Rising Tide. Part 8

The Klan had reserved the courthouse for March 1, 1922. That evening the crowd, not knowing who was friend or enemy, seethed inside the ma.s.sive Victorian building. The black neighborhood, the black brothels for the white men, the juke joints, the pool halls, were within a few blocks, but no blacks were in view. Percy called for the county sheriff to chair the meeting. The sheriff said simply, "Colonel Camp will now address you."

Tall and angular, with square sharp shoulders, Camp had a riveting energy. He pumped his arms, pounded fist against lectern, strode the length of the platform and back, preaching pride: Pride in America! Pride in Mississippi! Pride in the white race! Then he began to preach hate. Who killed Garfield and McKinley? A Catholic A Catholic. Who had bought land opposite West Point as well as in Washington? The Pope The Pope. Jews were organized! Catholics were organized! n.i.g.g.e.rs were organized! The only people in America who weren't organized were the Anglo-Saxons the Anglo-Saxons! Debauchery, lechery, drinking, horrors that he hardly dare speak of were going on right here in Washington County. G.o.d G.o.d wanted it to stop. wanted it to stop. The Klan The Klan would stop it. They were a million strong, and growing stronger every day. would stop it. They were a million strong, and growing stronger every day.

Camp finished in an uproar. Many clapped and shouted for him. Others broke into a loud chant: "Percy!" "Percy!" "Percy!"

Camp had given hundreds of speeches, recruited thousands of men. Never before had any man answered him.

Percy did. He spoke for an hour, mixing logic and sarcasm. His message was simple. They were a community whose members loved one another. He smiled with sarcasm and held out his hands to "this eminent orator, this colonel colonel, under what flag he won his t.i.tle or what battlefield he trod we know not." He spoke of his Jewish partner and snorted that Camp was right, "There are times I think he needs straightening out." Listeners laughed. This Jew had loaned Gentiles in the county $150,000 at less than half the market interest rates. "Don't you know that Jew ought to be regulated." He was "alarmed" about "this Catholic encroachment on our Government.... Do you know that after ten years of domination by that grand hierarchy of the Church...they have managed to get hold of our city government?...They have got Boots, as constable.... Took them ten years to get this far. Where will a hundred years take them?"

Still, his concern was not "this war on Catholics and Jews.... They can take care of themselves. But I know the terror this organization embodies for our negro population and I am here to plead against it.... The shifting of the population from the South to the North-you cannot stop that trend. It is going on as the result of industrial call to better opportunity. You cannot stop it, but you can expedite it. Instead of making it a matter of 35 years or 50 years, during which the South can readjust itself, you can make it an exodus within a year.... You can make three parades in the county of Washington of your Ku Klux Klan and never say another word and you can start the gra.s.s growing in the streets of Greenville."

He concluded angrily, denouncing this "gang of spies and inquisitors," then pleading: "Friends, let this Klan go somewhere else where it will not do the harm that it will in this community. Let them sow dissension in some community less united than is ours. Let this order go somewhere else if there is any place it can do any good. It can do no good here."

Dr. J. D. Smythe, officer of a bank on whose board Percy served, seized the moment. He rose and offered a resolution that he and Percy had drafted: "Be it resolved by the citizens of Washington County, Mississippi, in ma.s.s meeting a.s.sembled, that we do hereby condemn that organization called by itself the Ku Klux Klan, but having no connection with the real Ku Klux Klan, which, having served its usefulness, was dissolved many years ago.... Its impertinent a.s.sumption of the right to judge the private life of American citizens...is against the spirit of free inst.i.tutions and the traditions and laws of our country, and is unAmerican."

With a loud roar, by voice vote the resolution pa.s.sed. Camp was shaken and asked for protection. With elaborate courtesy an Irish Catholic policeman escorted him back to the Cowan Hotel.

PERCY'S SPEECH was reprinted in newspapers from New York to Houston. Leading Greenville blacks signed a letter to him reading: "If we had Mr. Percy in every county of the state there would be no Klan and the less fortune [ was reprinted in newspapers from New York to Houston. Leading Greenville blacks signed a letter to him reading: "If we had Mr. Percy in every county of the state there would be no Klan and the less fortune [sic] people would not be terrorized.... The colored people will feel much safer and more willing to live here and go on in trying to develop this our state of Mississippi." The Knights of Columbus distributed thousands of copies of the speech. Ellery Sedgwick, the Atlantic Monthly Atlantic Monthly editor who had visited Greenville as a guest of LeRoy and Will, ran it as an article. Letters of praise and requests to speak poured in from around the country. Percy always declined, telling those who invited him that it would have "much stronger effect" for a "local man to reply." editor who had visited Greenville as a guest of LeRoy and Will, ran it as an article. Letters of praise and requests to speak poured in from around the country. Percy always declined, telling those who invited him that it would have "much stronger effect" for a "local man to reply."

