The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.
—HERBERT HOOVER
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
—ALDOUS HUXLEY
On the evening of March 16, 1921, nine men quietly walked through the dark and silent streets of Johnson City, Tennessee. They congregated in the offices of a prominent local businessman, where they were greeted by a man wearing a white robe and a cape lined in red satin. His head was covered by a peaked helmet, in which two eyeholes were cut. That night the nine aliens became naturalized citizens of the Invisible Empire.
If the psychologist, looking over the diversified and conflicting interests and classes of the American people, attempted to find a common state of mind, he would probably discover one thing that applies to all American men, without regard to “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” He would learn that there is a common American trait possessed by the white man and the Negro, the Jew and the Gentile, the Catholic and the Protestant, the native and the foreign-born—in fact by every conceivable group of the males of the United States.
They are all “joiners”!
One has to search far and wide for an American who does not “belong” to some sort of organization, and who would not, under proper circumstance, join another.
I am a joiner-by-birth.1
Those were the words of one of the Johnson City Nine, Henry Peck Fry. The forty-year-old from Chattanooga never became a high-ranking Klan official, nor was he an important government officeholder. He was merely one of the tens of thousands who gravitated to the hooded secret order. Henry Peck Fry, however, was Edward and Bessie’s worst nightmare. Fry was a whistleblower.
He was born on September 27, 1880, to George Thompson Fry and Amelia Cooley Fry in Atlanta. His father had lived in Virginia until 1868, before moving to Georgia, where he practiced law and served two terms in the state legislature. During the Civil War the elder Fry had been a colonel in the Confederate army. The family had a strong military tradition. Henry’s great-great-grandfather, Col. Joshua Fry, served with distinction in the Revolutionary War and died during an early Indian war. Another ancestor, Col. Charles Fleming, fought in the same war and was killed at the Battle of Brandywine. Gen. Patrick Peck was killed in the Mexican-American War. The family believed they had been represented in every war in which the United States had been a participant.
Another Fry family legacy was public service and the law. Henry’s other great-great-grandfather, Adam Peck, was once chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court and helped write the state constitution. Jacob Peck, a great-uncle, also served as a chief justice. Henry’s father was a highly respected attorney.
Much was expected of young Henry Peck Fry.
In 1890 Colonel Fry moved his family to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Henry continued his education. He left high school without graduating and entered the prestigious Virginia Military Institute, known as “The West Point of the South.” Confederate legend Stonewall Jackson had once been an instructor at the school, and one of Henry’s classmates was Gen. George C. Marshall, who would be the architect of the Marshall Plan following World War II.
Henry was an apt student, graduating in 1901, distinguishing himself as both a mathematician and a tactician. After graduation he was offered and accepted the position of major and commandant at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Henry taught during the day and began reading law in the evening. After seven months in Sewanee, Fry returned home to Chattanooga to continue his study of law while working as a reporter for the Chattanooga Evening News, where he earned a reputation as a clear, exact, and forceful writer.
On June 13, 1903, Henry Peck Fry gained admittance to the Tennessee bar and joined the noted firm of Frazier and Coleman. In less than seven months, he argued his first case before the state supreme court. Fry quickly gravitated to politics and was elected county revenue commissioner. His motto was “honesty is the principal requisite in the administration of public affairs.” He also put his military training to good use when he was elected captain of Company M, Frazier Guards, Third Regiment, Tennessee National Guard. His company, while he was in service, was said to be the most efficient in Tennessee, so pronounced by Inspector General S. D. Tyson.
Henry was becoming a pillar of the Chattanooga community. He was a member of Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church as well as Temple Lodge 430 of the Free and Accepted Masons; of Park Lodge 75, Knights of Pythias; and Hill City Lodge 245, Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He was an officer of Chattanooga Lodge 91, of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
So prominent was young Henry Peck Fry that he was included in the 1905 edition of Notable Men of Tennessee.2 At the tender age of twenty-five, he seemed to have a bright and prosperous future. He was an intelligent, energetic, and eclectic southern gentleman. His personality was dominated by rigid discipline and strong belief systems. He was honor bound by many oaths taken as a soldier, lawyer, elected official, and fraternalist. There was yet one more complex facet to his life. Henry Peck Fry was also dedicated to the cause of white supremacy.
