I saw Tom Grant leave the Dale home on the night of the murder and hide this [Klan costume] in a bush.” Haskell then points to the badge on the costume.Footnote ³²

Haskell wants to undermine the group and exploits the secrecy that surrounds it. In one scene, Haskell, in costume, scares an African American character and then laughs. The film presents this as a misuse of the Klan costume, and responds not only to the apparent false representation of the group within society (by threatened villains like Haskell), but also to the misrepresentation of the group by sections of the media and within certain films. The insistence, particularly in publicity materials, on unveiling the truth behind the Klan works closely with the narratives of these films, which suggest that the Klan is misrepresented as a violent and anti-African American group.

The Traitor Within addressed a remarkably similar theme, showing “how crooks disguise themselves as Klansmen and commit robberies and murder.” A further report explained that the film reveals “the methods of Klan enemies in their unscrupulous attacks on Klansmen and Klan principles.”Footnote ³³ Both of these Klan films responded to the negative criticisms of the group, and illustrated the inherent problems that the Klan faced as a secret organization. Movie Weekly suggested that the production of The Toll of Justice “is a gesture on the part of the Klan to tear away the mask under which it has been existing, and which it would appear has been the cause of much antagonism to the organization.”Footnote ³⁴ This theme is also addressed in Klan stage plays. For example, in The Invisible Empire, which ran in Chicago at the beginning of 1923, “night riders, using the Klan as an unwilling shield, go about committing misdemeanors.” The play, according to one review, “voices the chronic alibi” that a rival organization is “stealing the Kluck stuff,” defending the widespread criticisms of Klan violence by suggesting that the Klan's enemies, adopting the Klan costume, are deliberately undermining the group.Footnote ³⁵

The Klan attempted to define itself on a national level through these films and plays, representing itself not as a violent racist group, but rather as a moral force, protecting traditional womanhood and administering prohibition. As self-appointed protectors of prohibition, the Klan uses drink as a signifier of villainy within these films, but it does not align this drinking with the issue of race, as Joan Silverman suggests is the case within The Birth of a Nation.Footnote ³⁶ Indeed, the role of the African American within The Toll of Justice is reduced to the illiterate, if loyal, servant, dutifully carrying out the orders of his master; “No Sah – Mistah, Dale done say you caint come in heah Sah!” The removal of racial targets can be explained in part by censorship, with a New York Times editorial in 1923 concluding that, in light of censorship, the “only safe villain is an atheist American.”Footnote ³⁷ Yet in 1923 Klan newspapers reported Klansmen visiting schools and making donations to churches. They showed Klan baseball teams smiling proudly for team photos and emphasized the “everyman” appeal of the Klan, as a legitimate fraternal group. In speeches the Klan represented itself in similar terms. Most famously, Imperial Wizard Simmons defended the Klan at a congressional hearing in 1921 as a group “opposed to profiteering in race prejudice and religious bigotry” that occasionally assumed “the role of regulators of public morals and the enforcement of law.”Footnote ³⁸ The Klan now sought to reimagine and further redefine itself, as a positive moral force, through film.

An advert for The Toll of Justice succinctly explained the Klan's role within the film: “Do away with the underworld – Protect clean womanhood.”Footnote ³⁹ These two issues are linked together within the film as the female heroine, Billy, who is hunting her father's killer, is captured and tied up in Haskell's drinking den. Billy, in the tradition of the earlier female serials, undertakes the role of the investigator of her father's death. The motherless Billy, with her masculine name and modern clothes (she wears trousers), races around in a car and climbs out of a plane in mid-air. The film may attempt to re-create the excitement of the earlier serials, but while those produced by the industry may, as Shelley Stamp and Ben Singer speculate, be viewed as liberating and empowering to the female spectator, The Toll of Justice would appear to serve more clearly as a warning.