But Percy knew his fight had not ended. Preparing for an extended struggle, he contacted three newspaper clipping services for information on the Klan. And he seemed to consider the fight a last stand of his cla.s.s. To a friend he confided, "The eagerness with which...this Ku Klux Klan folly is received in the South...is a reflection of the fading away of the old aristocracy of the South, which with its many faults and weaknesses is yet far and away the best thing the South has yet produced. In the olden days as gentlemen we were something of a success. In the latter days as money seekers we are sorrowful figures in the compet.i.tion with the more highly trained brains of the East and the more virile and unscrupulous products of the West.... [H]e is an optimist indeed who today can name the day or point the way" to the disappearance of the Klan.

Indeed, the night after being humiliated by Percy, Camp had spoken in Bolivar County, just upriver from Greenville, and announced that the Knights of Columbus had paid Percy, whose wife was a Catholic whose wife was a Catholic, $1,000 to confront him. Two weeks later the Leland Enterprise Leland Enterprise, located in the Klan's Washington County stronghold, published a letter from the Klan: "To all Flag and Liberty Loving, Law Abiding Citizens: In the name of our venerated dead,...We are going to make this a place in which you will be glad to rear your children.... To bootleggers, gamblers, and all other law-breakers, We are making an appeal at this time to clean up.... There are married men in this town who are not treating their wives right, we know who you are,...change your way.... To the boys who take girls out automobile riding, and park their cars by the roadside: Had you ever thought that what you do, some other boy is ent.i.tled to do with your sister?...To the Negroes: We are your best friend, but we wish you to do right...We have our eyes on you, and we are many; we are everywhere.... Dated this the Deadly Day, of the Wailing Week, of the Sorrowful Month.... Yours for a better country, Knights of the K.K.K."

THE TOWN OF M MER R ROUGE lay a little more than 60 miles south of Greenville, across the Mississippi River in northeastern Louisiana. Less than 10 miles from it was the town of Bastrop. Both towns were in Morehouse Parish (in Louisiana, counties are called parishes), but the hostility between them was palpable. Mer Rouge had the same alluvial soil as Greenville, and it was home to planters who traveled, gambled, wh.o.r.ed with black women, mocked Prohibition, mocked the Baptists, and mocked the Klan. But political power in the parish had already shifted from the planters to populists; the parish was in the part of Louisiana that served as the base for Huey Long, then a rising politician. lay a little more than 60 miles south of Greenville, across the Mississippi River in northeastern Louisiana. Less than 10 miles from it was the town of Bastrop. Both towns were in Morehouse Parish (in Louisiana, counties are called parishes), but the hostility between them was palpable. Mer Rouge had the same alluvial soil as Greenville, and it was home to planters who traveled, gambled, wh.o.r.ed with black women, mocked Prohibition, mocked the Baptists, and mocked the Klan. But political power in the parish had already shifted from the planters to populists; the parish was in the part of Louisiana that served as the base for Huey Long, then a rising politician.

Bastrop sat beyond a ridge that was just high enough-about 15 feet-to contain the river's floods and thus prevent the deposit of lush soil. The town epitomized the industrial New South, with gritty mills, poor whites who had been forced off the land, and a narrow-minded middle cla.s.s. The Klan did not so much take over Bastrop as embody it, and J. K. Skipwith, the local Exalted Cyclops, was a former Bastrop mayor. Since 1889, on a per capita basis, more lynchings had occurred in Morehouse Parish than in any other county in the United States. One mob had bound a black man's hands and legs and placed him inside the body of a dead cow with only his head sticking out, so he would die slowly while insects and birds were attracted to the moisture of his eyes, mouth, and nostrils, and crawled in his ears.

The Bastrop Klan specifically warned the sons of two Mer Rouge planters, Watt Daniel and Thomas Richards, to stop drinking and whoring, especially with black women. Daniel and Richards replied by publicly mocking the Klan.

On August 24, 1922, a baseball game and barbecue in Bastrop drew 4,000 celebrants. The Klan set up a roadblock and backed cars up for one and a half miles looking for the two men. They were found in a car with three others. All five were flogged. Three were released. Daniel and Richards never returned. John Parker was governor.

