Veiled Meaning of a Love of the Law
When the formation of the Washington State Ku Klux Klan was announced in Spokane on July 3rd, 1921, the announcement was coupled with the stated aims of the Klan. alongside stated goals of white supremacy and defending “pure womanhood,” the Klan preached a peculiar tenant of “Preventing the causes of mob violence and lynchings”. Additionally, the Klan pledged to stop fires and destruction of property at the hands of lawless elements. These pledges are in line with a common Klan theme of self-described love for the law and law enforcement. Often times, the Klan’s affinity for strong enforcement of the law was juxtaposed with vigilante justice at the hands of Klansmen across the country. While especially in the Spokane region, the Klan was largely nonviolent, Klan violence across the nation regularly made headlines and would have occupied a place in the consciousness of the informed reader.
With a lawless tendency in the Klan, one might at first glance assume they would have little to say about law enforcement. Looking deeper into an understanding of what the law represents in the racial hierarchy of America yields a clearer view. The Klan understood the United States as a country for White Protestants. This is who they understood to be true Americans. The constitution and all lower laws were thus means of shaping America and creating a country for their definition of Americans. While today, politicians preach law and order platforms under the mask of creating an ordered society for all, in the 1920s, the Klan was explicit about the purpose of law and law enforcement being to uphold the values and rules of white America. Subsequently, those who did not fit their mythical norm were to be assimilated through law. In an age where these views unmasked were far from controversial, the Klan praised laws they found in line with their own conservative values such as prohibition. Thus, they supported strict law enforcement of these laws that would create their vision of America. Their support was behind a broad enforcement of societal morals. A criticism of the Klan notably stated that they attempted to make unlawfulness synonymous with sinfulness—enacting strict punishments on those who broke the law with a disregard to their own lawless ness in this nature.
The Klan’s stand against mob violence and lynching would at first glance be something one would find little issue with. The tenant becomes much more chilling under examination of their specific opposition to the causes of this violence. Under an ideology of white supremacy, the causes of mob violence are a break from an established hierarchy. The Klan wanting to prevent lynching while at the same time having members as the driving force behind many lynchings means that their solution to the horror of racial violence was an accepted inferiority of those not in the ruling class. A love of law helped to serve this vision of the future as the laws passed had the potential to shape society into the Klan’s vision. As it means in political rhetoric today, law and order meant the oppressed staying in line.