In narrative and thematic terms, The Toll of Justice appears extremely similar to the 1919 Mary Pickford film Heart O' the Hills, in which Pickford plays Mavie, a twelve-year-old girl out to avenge her father's death. Yet, while in Heart O' the Hills Pickford was “dressed in the garb of the Night-riding Ku Klux Klan,” and “as a Night Rider, whirls over the mountains with the clansmen at her heels,” in The Toll of Justice Billy does not ride with the Klan herself.Footnote ⁴⁰ Instead Billy is helpless as she is captured and tied up by the villainous men, and she is ultimately reliant on male protection. Pickford, in contrast, not only rides with the night riders, but also assumes a distinctly masculine identity, shouting “Be My Dinner ready, Mammy,” talking of “raisin' h–l generally,” and dismissing one man with “I ain't answerin' no questions from a fella that wears gal's socks.”Footnote ⁴¹ Pickford's appearance as a female night rider may have contributed to a more accessible and less threatening presentation of the Klan, but this feminization of the Klan, depicting a female night rider empowered to defend herself, would appear to destabilize the clear gender boundaries that the Klan sought to promote. The Toll of Justice attempts to re-establish these boundaries, first by showing the danger faced by the independent modern woman, and then by allowing the male heroes to resolve the situation.

Billy, as an independent modern woman, is subsequently reformed as an example to the modern Klanswoman. The WKKK, officially formed in 1923, was a powerful institution particularly in Indiana, where Kathleen Blee suggested its 250,000 members comprised half of the Klan's total for the state.Footnote ⁴² The recently established women's Klan actively sought to promote traditional, clearly defined, gender roles, not by night riding, but by organizing consumer boycotts or social functions or by spreading rumours. Billy, while not depicted as a Klanswoman, ultimately recognizes these distinct gender roles, investigating her father's death and then calling for the male night riders to resolve the situation. The Klan responds – as an inter-title states – to “the appeal which stirs every man to vow allegiance to this brave little girl and help bring the criminals to JUSTICE.” The independent modern woman is now presented as a “brave little girl” as the Klan appears to qualify the definition of modern womanhood put forward by the female serials and by Heart O' the Hills.

The Toll of Justice, as with the earlier serials and Heart O' the Hills, presents Billy's actions as a direct response to her father's death, but it also positions the criminal activities as a failure of the family unit. The crimes of Saunders, a captured villain recovering in hospital, are presented in relation to his mother. Depicted in flashback, baking a cake and described as “lavender and old lace,” Saunders's mother sobs as the inter-title remarks “Love best, must suffer most.” The flashback works formally here to create a sense of nostalgia for an idealized family life that the Klan suggests is now passing. Earlier in the film, when Tom Grant is falsely arrested, his mother is shown sobbing as her son is led away. The Klan, through this film, thus emphasizes the importance of family order, and presents itself as a necessary protector of family values.

KLAN PROMOTION

The values emphasized within The Toll of Justice were further promoted within advertisements for the film. A poster in Columbus in January 1924 contained “Clean up crime and filth” and “Protect our women” in two boxes, while a further advert in Mansfield urged the viewer to “Rid your city of crime.”Footnote ⁴³ In Ashland, “Do away with the divorce evil” appeared in large bold capitalized letters above the film's title, and a full-page advert in the Klan magazine, Kluxer, stated, “Do away with the Underworld,” “Clean our Country of Filth” and “Protect Clean Womanhood.”Footnote ⁴⁴ The Klan emphasized the performative role of film, seeking to influence social behaviour, and define itself not only through the film, but also through the publicity surrounding the film. These productions, with their constant dogged emphasis on social and political problems, appear in contrast to the conventions of Hollywood, which often presented films as escapism, removed from reality.Footnote ⁴⁵ They would appear to share more in common with the films of other hugely influential, but largely overlooked, independent companies, such as the Ford Motion Picture Department, the American Legion Film Service and the Church Motion Picture Corporation in New York, all of which sought to educate through film.Footnote ⁴⁶ Yet the Klan recognized even wider possibilities for film, as it sought to educate not only through its pictures, but also through the publicity materials and sites in which they were exhibited. Furthermore, the Klan used these films to promote and legitimize itself as an educator and sought to define Klansmen and -women through film advertisements.