Their wives begged Governor Parker to investigate. He tried, but the parish sheriff insisted the men were alive. Parker asked for federal a.s.sistance from U.S. Attorney General Harry Daugherty, a political hack. (He was Harding's campaign manager and in February 1920 had predicted that the Republican National Convention would deadlock, and that party leaders would meet in a "smoke-filled room" in the middle of the night to choose Harding; his prediction came true and his phrase entered the language.) Daugherty would resign amid scandal a year later and had no interest in involving the White House in the Klan issue. He refused aid unless Parker formally declared that he had lost control of the state.

Parker was prideful. A few months earlier the Mississippi River had flooded a million acres of Louisiana and left 40,000 people homeless. The entire Louisiana congressional delegation had pleaded with him to ask for federal aid, or at least help from the national Red Cross. He had refused to do either, stating, "Louisiana has issued no call for help and will not."

Yet now Parker humbled himself and did as Daugherty required. He also vowed "a fight to the finish [against the Klan].... It is now my solemn duty to whip them.... When we have in Louisiana an outside organization seeking to control this state politically, seeking to be prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner in one, seeking to take the place of const.i.tuted law, then I tell you that it's inc.u.mbent on your executive, if he is a man, to stamp that organization out."

Justice Department investigators found evidence of murder, along with proof that parish law enforcement and court officers belonged to the Klan. Yet Daugherty refused to pursue the matter unless the Louisiana legislature pa.s.sed a resolution requesting it to do so, an impossibility. In November 1922, Parker went to Washington to plead personally for more help. He received none.

Meanwhile, the Louisiana Klan invited the press to a ma.s.s Klan initiation, erected wooden headstones on the lawn of the governor's mansion, and tied up Parker's dog. Their message: they could do anything.

Then two bodies were found in Lake Lafourche in Morehouse Parish. Each man had broken arm and leg bones; their hands and feet had been cut off or mashed off; each had had his p.e.n.i.s and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es cut off.

No convictions were ever obtained. And Skipwith, Bastrop's Exalted Cyclops, began campaigning across the river in Percy's Delta.

IN F FEBRUARY 1923, organizers of a ma.s.sive anti-Klan rally in Chicago invited Governor Parker and Percy to speak. Percy declined, but Parker, making it plain that a refusal would personally embarra.s.s him, wired Percy, "You have been extensively billed for a speech with me.... Will meet you at Blackstone Hotel. Don't fail." Percy could not refuse his old friend. But his speech fell flat and he never again spoke outside Washington County. 1923, organizers of a ma.s.sive anti-Klan rally in Chicago invited Governor Parker and Percy to speak. Percy declined, but Parker, making it plain that a refusal would personally embarra.s.s him, wired Percy, "You have been extensively billed for a speech with me.... Will meet you at Blackstone Hotel. Don't fail." Percy could not refuse his old friend. But his speech fell flat and he never again spoke outside Washington County.

Inside it he fought. The Klan's presence was threatening everything he had built in the Delta and every hope he had for it. He told his old colleague Jacob d.i.c.kinson: "I am intensely uneasy about the labor, uneasy for fear the negroes may not stay with us even to make this crop.... I regard the menace from the weevil, great as it once seemed, slight compared to the migration of the negroes from the South."

When a friend argued that confrontation strengthened the Klan and that, if unopposed, it would collapse of its own absurdity, Percy replied: "Nothing that is founded on pure absurdity can long survive, but...[i]t was unopposed in Indiana. It is said that it has 360,000 members there. It named the last United States Senator and all the state offices. It was unopposed in Oregon and swept the state. It has been unopposed, to come nearer home, in Bolivar, Coahoma, and Hinds counties. It has charge of all three counties.... It has been openly opposed in only two places in the United States: in Greenville and by John Parker in Louisiana."

And despite opposition, it had already infested Washington County. Ray Toombs, the county prosecutor, was the local Exalted Cyclops, and Klansmen occupied such county offices as superintendent of schools, circuit court clerk, chancery court clerk, supervisor of roads, tax a.s.sessor, two of the five-member Board of Supervisors, even county health officer. None had been elected as Klan candidates, but they now intended to sweep the county openly. Here, as across the country, the Klan was using techniques like the "decade," which required every Klansman to urge ten people to vote for the Klan candidate.

In March 1923 the Klan began holding election rallies around the county. Its target was Percy himself. "No man in the county ought to have a boss," one minister who supported the Klan told his congregation, "especially one who hasn't opened the Bible in ten years."

