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BIRDS 9/6/2014 8:02:08 AM
My good wife reminded me yesterday that I had met and interviewed her in her dressing room at the Town and Country Dinner Theater many years ago — the comedienne/chanteuse Joan Rivers. She had passed away a couple days ago, and I had completely forgotten about her.
I was more concerned that the CBS newsman, Bruce Morton, died Friday of cancer. He was 83 and retired; he reported mainly on the Vietnam War, and the King and Kennedy assassinations and had a closet full of Emmy Awards.
Tiffany Colman, one my therapists, was here working on my hand when Chris reminded me. A column about Joan Rivers will appear on Wednesday.
BIRDS
Because the city of Atlanta (not yet the capitol of Georgia) rose from the ashes of the Civil War, its devastation thanks mainly to General Sherman, it’s often called by the very ‘old timers’ as the City of ‘Phoenix’, (It has no more to do with Arizona than I with F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
Yet, this Southern city of less than 2,500 population has over the decades since become a thriving metro-populace of nearly 600,000 people, and the home of countless American companies — such as Delta Airlines and the CDC, Dr. Alan Freeman, Emory Hospital and the Home Depot — and many, many more.
It was not always such. Atlanta began in 1915 as the home of the KKK. (The first organized Klan after the Civil War, in 1870 was in Pulaski, TN. More on that later.)
Starting in 1921, the KKK adopted a modern business system of recruiting (which paid most of the initiation fees and costume charges as commissions to the organizers). It was then that Setson Kennedy, the writer. decided to phone them and join up.
But he hated the organization with it‘s rapid growth at a time of prosperity, the social tensions of urban industrialization and vastly increased immigration at the time, its membership having abundant growth most rapidly in cities, and its spread out of the South, going primarily into the Midwest and West.
Kennedy further hated the second KKK because it preached ‘One Hundred Percent Americanism’ and demanded the cleaning up of its politics and its calling for strict morality and better enforcement of prohibition (of all things!).
But its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti-Catholic doctrine as its appeal, directed exclusively at white Protestants. This was more than Stetson Kennedy, a Catholic, could tolerate.
So, Kennedy went to Stone Mountain. GA. about ten miles from the square in downtown Atlanta. Stone Mt. is an outcropping of granite, about five miles in circumference and over a thousand foot elevation. It is the site of many ‘cross burnings’ and the home of the Atlanta KKK.
Kennedy went there for his training and his iniation. He was there also for information that traitors and ‘big-mouths’ would be dealt with swiftly by hanging!
This was very unnerving, but Kennedy, to his credit, kept his cool and the authorities believed him — all the while, he gathered data on them, and finally blew the well-informed whistle on the Klan.
Recruitment immediately dried up and the Atlanta branch was, for all intentions, out of business. And no one ever thought Stetson Kennedy was the cause!
At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed ils membership included about 15% of the nation's eligible population — approximately 4 to 5 million men.
The first Klan was founded in 1865 by six veterans of the Confederate Army. The name was probably derived from the Greek word kuklos, which means circle, suggesting a band of brothers.
However, Kennedy was not satisfied. He felt we need a ‘national hero’ to defeat the KKK, once and for all. He remembered his twelve year old nephew had once suggested the super-being Superman as that logical person.
His next call was to the producers at WOR in New York to propose a story where the superhero battles the Klan, looking for new villains. The producers eagerly agreed, mainly because Stetson Kennedy was such a well-known writer who knew what he was talkin about. To that end, he provided information — including secret code words and details of Klan rituals.
The result was a series named “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” in which Superman took on the Klan.
Kennedy intended to strip away the Klan's mystique, and the absurd trivialization of the Klan's rituals and code words was perceived to have a negative impact on their recruiting and membership. The program was begun in 1940, and it lasted 25 episodes.
According to reports crossing my desk, Klan leaders denounced the show and called for an economic boycott of Kellogg, the sponsor’s products. However, the story earned such spectacular ratings that the food company, to its everlasting credit, stood by its support of the show.
With the voice of Bud Collyer as his side kick. Stetson Kennedy and ‘the man of steel’ took on the KKK.
“It’s a BIRD! No, a PLANE! NO — it’s SUPERMAN!“
“FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET! MORE POWERFUL THAN A LOCOMOTIVE! ABLE TO LEAP TALL BUILDINGS IN A SINGLE BOUND!” S U P E R M A N ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
