Samuel Green (18 November 1889 – 18 August 1949) was a
Grand Wizard of the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cath ...
in the late 1940s, organizing its third and final reformation in 1946.
[
]
Biography
Green was born on 18 November 1889 in Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital city, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georgia, Fulton County, the mos ...
.
He became an obstetrician
Obstetrics is the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. As a medical specialty, obstetrics is combined with gynecology under the discipline known as obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), which is a surgic ...
and joined the Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
in 1922. By the early 1930s, Green had become the Grand Dragon
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) nomenclature has evolved over the order's nearly 160 years of existence. The titles and designations were first laid out in the original Klan's prescripts of 1867 and 1868, then revamped with William J. Simmons's '' Kloran'' of ...
of Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
.[Quarles (1999), pp. 81]
Starting from the late 1920s, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cath ...
had a problem with declining membership. In 1939, Imperial Wizard
The Grand Wizard (later the Grand and Imperial Wizard simplified as the Imperial Wizard and eventually, the National Director) referred to the national leader of several different Ku Klux Klan organizations in the United States and abroad.
The ti ...
Hiram Wesley Evans sold the organisation to two Klan members, Green and James A. Colescott
James Arnold Colescott (January 11, 1897 – January 11, 1950) was an American white supremacist who was Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Under financial pressure from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for back taxes, he dis ...
. Colescott served as the Imperial Wizard and Green as his assistant.[Quarles (1999), pp. 81] While Colescott was forced to dissolve the organization in 1944, Green began to reform the Association of Georgia Klans with its focus on white supremacy
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White ...
and anti-communism
Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
. In October 1945, his group announced their return to public life with a cross-burning.
From the autumn of 1945 to the spring of 1946, the Klan regularly signaled their presence through lighting up "huge fiery crosses" on top of Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome Inselberg, monadnock and the site of Stone Mountain Park, east of Atlanta, Georgia. Outside the park is the small city of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The park is the most visited tourist site in the state o ...
. During this period, Green and his associates started contacting former Klansmen and inviting them to rejoin the ranks. On May 9, 1946, this version of the Klan staged its first major initiation ceremony.[Quarles (1999), pp. 83-87] In October of the same year, Green orchestrated a formal revival ceremony on Stone Mountain. According to historian Robert P. Ingalls, the fiery cross lit for the ceremony was between 200 and 300 feet in height (60.96-91.44 metres). The initiation ceremony of the night closely followed the patters established by William Joseph Simmons
William Joseph Simmons (May 7, 1880 – May 18, 1945) was an American preacher and fraternal organizer who founded and led the second Ku Klux Klan from Thanksgiving evening 1915 until being replaced in 1922 by Hiram Wesley Evans.
Early life
Simm ...
in 1915. The only problem for the ceremony was that there were more members and initiates present than robes and hoods available to them. Many of them wore handkerchief
A handkerchief (; also called a hankie or, historically, a handkercher or a ) is a form of a kerchief or bandanna, typically a hemmed square of thin fabric which can be carried in the pocket or handbag for personal hygiene purposes such as wi ...
masks instead of more traditional Klan uniforms. Green sold to ''Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...
'' magazine the rights of taking and publishing photos of the event.
New Klan units soon emerged throughout the Southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
. Chester L. Quarles, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi (byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment.
...
, points out that new conditions in the region helped the Klan in its recruitment drive. One factor was the supposed "new assertiveness" of the Negro
In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be ...
es. In other words, African American veterans of World War II were returning home. Having fought for liberty and freedom abroad, they were now demanding these rights for themselves in their own homeland. They were joining the Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
en masse. In response, the Klan re-embraced its original goals of seeking to contain and control the Negroes. In Green's own words on the subject:
The Klan focused its recruitment drives towards White American
White Americans are Americans who identify as and are perceived to be white people. This group constitutes the majority of the people in the United States. As of the 2020 Census, 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were white alone. This represented ...
veterans of the war who felt restless. Their rhetoric called attention to non-combatant negroes "who got all the good jobs while you were in uniform". Another factor to the revitalization of the Klan was a then-recent wave of refugees and immigrants entering the United States, including Jews who survived the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. Green described the country as having been "flooded with Jewish refugees". The Klan once again embraced both nativism and antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
. A third factor was that Roman Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...
was increasing its influence over the American population, gaining new adherents. Green found this to be a disturbing trend and spoke against these "papist
The words Popery (adjective Popish) and Papism (adjective Papist, also used to refer to an individual) are mainly historical pejorative words in the English language for Roman Catholicism, once frequently used by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox ...
s". Meaning that the Klan was re-embracing Anti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the Uni ...
. The final factor was the ongoing Operation Dixie
Operation Dixie was the name of the post-World War II campaign by the Congress of Industrial Organizations to trade union, unionize industry in the Southern United States, particularly the textile industry. Launched in the spring of 1946, the campa ...
, which involved labor organizers operating in the South. The Klan was opposed to the labor movement
The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other.