Percy, the banker and physician J. D. Smythe, and others organized the Washington County Protestant Committee of Fifty Opposed to the Ku Klux Klan. The committee excluded Catholics and claimed independence from Percy, declaring that he was not an officer of it, and stating that "Senator Percy has never written even one word of any article published by this committee."

The claims fooled no one. The power behind the group was Percy's. The force that drove the group was Percy's. The room it met in was in the same building as his law office, a few doors away. At an early meeting of the committee, Percy had listed five points all had to affirm. The final one: "All agree to stay and fight to the finish."

The Klan rallies continued. "The Big Cheese," Toombs called Percy at one in Leland, proclaiming, "The day of Kings has pa.s.sed."

TO REPLY, Percy announced a public meeting on April 23, 1923. It was hot the way only the Delta gets hot, but all day men and women poured into town in antic.i.p.ation, coming in cars, in wagons, on horses, on mules. They found business to do with cotton brokers and farm suppliers, or lined up at one of the soda fountains, or sinned in moderation by climbing the stairs of the Elks Hall to gamble on cards, or sinned greatly by visiting women.

Then they trooped to the People's Theater and stood impa.s.sively waiting, the crowd thickening past 2,000. The moment the doors opened, they filled the benches, crowded the aisles, pressed against the back railings. Some had come to see a show, some to listen and decide; some knew what they thought one way or the other and had brought guns. The conjoined elbows and knees and smoke and spit and sweat put the crowd in a foul mood. So did the alcohol: the sinners who drank it became more insolent; the prohibitionists who reviled it grew enraged at its proximity. By the time the meeting began, the crowd was surly, tense, explosive.

Percy took it over. He gave a speech full of love, and a warrior's speech. He stood dressed formally as always, stiff, solid, barrel-chested, implacable, the ferocity of his eyes his only sign of pa.s.sion. He declared, "The day of kings may have pa.s.sed, but the day when wizards will rule Washington County will never come!"

He spoke of unity, of decency, of fairness, of humanity. He reminded his listeners that a few years earlier when the blacks went to war, "We prayed to the same G.o.d that they might come back to us.... And then only one year ago when we fought the Mississippi River flood, we fought it united together. Now, can't you let us say to those negroes who want to stay with us that we never meant to hurt you, that we have taken this thing out of our midst and, standing here united, we pledge this as a safe place to live out your lives?"

In the heat, sweat shone on his face, making him seem brilliant and glistening as it reflected the electric lights. To those who wanted to allow the Klan to run its course, he warned: "When the mighty Mississippi River charges against these levees, if you don't fight it it will run its course, but behind that course it will leave devastated fields." From the stage, as if from a pulpit, he pointed out the Klan leaders, Toombs and others, and the crowd stared at them. But Percy did not d.a.m.n the Klansmen. He pleaded with them: "People know you, have honored you, you have lived with us, we have known you as friends. Is not there one among you who can say, 'I have made a mistake in going into it?'...Can't you come back and take part with us in the life of this community? I say to you, come back, come back and place us back where we were, come back to your father's house."

Then suddenly he turned hard, warning, "But if you won't, if 'Ephraim is joined to his idols,' I tell you we are going to clean you up from top to bottom."

He lashed the Klan as evil and absurd, sneering at the Klan's claim that the Mer Rouge murders were committed by Irish Catholics on the pope's order. Then he switched to mockery: "[Klansmen] are guilty of one grave defect. They are lacking in a sense of humor." The audience began to laugh and he had them. "You know humor is the saving grace of human life. It enables you to get a proper perspective, size things up in their true proportion." He mocked the Klan's leadership: two men were claiming to be Imperial Wizard and fighting over hundreds of thousands of dollars. He read a letter that the Klan claimed the pope had sent to the Knights of Columbus, challenging any Klansman present to say he believed the letter was real, scoffing, "They dare not do it because they know they will write themselves down as blithering idiots." He compared the Klan's t.i.tles to "some colored society...Genii, Grand Dragons, Hydras of Realms, Grand Goblins, Grand t.i.tans and Furies of Provinces, Giants, Exalted Cyclops and Terrors of Klantons.... And yet keeping a brother in black out of the order, the only person who can really enjoy it. Don't you know that no full grown white man ought to be allowed to indulge in that stuff?"

His audience was laughing, laughing. Then, finally, he denounced the Klan as spies, liars, cowards. And he announced, "If I've said anything untrue about the Klan, and there's a Klansman here with the courage of a red worm, he'll stand up and deny it."