He wasn’t a radical, violent proponent in the movement; his involvement was more rational and intellectual. In 1906 Fry wrote and self-published his personal treatise on the race problem in the United States, with the rather cumbersome title, The Voice of the Third Generation: A Discussion of the Race Question for the Benefit of Those Who Believe That the United States Is a White Man’s Country and Should Be Governed by White Men. Fry’s dedication page read,
To the American people hoping that, in the interest of true Americanism, the purity of the United States Government, and the perpetuation of the theory that this is a white man’s government, Almighty God will send the message herein contained to every thinking man in the nation and that “The Voice of the Third Generation” will be heard and its counsels heeded.3
The first page of the thirty-two penned by Fry states his hypothesis. He claims there was one, and only one, solution to America’s race problem: “The race problem will vanish into the gloom of an unpleasant memory of unpleasant events, if one thing is done by the American people, THE RE-PEAL OF THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.”4 The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, gave black men the right to vote by specifying, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Fry calls the Fifteenth Amendment “the most glaring piece of legislative stupidity of which lawmakers have ever been guilty.”5 He claims blacks were an inferior race of people, unfit to exercise the privileges of U.S. citizenship. Slavery should never have been introduced, but blacks had been treated kindly in the South and had committed very few crimes. The book states that the Civil War was not about slavery but instead about states’ rights. Fry praises Abraham Lincoln for never intending equality, preferring a policy of compensated emancipation and colonization. He places the blame squarely on Andrew Johnson and the Thaddeus Stevens–led Radical Republican Congress.
The book rambles through a historical argument for his race’s superiority. Fry places the evidence of great Caucasian accomplishments—Greek, Roman, European, even Egyptian—in comparison with black Africans living for centuries in primitive jungle savagery. He explains the genesis of his book title. The first generation in the southern states were the active participants in the Civil War. They were, according to Fry, brave, chivalrous men of knightly bearing who had covered themselves in honor and glory. The second generation consisted of those born during or shortly after the Civil War. The third generation was Fry’s generation. These were men born since Reconstruction, then between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight, and not directly familiar with the events following the Civil War. Fry believes they were the most patriotic of southerners—college educated and equipped to solve the South’s race problem. This generation was not violent but instead rational and well intentioned.6
As a lawyer, Fry made the argument that the Thirteen, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution were not worth the paper they were written on. Amendments require a certain percentage of ratification by states to become law. Because southern states under military supervision during Reconstruction were not allowed to be a part of the process, there were not enough northern states to reach the percentage.
Fry’s philosophy regarding race can be summed up by the following: “A Negro is a Negro regardless of a smattering of education he may have, and the protection of the government makes him more vicious than in his ordinary condition.”7 Fry’s book constitutes intellectual racism. For most racists the issue is visceral, emotional, and void of logic. It is rare for someone to form an educated argument, commit it to paper, and publish it at his own expense for all to see.
Henry’s military life continued through an association with Leonard Wood, one of the most famous soldiers of his generation. Leonard Wood began his career as a doctor, graduating from the Harvard Medical School. His first military assignment was in Arizona, fighting the last campaign against the Apache leader Geronimo. He was decorated for his actions in taking charge of a unit after its officer was killed and for surviving a harrowing hundred-mile journey through dangerous Indian territory. He returned to Washington to become the personal doctor to several U.S. presidents. When the Spanish-American War broke out, he received a command in Cuba. On the day of the charge at San Juan Hill, one of his junior officers was Teddy Roosevelt. In the early 1900s he would serve as military governor of Cuba and governor general of the Philippines. The high point in his career would come in 1910, when he was named army chief of staff.
As the head of the army, Leonard Wood began to modernize the military for a future war in Europe. He saw a need for training and preparedness and established the framework for what would become the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC).8 In 1916 Henry Peck Fry served as Wood’s personal representative, enrolling men at military training camps. Together Fry and Wood would author a military training guide, and, later in 1916, with Wood’s help, Henry established the first military correspondence school, the American Military Institute.
