Southern Publicity Association
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The Southern Publicity Association was a fund-raising agency whose clients included the
Anti-Saloon League The Anti-Saloon League (now known as the ''American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems'') is an organization of the temperance movement that lobbied for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. Founded in 1893 in Ober ...
, the Ku Klux Klan, the
Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and ...
. The firm was owned and operated by
Edward Young Clarke Edward Young Clarke was the Imperial Wizard '' pro tempore'' of the Ku Klux Klan from 1915 to 1922. Prior to his Klan activities, Clarke headed the Atlanta-based Southern Publicity Association. He later served as the president of Monarch Publis ...
and
Mary Elizabeth Tyler Mary Elizabeth Tyler (July 10, 1881 – September 10, 1924) was an Atlanta public-relations professional who, along with Edward Young Clarke, founded the Southern Publicity Association. Their organization helped to turn the initially anemic seco ...
. While working with the Klan during its resurgence in the 1920s, the agency was paid for signing up members. They organized recruiters on the national level who were also paid a commission. Their Klan recruitment operation was largely successful in the Southern United States.


Background

Founding member Elizabeth Tyler was the first major female Klan leader of the 1920s and Edward Clarke had previous experience with fraternal organizations, having previously worked with the Woodmen of the World. Tyler herself was a member of the Daughters of America, which was a female organization associated with the Junior Order of United American Mechanics (an
anti-Catholic 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 ...
fraternal organization). When Tyler and Clarke first met, Clarke was a festival organizer in the American South. They met when they were both involved in the "great Harvest Festival" in Atlanta,Georgia. Together they created the Southern Publicity Association. During the early years of the Association, they worked with low-revenue generating clients like the
Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and ...
, the Salvation Army and the
YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams (philanthropist), Georg ...
.


Ku Klux Klan

They entered into a contract with
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 Si ...
, agreeing to recruit members for the Klan in exchange for a percentage of the $10 initiation fee. Within six months they had recruited 85,000 new members for the Klan. They accomplished this by expanding the Klan's traditional Reconstruction era hatred of blacks. During this period of the Klan's second resurgence, under the guidance of the Southern Publicity Association, the Klan targeted Catholics,
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, nonwhites,
Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
and immigrants. Paid organizers, called Kleagles would identify sources of conflict for native-born White Protestants on the community level, and target those groups in their recruitment campaigns. Tyler has said that the Association was first put in touch with Simmons after her son-in-law joined the Klan. She has said:
We found Colonel Simmons was having a hard time
etting Etting (; ; Lorraine Franconian: ''Ettinge'') is a commune in the Moselle department of the Grand Est administrative region in north-eastern France. The village belongs to the Pays de Bitche. See also * Communes of the Moselle department The ...
along. He couldn't pay his rent. The receipts were not sufficient to take care of his personal needs. He was a minister and a clean living and thinking man, and he was heart and soul for the success of the Ku Klux Klan. After we had investigated it from every angle, we decided to go into it with Colonel Simmons and give it the impetus that it could best get from publicity.
Their campaign to promote the Klan emphasized anti-Catholiscm and "one hundred percent Americanism". They promoted the Klan's image of guarding socially conservative values by advertising Klan opposition to bootlegging, gambling, drugs, sexual liberty, Sabbath violation, non-traditional gender roles and "virtually anything and everything that might be deemed morally scandalous."


Other Clients

*The
Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
Memorial Association, who sued Clarke alleging that he had embezzled $1,000 and claiming another $4,000 was unaccounted for *The Armenian Relief Fund


Notes


References

* * * *{{Cite book, last=Flora , first=Joseph , title = The Companion to Southern Literature, date=2002 , publisher=Louisiana State University Press , isbn=9780807126929 , url = https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780807126929, url-access=registration Ku Klux Klan Prohibition in the United States Fundraising