Eyes flaming, Percy stared out at the crowd. It was silent. He was finished. The theater emptied.

PERCY CONTINUED to campaign relentlessly, gathering one vote at a time, leaning on people, leaning hard. He wrote Alfred Stone: "[A] letter from you to the Klan bunch might be of service.... No one could write such a letter with any hope of doing any good except yourself." Stone promptly published a pamphlet that began: "Senator Percy has no knowledge whatever of my purpose to make the following statement.... In fact, I am taking this step at the risk of offending him." to campaign relentlessly, gathering one vote at a time, leaning on people, leaning hard. He wrote Alfred Stone: "[A] letter from you to the Klan bunch might be of service.... No one could write such a letter with any hope of doing any good except yourself." Stone promptly published a pamphlet that began: "Senator Percy has no knowledge whatever of my purpose to make the following statement.... In fact, I am taking this step at the risk of offending him."

And over and over Percy condemned the Mer Rouge murder and Skipwith, who also continued to campaign in the Delta. One night in a rainstorm a man came to his door, claimed his car had broken down, and asked Percy to come help him. Despite having never seen him before, Percy was about to do so when several men, including the sheriff, arrived for a poker game. The visitor ran off.

Privately, Will Percy gave Toombs a message. Will had little in common with his father, though, even at thirty-seven years old, he still lived at home. Despite being his father's law partner, he had not yet made a mark in Greenville, and his father likely suspected he was h.o.m.os.e.xual. Yet they did share a ferocity, and now Will told Toombs: "If anything happens to my father or any of our friends, you will be killed. We won't hunt for the guilty party. So far as we will be concerned the guilty party will be you."

Meanwhile, LeRoy exploited the incident. In a letter to Toombs published in the Greenville paper and the Memphis Commercial-Appeal Memphis Commercial-Appeal, he accused the Klan of plotting "my personal injury or death.... You claim the Klan has eyes everywhere and knows everything and that its object is to cooperate with officers of the law. Will you cooperate with Sheriff Nicholson in the location of this man?"

Percy was wearing down the Klan. In Toombs' final pre-election statement even he, the Exalted Cyclops, implicitly repudiated the Klan himself by appealing for votes from his "friends among the Jews [and] Catholics" in the county.

Voter turnout was the largest in the county's history. Anti-Klan candidates won control of the Board of Supervisors, county offices, and the courts. But the margins were narrow-a single vote in one race-and Toombs was reelected. For county superintendent of education, a Klansman defeated E. E. Ba.s.s, who had made Greenville's schools the best in the state. Five candidates had run for sheriff; a runoff pitted Percy's candidate against a Klansman.

For three weeks the campaign, more intense than ever, continued. As the ballots were counted, a crowd gathered outside the courthouse, the same building where the confrontation had begun. People milled about, quiet and apprehensive. Percy sat in an office inside for a while, then chatted with supporters, then went home to play cards. At 9 P.M. P.M. a man rushed down the courthouse steps, bellowing, "We've won! We've won! G.o.d d.a.m.n the Klan!" a man rushed down the courthouse steps, bellowing, "We've won! We've won! G.o.d d.a.m.n the Klan!"

As Will recalled, "A tremendous uproar came to us from the street. We rushed out on the gallery. From curb to curb the street was filled with a mad marching crowd carrying torches and singing. They swarmed down the street and into our yard.... Father, nonplused...laughed, 'They don't seem to have any idea of going home and I haven't a drop of whiskey in the house-at least I'm not going to waste my good good liquor on them.'" liquor on them.'"

Despite Prohibition, "Adah and Charlie dashed off in their car and returned with four kegs. Father called to the crowd: 'Come on in, boys,' and into the house they poured. That was a party never to be forgotten.... Our Ku Klux neighbors stood on their porch watching-justified and prophesying Judgment Day."

FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY congratulations poured in upon Percy. One letter came from former President and then-Chief Justice William Howard Taft. He and Percy knew each other well, and with former Secretary of State Elihu Root were working together on a project for the American Bar a.s.sociation. Taft told him, "I mourn the fact that you are not in Washington continuing to represent your state, but the work you are doing at the place where it is to be done is perhaps more important." congratulations poured in upon Percy. One letter came from former President and then-Chief Justice William Howard Taft. He and Percy knew each other well, and with former Secretary of State Elihu Root were working together on a project for the American Bar a.s.sociation. Taft told him, "I mourn the fact that you are not in Washington continuing to represent your state, but the work you are doing at the place where it is to be done is perhaps more important."