The school was short lived, however, with the onset of the United States’ involvement in World War I in 1917. Fry rejected a number of staff assignments and enlisted as a private in the army. He did not want a desk job, instead hoping to see combat in Europe. He quickly was promoted to sergeant, then second lieutenant and first lieutenant. A promotion to captain was pending when the war ended on November, 11, 1918. His unit remained at Camp Funston, Kansas, and never made it overseas.9
Fry’s contact with the Ku Klux Klan came in upper east Tennessee during the early months of 1921. The account comes from The Modern Ku Klux Klan, a book written by Fry in 1922. He described the region as a place where one would least expect a movement like the Klan to establish a foothold, as the black population was small, orderly, well behaved, and industrious. There was a small Catholic presence, few Jews, and a “paucity of foreign population.” It was overwhelmingly American and uniformly Protestant.10
He had been sent by a Chattanooga business house on an extended trip through east Tennessee. There is no other record of who Fry was working for or the type of business being done. He made his headquarters a boarding house in Johnson City. In early March Fry noticed a “young man of pleasing personality” staying in the same home. On March 16 they spoke for the first time at the breakfast table. Fry asked what the young man was selling, as most of the residents were traveling salesmen. According to Fry, the man noticed the Masonic pin on his jacket and showed Henry a local newspaper clipping announcing the arrival of a Ku Klux Klan organizer. They had a long talk. “He was an excellent salesman of his proposition, and in a few minutes he had me completely sold.” Fry was aware of the organization “and was curious to see what it was all about, but principally because I thought it was a fraternal order which was actually a revival of the original Ku Klux Klan which played so important a part in the history of the South during the days of the Reconstruction.”11 This would line up with his feelings expressed in The Voice of the Third Generation.
That very evening Henry Peck Fry joined the Klan. He maintained he knew nothing about the structure of this new Klan but assumed it would function like any other standard fraternal order and that it would be a pleasure to belong to it. Fry quickly showed interest in the organization and began assisting in membership recruitment. In early April the local kleagle received a promotion, and Henry was named his replacement. In the commission he signed on April 8, there was a pledge of “wholehearted loyalty and unwavering devotion to William Joseph Simmons as Imperial Wizard and Emperor of the Invisible Empire.”12
Fry took to the duties of a kleagle with great energy. He expressed the opinion that the best way to learn about a fraternal order was as an organizer. For nearly three months Fry worked and observed. Before long he began to have doubts. According to his book, “a feeling developed within me that there was something wrong with the organization—that it was not the sort of fraternal society to which I had been accustomed for nearly twenty years.”13 He began noticing the Klan goal of infiltrating politics, the law, and the military to establish an Invisible Empire within the United States. He rankled at the thought of an emperor elected for life. And he saw the operation as a moneymaking scheme, benefiting a select few. He also observed an organization, built on absolute secrecy, as potentially dangerous and radical.
The average person might not have questioned the inner workings of the Klan—or he might simply have resigned if he found things not to his liking. Henry Peck Fry was no ordinary man. He felt a struggle developing within himself. In The Modern Ku Klux Klan, he reconstructed how he resolved his moral conundrum.
The portentous nature of my conclusions, however, weighed heavily upon me, and after the most serious consideration, I finally decided to repudiate the entire organization. I finally decided to expose the whole system, calling public attention to what seems to me to be the greatest menace that has ever been launched in this country.14
This seems to be a classic example of a whistleblower; a person willing to risk everything to right a wrong. Fry was a highly principled idealist, devoted to honor and country. There were, of course, dangers and potential regrets.
My decision to take this step was a most difficult one to reach. In the first place, to give to the public the facts and inside workings of the “Invisible Empire” means to subject oneself to the penalty of death for disclosing a secret of the order.
The most disagreeable feature of the whole procedure is the absolute necessity of going on record publicly as violating a solemn oath, a pledge of honor, and an obligation that would ordinarily be considered sacred. Is a man, having taken an oath, ever justified in breaking it?15
Fry answered his own question. In his mind, if the oath is illegal and could incite a riot or lawlessness, a man is not only justified but morally required to break it.
I have, therefore, deliberately and with careful thought, decided to violate and repudiate this obligation. . . . The question as to whether I am right or wrong is one that will have to be decided by public opinion. . . . If I am wrong in my viewpoint, I do not deserve to be allowed to mingle with honorable men and women, and should be set apart from my fellows as a social outcast.
On the other hand, if I am right in the stand that I take, that the Ku Klux Klan is a secret, political, military machine, actually developing into an Invisible Empire; . . . if I am correct in my position and the whole scheme is an attempt to create class hatred and antagonism, which in the end will array race against race and religion against religion; if my contention is just that the proposition is a money making scheme; and, if the public adopts my viewpoint to the extent of demanding that the organization be legislated out of existence and made an outlaw to the world of open things, then I shall feel satisfied that the violation of this oath has been a public service.
There is no middle ground. I am either entirely right, or else I am entirely wrong.16
With the instincts and training of an experienced journalist, Fry gathered all the information and documents available to him. He formally resigned his commission as a kleagle on June 15, 1921. His final act was to write a long and scathing letter to the imperial wizard, withdrawing him self as a citizen of the Invisible Empire.
Henry Peck Fry began his journey to the North.