When The Toll of Justice made its first public appearance at the Rex Theatre in Newark in December 1923, it was advertised as “a show that interests every american man, woman or child.” The film (and its audience) was defined as distinctly American, and adverts went a step further when promoting the film a few weeks later in Dayton, Ohio, presenting it as “the picture that every red blooded American should see.”Footnote ⁴⁷ These adverts directly targeted Klansmen and -women but they also served to differentiate these Klan-made films from the supposedly “foreign” industry films. The Traitor Within was described as the “Greatest of all American Pictures,” one that was “produced for, owned and controlled by Protestants.” Further adverts highlighted that “It's all American” and that “It is a clean American picture.”Footnote ⁴⁸ The film (and by extension the Klan) emphasized its national, racial and religious identity, while the Klan sought to overcome the inherent contradictions in its use of film by differentiating itself from the immoral “foreign” films that it opposed.

Local Klan groups sought to exploit the publicity generated by these screenings by aligning themselves with the activities on-screen. This was achieved firstly by emphasizing any local scenes within the film. For example, when The Toll of Justice played in Columbus in January 1924, local advertisements emphasized that there were “scenes made during [the] big Buckeye Lake Conclave,” and noted that the film was “made in and by Columbus people” and was the first “ever made of [the] K.K.K. in session.”Footnote ⁴⁹ The local Klan further attached itself to the film by very publicly attending screenings as a group. A report in the Columbus Dispatch detailed that “about 1000 members of the Columbus chapter of the Ku Klux Klan will meet Saturday evening … to march in a body to Memorial hall, where they will view the Klan movie, The Toll of Justice.” The report explained that the Klan band would lead the marchers. The Columbus chapter sponsored viewings of the film and these independent Klan productions were regularly put on by, and for, local Klan groups.Footnote ⁵⁰

KLAN EXHIBITION

For the most part, these films played not at mainstream venues, but in schools, churches and community halls, and the Klan was able to define itself through the venues in which it exhibited these films. The Toll of Justice was shown at a school in Homer, Michigan in October 1924 before an “audience that packed the building to overflowing.”Footnote ⁵¹ The film also played at Bowman School Auditorium in 1924, where local churchmen monitored films, showing only those that “may be seen by the children without any harmful results whatever.”Footnote ⁵²The Toll of Justice appeared at the High School Auditorium in Elyria, Ohio in March 1925, while in the same month the Junior Klan in Akron organized a two-day screening of the film. The Youngstown Citizen reported that “the lessons taught will make a lasting impression.”Footnote ⁵³ The screenings aligned the Klan with local schools and presented the group as an organization positively influencing and educating young Americans. The films thus sought not only to define the Klan on a national level, but also to publicize and promote the role of Klan groups within the local community.

The Klan, which heavily criticized mainstream films for the destructive influence they had on the morals of women and children, presented film as an educative device within a school setting. The Decatur Review described The Traitor Within as “an educational motion picture,” while the Marion Daily Star described The Toll of Justice as “a lesson in patriotism which arouses in the bosom of the sturdy youth a love for his native flag and causes the blood of the old to flow with new zest.”Footnote ⁵⁴Movie Weekly drew a parallel between the Klan's production of The Toll of Justice and its recent purchase of Valparaiso University, noting that the acquisition of an entire educational institution was “a move on the Klan's part to take a hand in educating American youth along certain principles.”Footnote ⁵⁵ The first Klan University, Lanier University, was founded and run by Charles Lewis Fowler, who then became president of Cavalier. Fowler was a noted Klan lecturer and Kleagle, and was selected as president in part because he was “identified as an educator.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Cavalier certainly sought to ensure that children viewed The Traitor Within. Schoolchildren were admitted free of charge for an early morning showing in Muncie in February 1924, while a further screening was arranged for the children of Delaware County Children's Home. When the film played in Ashland, an afternoon screening was organized for local schoolchildren. The price was reduced so that “each and every boy and girl may see this production before it leaves town.”Footnote ⁵⁷