Percy replied: "You can scarcely understand the sense of relief experienced by the people of this community as a result of the Klan defeat.... The amazing spread of it seems to be an indictment of democracy, but at best the maintenance of any form of government worthwhile means a constant struggle.... No cla.s.s of American citizenship can escape responsibility for the rise of the Klan, but no cla.s.s seems to have been more recreant to its duty as the protestant [sic] ministry. The repudiation of this sulking, cowardly, unAmerican, unChristian, organization as the champion [of] protestantism should have been instantaneous and wide spread and such a repudiation would have sounded its death knell...[but] the rank and file of the Baptist and Methodist ministry has either acquiesced in it or actively espoused it."

The Klan of the 1920s represented something frightening in America, frightening because it ran so close to the mainstream. Across the country, lawyers, doctors, and ministers-successful men, ambitious men, middle-cla.s.s men-supported the Klan.

The Klan's target was not really blacks. No politician was proclaiming racial equality. Even Calvin Coolidge, raised in Vermont, stated, "Biological laws shows us that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races." The Klan's target was change. Out of fear, the Klan enforced a populist conformity. In addition, as in Greenville, Klansmen generally tried to pry power out of the hands of the strongest and wealthiest men in a community, the men who had always run things. Percy was tired of fighting this battle. He even blocked plans to locate the new Delta State College, a normal school, in Greenville because he expected it to attract poor whites who would strengthen his enemies. Instead, in 1925 the school went to Cleveland, in neighboring Bolivar County.

In the larger sense, Percy sarcastically compared "the Klan virus" to "the good old days when [William Jennings] Bryan was the demagogue" and the Klan of the 1920s does fit uncomfortably close to America's populist tradition.

American populism has always been a complex phenomenon containing an ugly element, an element of exclusivity and divisiveness. It has always had an "us" against a "them." The "them" has often included not only an enemy above but also an enemy below. The enemy above was whoever was viewed as the boss, whether a man like Percy, or Wall Street, or Jews, or Washington; in the 1920s the enemy below was Catholics, immigrants, blacks, and political radicals.

The Klan continued to run strong nationally after Percy's rare victory over it. It was in 1924 that it elected the mayors of Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine. That same year Percy tried to address the 1924 state Democratic convention; after complex parliamentary maneuvers finally gained him recognition, the convention erupted in tumult and he was shouted down.

He turned his attention to "mak[ing] it more difficult for the Democrats to evade the Klan proposition" at their national convention. The Democrats had hoped to avoid the issue, as the Republicans had. But William Pattangall, attorney general of Maine, proposed a platform plank condemning the Klan. His proposal lost by a vote of 5423/20; to 5413/20. The fight split the party and made the Democratic presidential nomination worthless. It took 103 ballots to nominate John Davis, who was crushed by Coolidge. Pattangall himself lost reelection.

A year later the Klan remained strong. In 1925, Colorado Judge Ben Lindsay wrote Percy, who was advising him on anti-Klan tactics: "I really believe there is nothing in the entire history of the South that shows such sudden and devastating sweep as [the Klan] has achieved in Colorado. This secret order has functioned as almost the entire state government from state militia to the last constable."

Yet the 1920s Klan did collapse. It did so because it was not conceived as a political movement but as a scheme to make money selling memberships and regalia. It brought terrible forces together, like a magnifying gla.s.s concentrating the sun's rays, but no leader with a political vision emerged to focus that power and make it explode into flame. Instead, its leaders wrestled scandalously over profits, embarra.s.sing its members. Then David Stephenson, Indiana's Klan leader who had ama.s.sed $3 million, was convicted of rape and murder; expecting a pardon and not receiving it, he revenged himself by revealing the corruption of dozens of Klan-backed politicians, including the governor and the mayor of Indianapolis, several of whom were also jailed. The Klan faded away.

Percy belonged to the large world. By 1925 he was a governor of the Federal Reserve Bank at St. Louis, a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, on the board of directors of the Rockefeller Foundation, companion of presidents of great northern universities. Though a Democrat, he often dined with the chairman of the Republican National Committee and was routinely consulted by black Mississippi Republicans about appointments Republican presidents made in the state.

