Edward Young Clarke | |
|---|---|
 In his office, 1922 | |
| Born | 1877 |
| Parent | E. Y. Clarke Sr. |
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 Publishing, a book publishing company.
Edward Young Clarke was born in Georgia according to census records. He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, as his mother, Elnora Harrison Clarke, and his father, Colonel Edward Y. Clarke Sr. were both longtime citizens of the city. His father was the owner of The Atlanta Constitution newspaper from 1870 to 1876, whose managing editor was his brother, Francis Clarke.
In the early 20th century, Clarke joined the Ku Klux Klan, which had been reborn in Atlanta. He then served as the Imperial Wizard pro tempore of the Ku Klux Klan from 1915 to 1922. [1] He devised the "kluxing" system of payments to the hierarchy within the Klan. [1] [2] Along with Elizabeth Tyler, he helped to turn the initially anemic second Ku Klux Klan into a mass-membership organization with a broader social agenda.
In March 1924, he pleaded guilty to violating the Mann Act, after being arrested for a violent attack against a young woman who worked for him. Clarke was spared prison, but fined $5,000. [3] [4] In 1940, he was arrested in Chicago for failing to pay a $600 hotel bill, cashing a $76 worthless check, and the failing to repay $600 he borrowed from a Chicago woman. [5]
He was the President of Monarch Publishing, a book publishing company. [6] In 1939, he published the novel The Flaming Sword by Thomas Dixon Jr. [6]
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of an American Protestant-led Christian extremist, white supremacist, far-right hate group. Various historians have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist group. There have been three distinct iterations with various targets relative to time and place, including African Americans, Jews, and Catholics.
David Curtis "Steve" Stephenson was an American Ku Klux Klan leader, convicted rapist and murderer. In 1923 he was appointed Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan and head of Klan recruiting for seven other states. Later that year, he led those groups to independence from the national KKK organization. Amassing wealth and political power in Indiana politics, he was one of the most prominent national Klan leaders. He had close relationships with numerous Indiana politicians, especially Governor Edward L. Jackson.
The grand wizard is the national leader of Ku Klux Klan organizations in the United States and abroad.
William Joseph Simmons was an American preacher and fraternal organizer who founded and led the second Ku Klux Klan from Thanksgiving evening 1915 until being ousted in 1922 by Hiram Wesley Evans.
James Arnold Colescott 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 disbanded the second wave of the original Ku Klux Klan in 1944.
This is a partial list of notable historical figures in U.S. national politics who were members of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan, or was supported at the polls by Klan members.
Hiram Wesley Evans was an American dentist and political activist who served as the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, an American white supremacist group, from 1922 to his resignation in 1939.
Edward Clarke may refer to:
The national leader of the Ku Klux Klan is called either a Grand Wizard or an Imperial Wizard, depending on which KKK organization is being described.
The Indiana Klan was the state of Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society in the United States that organized in 1915 to promote ideas of racial superiority and affect public affairs on issues of Prohibition, education, political corruption, and morality. Like the rest of the KKK, it was strongly white supremacist against African Americans, Chinese Americans, and also Catholics and Jews, whose faiths were commonly associated with Irish, Italian, Balkan, and Slavic immigrants and their descendants. In Indiana, the Klan did not tend to practice overt violence but used intimidation in certain cases, whereas nationally the organization practiced illegal acts against minority ethnic and religious groups.
Samuel Green was a Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1940s, organizing its third and final reformation in 1946.
Alton Milford Young was the Grand or Imperial Kaliff and the Imperial Kludd of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey. The Imperial Kludd is the chaplain of the Imperial Klonvokation and he performs "such other duties as may be required by the Imperial Wizard." The Imperial Kaliff is the second highest position after the Imperial Wizard.
The Ku Klux Klan has had a history in the U.S. state of New Jersey since the early part of the 1920s. The Klan was active in the areas of Trenton and Camden and it also had a presence in several of the state's northern counties in the 1920s. It had the most members in Monmouth County, and operated a resort in Wall Township.