* The trade union movement ...
and Green characterized these organizers as carpetbagger
In the history of the United States, carpetbagger is a largely historical term used by Southerners to describe opportunistic Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War, who were perceived to be exploiting the lo ...
arriving to "tell Southerners how to run ... their business". Green assured his audience that "niggahs" (sic), Jews, Catholics, labor organizers, and any alliance between them would not be tolerated by the Klan. In his words:
In this period of the Klan, it was relatively normal for Klansmen to attend church service in full uniform. The practice both asserted their predominance in their respective areas, and implied their connection to local church leaders. At times these Klansmen offered cash donations to the congregations. At least some religious figures opposed the practice. For example, Hugh A. Brimm of the Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. The wor ...
instructed its pastors to refuse to accept "blood money" from the Klan. In his view the Klansmen were covered with the blood of "lynched victims" and their "superficial piety" was merely hypocritical. In 1947, the Klan was included in the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations The United States Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO) was a list drawn up on April 3, 1947 at the request of the United States Attorney General (and later Supreme Court justice) Tom C. Clark. The list was intended to be a c ...
, and denounced as Un-American. It shared the list with organizations embracing totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...
, fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
, and communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
. In the Klan's case, the list accurately reflected their subversive ideology. While declaring itself the "American social conscience", the Klan consistently favored ignoring and disobeying laws which went against their ideology. Their rhetoric had taken an increasingly anti-statist
Anti-statism is any approach to social, economic or political philosophy that rejects statism. An anti-statist is one who opposes intervention by the state into personal, social and economic affairs. In anarchism, this is characterized by a comp ...
turn.
With the Klan attracting some negative attention, it soon started facing internal problems. Their ranks were infiltrated by government informants, federal agents, and investigative journalists
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years rese ...
. All were eager to expose the violent nature of the Klan, the one Klansmen publicly denied. The most notable infiltrator was Stetson Kennedy
William Stetson Kennedy (October 5, 1916 – August 27, 2011) was an American author, folklorist and human rights activist. One of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the 20th century, he is remembered for having infiltrated t ...
, whose later book ''I Rode With The Ku Klux Klan'' (1954) covered the activities of the Klavalier Klub. The Klub was an elite squad of Klansmen devoted to flogging campaigns, active within Georgia itself. By 1949, following the revelations to the public, the Klan's name had become synonymous with terrorism and violence. But this reputation failed to discourage people from seeking membership. In the summer of 1949, shortly before his death, Green himself presided in a major initiation ceremony. About 700 members joined in a single day.
Meanwhile, Green led the Klan in renewing its political activities. He was active in the 1948 Georgia gubernatorial special election, reportedly serving as an aide-de-camp to candidate Herman Talmadge
Herman Eugene Talmadge (August 9, 1913 – March 21, 2002) was an American politician who served as governor of Georgia in 1947 and from 1948 to 1955 and as a U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1957 to 1981. Talmadge, a Democrat, served during a tim ...
. Talmadge was seen as the Klan's candidate for the office. When he did win the election, the Klan took credit for it. According to
Stetson Kennedy, Talmadge had promised the Klan "a free hand in any racial rioting".
He was elected Imperial Wizard
The Grand Wizard (later the Grand and Imperial Wizard simplified as the Imperial Wizard and eventually, the National Director) referred to the national leader of several different Ku Klux Klan organizations in the United States and abroad.
The ti ...
two weeks before his death from a heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...
in Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital city, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georgia, Fulton County, the mos ...
on 18 August 1949. He died in the rose garden of his home. His death weakened the Klan by further splintering its leadership. He was replaced by Samuel Roper
Samuel Roper (died 1658) was an English antiquary.
Life
He was the eldest son of Thomas Roper of Heanor, Derbyshire, by his second wife, Anne, daughter and co-heir of Alvered Gresbrooke of Middleton, Warwickshire. Roper claimed ancestry going ...
.
1949 Exhibition Baseball Games
After the Brooklyn Dodgers
The Brooklyn Dodgers were a Major League Baseball team founded in 1884 as a member of the American Association (19th century), American Association before joining the National League in 1890. They remained in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the ...
announced in January that their exhibition games would be in Macon and Atlanta, Green stated "there is no law against the game. But we have an unwritten law in the South – the Jim Crow law
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
." His statements were against the black players on the team. During the exhibition games, Green used the influence of Herman Talmadge
Herman Eugene Talmadge (August 9, 1913 – March 21, 2002) was an American politician who served as governor of Georgia in 1947 and from 1948 to 1955 and as a U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1957 to 1981. Talmadge, a Democrat, served during a tim ...
to try and ban Dodgers players Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line ...
and Roy Campanella
Roy Campanella (November 19, 1921 – June 26, 1993), nicknamed "Campy", was an American baseball player, primarily as a catcher. The Philadelphia native played in the Negro leagues and Mexican League for nine years before entering the minor lea ...
.
Organizations
During his command, the Ku Klux Klan infiltrated and controlled the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) is the state bureau of investigation of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is an independent, statewide agency that provides assistance to Georgia's criminal justice system in the areas of criminal investiga ...
. Green's successor Samuel Roper
Samuel Roper (died 1658) was an English antiquary.
Life
He was the eldest son of Thomas Roper of Heanor, Derbyshire, by his second wife, Anne, daughter and co-heir of Alvered Gresbrooke of Middleton, Warwickshire. Roper claimed ancestry going ...
was the second director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Green also made alliances with the Atlanta Police Department
The Atlanta Police Department (APD) is a law enforcement agency in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
The city shifted from its rural-based Marshal and Deputy Marshal model at the end of the 19th century. In 1873, the department was formed with 2 ...
and Atlanta taxi drivers.
References
Sources
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Samuel (Ku Klux Klan)
1889 births
1949 deaths
Activists from Atlanta
Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragons
Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan
Anti-Catholic activists
American obstetricians
Ku Klux Klan in Georgia (U.S. state)
Physicians from Georgia (U.S. state)