Yet what he cared about most remained the Delta. He had shown absolute focus, and a certain ruthlessness, in his fight against the Klan. It had made him a hero to many across the country. He had built a society and he would protect it against any enemy-even if it made him reviled. The great invincible enemy was of course the river.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THERE IS NO SIGHT like the rising Mississippi. One cannot look at it without awe, or watch it rise and press against the levees without fear. It grows darker, angrier, dirtier; eddies and whirlpools erupt on its surface; it thickens with trees, rooftops, the occasional body of a mule. Its currents roil more, flow swifter, pummel its banks harder. When a section of riverbank caves into the river, acres of land at a time collapse, snapping trees with the great cracking sounds of heavy artillery. On the water the sound carries for miles. like the rising Mississippi. One cannot look at it without awe, or watch it rise and press against the levees without fear. It grows darker, angrier, dirtier; eddies and whirlpools erupt on its surface; it thickens with trees, rooftops, the occasional body of a mule. Its currents roil more, flow swifter, pummel its banks harder. When a section of riverbank caves into the river, acres of land at a time collapse, snapping trees with the great cracking sounds of heavy artillery. On the water the sound carries for miles.

Unlike a human enemy, the river has no weakness, makes no mistakes, is perfect; unlike a human enemy, it will find and exploit any weakness. To repel it requires an intense, nearly perfect, and sustained effort. Major John Lee, in the 1920s the Army district engineer in Vicksburg who would in 1944 make the cover of Time Time as an important World War II general, observed, "In physical and mental strain, a prolonged high-water fight on threatened levees can only be compared with real war." as an important World War II general, observed, "In physical and mental strain, a prolonged high-water fight on threatened levees can only be compared with real war."

In 1922 the Mississippi River was rising. Soon after LeRoy Percy began his struggle with the Klan, the river reached extreme high water and threatened all the tens of thousands of square miles in the river's floodplain. Even more than the Klan, it threatened the society LeRoy Percy had built, and it turned both his focus and that of his Klan opponents to the river, temporarily unifying them again.

And there was something new and frightening about this flood. For more than forty years the Mississippi River Commission had set standards and contributed money to build levees. For most of that time the overwhelming majority of the people in the Mississippi valley had trusted the commission and its strategies. Now some were accusing it of flawed strategies that exposed the valley to danger.

To understand the threat to the Delta and to all the floodplain, one has to understand both this criticism and what man had done in the years since James Eads had triumphed over Andrew Humphreys.

ALTHOUGH for very different reasons, Eads and Humphreys had both rejected the theory that levees alone caused a significant deepening of the channel. It was the only thing they had agreed upon. Yet, beginning a few years after both had left the scene, Mississippi River Commission engineers began to meld Humphreys' arguments for levees with Eads' arguments about the effect of current. The result was a b.a.s.t.a.r.dization of both their arguments, and a theory that both Eads and Humphreys had not only rejected but condemned: in 1885 the commission stated flatly, and repeated thereafter, "Levees designed to limit the high water width of the river, by concentration of the flood discharge of the channel,...secure the energy of the flood volume in scouring and enlarging the channel." for very different reasons, Eads and Humphreys had both rejected the theory that levees alone caused a significant deepening of the channel. It was the only thing they had agreed upon. Yet, beginning a few years after both had left the scene, Mississippi River Commission engineers began to meld Humphreys' arguments for levees with Eads' arguments about the effect of current. The result was a b.a.s.t.a.r.dization of both their arguments, and a theory that both Eads and Humphreys had not only rejected but condemned: in 1885 the commission stated flatly, and repeated thereafter, "Levees designed to limit the high water width of the river, by concentration of the flood discharge of the channel,...secure the energy of the flood volume in scouring and enlarging the channel."

This pure expression of the levees-only theory was now policy. Few people along the lower Mississippi disputed this policy because Congress, throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, resisted spending money on "internal improvements" on fiscal and const.i.tutional grounds. So those who wanted money for levees embraced the claim that levees deepened the channel and thus aided shipping and interstate commerce, a clear federal responsibility. For forty years, congressmen and senators, governors and state and local politicians, local levee boards, contractors, planters, and cotton brokers all became wedded to and defenders of the commission's policy.

Meanwhile, the commission itself, although created specifically to inject civilian input into Army thinking, had fallen under the influence of Army engineers. Its president was an Army officer who reported to the chief of Army engineers. The commission did include two civilians and employed civilians, but Army engineers, who had neither special background nor training in the problems of the Mississippi River, made all important decisions. They were not scientists asking questions. They were soldiers serving a regular tour of duty. By the 1920s, after decades of adherence to the levees-only policy, few officers questioned it.

