The Keys to the Jail

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Over half of all victims of lynching in Texas were taken out of the custody of law enforcement. Linda Gordon argues that this and the broader success of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was due to its pseudo-legal status. This could have only been provided by the involvement of the legal system itself in the work of the Klan, as Sheriffs and Deputies alike would have otherwise felt the calling to raid meetings. While secrecy may have intensified membership in the Invisible Empire, local Klan “klonklaves” were advertised in the newspaper in Denton beginning in January 1924.

In Oklahoma, law enforcement officers occasionally handed suspects over to the Klan for violent extralegal punishment. Sometimes, those law enforcement officers “even participated in the beatings.” Less public, Denton County officials appear to have signaled to the Klan when action was requested but distance required on the part of the Sheriff’s Department. The morning of accused rapist George Smith’s disappearance, the Denton Record-Chronicle printed a one-line statement that said “Sheriff Goode and his officers are overworked.”

Membership on the District Court’s Grand Jury was both public and semi-regular for some citizens. Former law enforcement officers were frequently selected and would serve in a non-consecutive rotating semi-pattern. “In Oklahoma, and perhaps in elsewhere too, Klan membership was automatically suspended for any man called for jury duty, so that he could deny it and not be excluded for bias” argues Linda Gordon. 

A Klan advertisement in the Beaumont Enterprise read “The law of the Klan is JUSTICE” -- a term also painted on the side of the makeshift platform used for the live incineration of Henry Smith. As such, the Klan often acted as the investigative body of local Sheriff’s Departments. Erwin J. Clark testified in 1924 that the Ku Klux Klan had an organized system of espionage where members were assigned people to watch. All Mexican and African Americans were watched in addition to any other white Americans who were considered of poor moral character. This was the work of the Klokann. “If we had a report about a man’s immoral conduct we would select one of his neighbors, someone who knew him well, and we would authorize this party to watch him from day to day and night to night and render reports...If we wanted telephone conversations, why we got them; or anything else of that nature.” 

The Governor of Arkansas became so overwhelmed with the actions of the Ku Klux Klan in 1922 that he petitioned the Department of Justice for help. J. Edgar Hoover contemporaneously reported, “The Governor has been unable to use either the mails, telegraph, or telephone because of interference by the Klan” and that, “local authorities are absolutely inactive.” In Houston, Klansmen tapped telephone wires, intercepted telegraphs, and spied at the post office. This information was then transmitted to the Sheriff’s Department who would respond through capturing the offender and placing them into custody. It was from this very custody that the accused were taken by the Klan under the cover of masks and darkness. 

Police forces were active participants in the Ku Klux Klan. “Take Dallas County as an instance,” opined anti-Klan gubernatorial candidate Henry Warner on July 19, 1922, “Sixty-three outrages committed and only one case brought into court. And then it was the prosecuting witness who was tried. Or Harris County, where a great number of outrages have been perpetrated; Jefferson, Hardin, Liberty, Chambers, Angelina, Harrison, McLennan, and half a hundred others the tale is the same. In Travis County, Peeler Clayton was shot to death near the Klan hall. Every effort has been made to ascertain his slayers and there is today no information to be had by the grand jury, despite the strenuous effort of the District Judge and the District Attorney and the Grand Jurors. I cite you these facts as a reason why the courts were first captured by the Klan.” 

Not only were law enforcement officials an essential component of extralegal justice and, the majority of victims of lynching in Texas taken directly from the custody of the police, but the Sheriff’s Department in Denton County coordinated directly with the Ku Klux Klan as early as the summer of 1921. Deputy Sheriff J. W. Fox was visited at home by members of Klavern 136 in August 1921 who encouraged the Sheriff’s Department to “clean up the whiskey situation” in the eastern portion of Denton County and supplied the deputy with information about alleged prohibition violators. The Klansmen indicated if Deputy Fox did not act on the information shared, the Klan would take actionact and their response would be far less “mild.” The men met again a few days later after Fox arrested a father and son in the eastern part of the county on prohibition charges; within days, two more raids were conducted in the same spot. 

The significance of this marriage between violent ideology and the justice system in Denton County became apparent in October 1921. Gus Fowler, a Black man who lived a few miles south of Pilot Point in the eastern portion of Denton County, received a letter from the Ku Klux Klan on Friday, October 7, 1921. The letter warned Fowler not to continue his pattern of Saturday night parties and that he “better watch [his] conduct.” The letter was signed “K.K.K.” and stated that Fowler would only get one warning. Deputy Sheriff J. W. Fox publicly denied any knowledge of the letter or its contents and Fowler canceled his party for Saturday night.

The following Friday, students dressed as Klansmen, calling themselves the “Keen Kollege Klan,” marched across the campus of North Texas State Normal College in Denton. On Monday, December 19, 1921, 330 hooded Klansmen marched in the streets of Denton from Robert E. Lee High School, where they put on their regalia, to the courthouse square where Mayor H. V. Hennan addressed the crowd of hooded attendees. Several thousand people watched the procession as Klansmen carried a burning cross and a sign that said “Denton Klan, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” This was the first official action of Klavern 136.