The Klan also emphasized its close links with the Protestant Church through its exhibition of these films. The Traitor Within was shown at the Scoville Tabernacle in Muncie, and also enjoyed a run at the Cadle Tabernacle, an established Klan centre in Indianapolis, in March 1924.Footnote ⁵⁸ The film was presented here “under the auspices of the Lawrence Community Brotherhood of the Lawrence M. E. Church” and served as a fundraiser for the church's community building. The Klan's religious validity was further strengthened by a series of lectures offered each night during its run. On the opening night the evangelist Dr. E. J. Bulgin, earlier described by the Catholic publication Tolerance as a “foul-mouthed sensationalist,” spoke before the film.Footnote ⁵⁹ Klan groups legitimized themselves through their close relations with the church, and positively sought to attract churchmen to screenings. When The White Rider, a picture depicting local Klan activities, was shown in Lincoln in 1925, advertisements stated that “ministers are especially invited to attend.”Footnote ⁶⁰

The appearance of these films at non-theatrical venues helped the Klan to define and position itself within local communities, but it was largely enforced, given the increasing power exercised by the industry and the Klan's attitude towards established exhibitors. The Toll of Justice was originally intended for exhibition in twenty-one states, but appeared predominantly in halls and schools throughout Indiana and Ohio. The Traitor Within did not even make it into Ohio, after the board of censors refused a license for it.Footnote ⁶¹ However, the film did appear at Klan picnics and at Klantauquas in other states during 1924, where it was used to recruit and inspire new Klan members. For example, in June the film played as part of a big open-air demonstration staged at a racetrack in Plainfield, Illinois, which culminated in “the naturalization of scores of this community's best men and women.” A month later, the Klans of Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois organized a screening at a “monster picnic” in the Klan Park in Racine, Wisconsin.Footnote ⁶²

Local Klan groups did, on occasion, hire out mainstream cinemas in order to exhibit these films, but this often provoked extreme local reactions. Even though advertisements invariably emphasized that the theatres were leased, for many the screenings inferred that theatre's support for the Klan, with some rented sites becoming battlegrounds for the local Klan and its opponents. For example, when a Klan representative hired out the Mecca Theatre in Decatur, Illinois, for a two-day screening of The Traitor Within in January 1924, parts of the motion picture machine were stolen. A note was left explaining that “these parts will be returned by Saturday providing no more K.K.K. pictures are shown in Decatur.”Footnote ⁶³ The Klan reported this theft as a direct attack on the organization, and the theatre manager, facing claims that he was a Klansman, quickly aligned himself (and his theatre) with the anti-Klan protestor, cancelling all further screenings.Footnote ⁶⁴ Locals evidently associated the politics of the theatre with the film shown, and this made it even more difficult for the Klan to position its films within established cinemas.

There were, though, a few sites, such as the American Theatre in Noblesville, Indiana, which were owned and controlled by Klansmen. The American Theatre had opened in the summer of 1923, and immediately differentiated itself from the “Jewish controlled” establishments. It advertised itself as “100% American,” and stated that it “is owned and controlled by home people.”Footnote ⁶⁵ The theatre presented itself as a Klan establishment, describing itself as “Kool, Kozy and Klean” and offering short poems outlining its American identity; “To do a thing and see it through is true Yankee Red, White and Blue – American 100%.”Footnote ⁶⁶ The theatre showed The Traitor Within in January 1924 for the benefit of the “charity fund for Hamilton County Klan” and then The Toll of Justice in April, but, for the most part, it sought to attract audiences not through the individual films shown, but through emphasizing its Protestant, American identity. The theatre presented itself, like the Klan, as an underdog in direct opposition to the controlling Jewish and Catholic influences infiltrating America; “At a time when odds were against us and clean amusement furnished by Americans only was almost improbable, the present American Theatre management worried and worked day and night till the apparently impossible was accomplished for you and yours.” The advert was signed “Americanly yours.”Footnote ⁶⁷