The New York World's exposé of the Ku Klux Klan brought national media to the operations and actions of the Ku Klux Klan beginning on September 6, 1921. The newspaper published a series of twenty one consecutive daily articles, edited by Herbert Bayard Swope, that discussed numerous aspects of Ku Klux Klan including rituals, recruitment methods, propaganda, and hypocrisies in logic. At least eighteen other newspapers nationwide picked up the coverage, which led to national discourse on the activities of the group. These publications included the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Boston Globe, Pittsburgh Sun, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), New Orleans Times-Picayune, Galveston News, Houston Chronicle, Seattle Times, Milwaukee Journal, Minneapolis Journal, Oklahoma City Oklahoman, Toledo Blade, Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, Syracuse Herald, Columbus Enquirer-Sun and the Albany Knickerbocker Press. The New York Times ran ads for the article series to increase exposure, while other large papers like the Baltimore Sun quickly picked up the article series instead of advertising for The World. The Ku Klux Klan announced shortly afterward that it would take legal action against all the publications that ran the article series for libel, seeking total damages of over $10 million. Following the exposé, Klan membership significantly increased.
Samuel W. Roper was an American law enforcement official and Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
Mary Elizabeth Tyler 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 second Ku Klux Klan into a mass-membership organization with a broader social agenda. They also worked with the Anti-Saloon League during the same period.
The U.S. Klans, officially, the U.S. Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. was the dominant Ku Klux Klan in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The death of its leader in 1960, along with increased factionalism, splits and competition from other groups led to its decline by the mid-to-late 1960s.
The Association of Georgia Klans, also known as the Associated Klans of Georgia, was a Klan faction organized by Samuel Green in 1944, and led by him until his death in 1949. At its height the organization had klaverns in each of Georgia's 159 counties, as well as klaverns in Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida. It also had connections with klaverns and kleagles in Ohio and Indiana. After Green's death, however, the organization foundered as it split into different factions, was hit with a tax lien and was beset by adverse publicity. It was moribund by the time of the Supreme Court's "Black Monday" ruling in 1954. A second Association of Georgia Klans was formed when Charles Maddox led dissatisfied members out of the U.S. Klans in 1960. This group appears to have folded into James Venable's National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan by 1965. There is also a current Klan group by that name.
The Canadian branch of the Ku Klux Klan was an expansion of the second Ku Klux Klan established in the United States in 1915. It operated as a fraternity, with chapters established in parts of Canada throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The first registered provincial chapter was registered in Toronto in 1925 by two Americans and a Canadian. The organization was most successful in Saskatchewan, where it briefly influenced political activity and where its membership included a member of Parliament, Walter Davy Cowan.
Roy Elonzo Davis was an American preacher, white supremacist, and con artist who co-founded the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. Davis was Second Degree of the KKK under William J. Simmons and later became National Imperial Wizard (leader) of the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He worked closely with Simmons, and was a co-author of the 1921 KKK constitution, bylaws and rituals. Davis spent decades as a KKK recruiter, at one point being named "Royal Ambassador" and an "Official Spokesperson" of the KKK by Simmons. Davis and Simmons were both expelled from the KKK in 1923 by Hiram Wesley Evans, who had ousted Simmons as leader. Simmons started the Knights of the Flaming Sword branch of the KKK and with Davis's help retained the loyalty of many KKK members. Davis was later reappointed second in command of the national KKK organization by Imperial Wizard Eldon Edwards, a position he held until being elected national leader by 1959.
Edward Young Clarke, Imperial Wizard protem, of the Knights Ku Klux Klan and virtual dictator of the order for several years, has just announced his withdrawal from all official connection with the Klan. From November 10 he will be merely a member.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)Eighty years ago, in mid March 1924, Edward Young Clarke, an advertising executive in the state of Louisiana, pled guilty in federal court to violating the Mann Act (an anti-prostitution measure enacted in 1910). The fact that he had been caught taking his mistress across state lines, however, was just the tip of this federal case.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