So for decades the river commission followed a policy of sealing the river off from its natural reservoirs and outlets. This both opened up millions of acres to development, reinforcing the political support for levees-only, and increased the volume of water in the river along with the current. But the stronger current did not seem to dredge out the bottom enough to compensate. Floods that carried less water were rising higher than earlier ones that had carried more. In 1912, for example, a flood devastated the lower Mississippi region. Though carrying far less water than the great flood of 1882, it smashed height records on seventeen of the eighteen river gauges from Cairo to the Gulf.

This contradicted the predictions of the levees-only theory, but the Corps ignored the findings. After the 1912 flood a few civilian engineers tried to reopen the debate about levee policy, chief among them James F. Kemper, a thin, intense young man to whom the cause became an obsession. The commission ridiculed him. Later Kemper recalled, "I was not accustomed to ridicule and it hurt to the bone." But as he persisted, abuse supplanted ridicule. "That was more to my liking. I rather like to fight."

When he presented his arguments to a meeting of engineers in New Orleans, General a.r.s.ene Perrilliat patronized him: "The alluvial stream is a gigantic hydraulic dredge.... Just as your arm will have its muscles developed if you exercise it and train it intelligently, so if the Mississippi River is guided intelligently...by a levees-only policy...it will grow in section so that it will carry floods to the sea, where we want them to go, without damage to us."

Then came the 1913 flood. The New York Times New York Times estimated 2,000 dead in Ohio alone. Fifty died in Hamilton, 150 in Zanesville, 200 in Dayton, and at least that many in Columbus. When the same waters reached the lower Mississippi, deaths were few but economic damage was vast. estimated 2,000 dead in Ohio alone. Fifty died in Hamilton, 150 in Zanesville, 200 in Dayton, and at least that many in Columbus. When the same waters reached the lower Mississippi, deaths were few but economic damage was vast.

The deaths of northern whites sensitized the country in ways that deaths of black sharecroppers did not, and Percy took advantage of the disaster to push Congress to increase appropriations for levees and, for the first time, to do so solely for flood control-no longer using the pretense of aiding shipping. He spent weeks in Washington leading a consortium of interests, and wrote home that he "succeeded in getting a favorable report...[and] its pa.s.sage."

A few civilian engineers also opened savage attacks on the river commission and the Corps. Yielding finally to the pressure, the commission agreed to conduct "new" studies of cutoffs, reservoirs, and outlets. But the respective reviews lacked scientific integrity.

The "study" of cutoffs, for example, reviewed old arguments and observations-originally made between 1831 and 1848-regarding two cutoffs in Louisiana. It collected no new data and performed no experiments. Its conclusion affirmed the old policy: it rejected cutoffs.

The issue of reservoirs was handled similarly. Reservoirs had been a pet proposal of Humphreys' archenemy Charles Ellet, and in 1874, Humphreys had convened a board of Army engineers to investigate them. That board had rejected reservoirs but conceded, "The question of absolute practicality could only be decided by a series of extensive and elaborate surveys, for which neither funds nor time were available."

In the ensuing forty years not a single such survey had been made, yet the "new" study again unequivocally condemned the idea. Ohioans who had just suffered a disastrous flood ignored the findings and built their own reservoir system. Army engineers opposed it and warned it would not succeed, but, since no federal money was involved, they could not block it. (Over the next three-quarters of a century, these reservoirs would prove successful.) Then came the question of outlets, also called spillways. The deaths in 1913 had frightened New Orleans; the city had demanded a new study. Mississippi River Commission secretary Major Clarke Smith did collect fresh data and confessed, "[T]here is no doubt that a spillway would reduce extreme flood heights at New Orleans." Still, he recommended against building one because "its use would be rare...and the expense great."

The commission published his conclusion but, despite repeated requests from civilian engineers, refused to release his new data. And the formal commission response to the call for spillways came in 1914 from commission member J. A. Ockerson. Ockerson revealed the openness of his mind when he said that he conducted his study solely to calm people in New Orleans, adding, "Whether their fears are groundless or not, whether based on facts or not, it justifies a review." Ignoring both the commission's new data and Humphreys' old data, he declared: "Guglielmini confirmed the opinion as to the little utility of spillways for reducing flood heights.... It is difficult to find a reason for any change at this time."

Guglielmini had made his observations on the Po River centuries earlier. Humphreys himself had stated that the results predicted by Guglielmini's theory "are all contrary to observation."

The engineering review thus left the levees-only policy in force. The only policy impact of the 1912 and 1913 disasters was to force the Mississippi River Commission to set new standards for levees, making them higher and thicker. Then in 1920, in accord with its theory that called for increasing the volume of the Mississippi River, the commission began sealing the river off from Cypress Creek.