Harry Truman and the KKK

My post on Tuesday further reminded me of an incident in the life of President Harry Truman. You may recall that I admire Truman as a president, Mason and man and wrote about him earlier.[1]

In 1922, Truman started his political career by running for county judge (our county commissioner) in Missouri.  He was endorsed by the Pendergast organization – a political machine that had been accused of corruption, and not without cause.

The Ku Klux Klan was a rising force in Missouri that year.  Two of Truman’s opponents in the primary had the backing of the Klan.  In an uncharacteristic move, Truman gave one of his friends $10 to join the Klan.  The Klan, however, sent a representative to speak to Truman before his membership became official. 

When the representative told Truman that he could count on Klan support only if he promised never to hire Catholics is he were elected, Truman ended the discussion right there.

Truman biographer David McCullough writes

It had been a grievous mistake ever tp have said he would join in the first place.  It was an act either of amazing naivete, or one revealing a side he had not shown before, a willingness under pressure to sacrifice principle for ambition.  Either way the whole incident was shabby and out of character, and hardly good politics.  How he thought Klan support might offset the devastating effect such an alliance would have on the Pendergasts – not to say the effect on his own beloved “Irish bunch” – is difficult to imagine.[2] 

The Pendergasts, his political patrons, were Catholic.  The Irish bunch were the mostly Catholic men Truman had commanded in his artillery unit in France during WWI. 

McCullough also points out that only the year before, Truman had supported a Masonic effort to suppress the Klan in St. Louis.  While it is likely true that more than a few Freemasons were members of the KKK (just as it is likely that more than a few Freemasons took part in the Boston Tea Party), it was a vicious false rumor that the Klan and Masonry were in any way connected. 

So, Truman had attempted to join the Klan, but in the end, did not.  This episode should remind us that we all make errors of judgment – some large, some small.  The true test is how we respond to our mistake.  Truman responded by ending discrimination in the armed forces,[3] among many other initiatives to provide for equal rights for all Americans.

We, like Truman, must strive to learn from our mistakes and strive to improve ourselves, and thereby our family, community, state, country and world. 

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[1][1] See the March 14, 2017 blog entry.

[2] Truman, David McCullough (Simon and Schuster, 1991) pp 164-165.

[3] Id., 651