LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Grady Early overlooked at least one apparently reliable history treatise in discussing Ed J. L. Green in the April 19 San Marcos Record.
“A Brief History of Hays County and San Marcos Texas,” published by the San Marcos Record in 1948 and written by Dudley R. Dobie, includes the following about Ed J. L. Green at pp. 40-41: “The Ku Klux Klan was sweeping over the Southern States. Hays County was one of many Texas counties that had a Klan organization. It had such law-abiding men as Ed J. L. Green, Judge W. W. Martin, James Hewett, W. W. Wolfork, William Adair, Captain C. Standifer, and many others as members. So far as is known the Klansmen did not kill anyone, but they administered the ‘wet rope’ with great vigor.”
This would indicate that the KKK in Hays County was more than just “a fraternal organization where old vets could reminisce about their Civil War experiences.”
A thesis by Barbara Lean Clayton, “Lone Star Conspiracy: Racial Violence and Ku Klux Klan Terror in Post-civil War Texas, 1865-1877” published in 1986, explains that “Prior to 1865 whites targeted European and Mexican immigrants and Unionists for violence. Those same whites had kept black slaves in check despite emancipation. After 1865 Anglos transferred their hatred and aggression to all who were not ex-Confederates, white Southern Democrats, or ‘true’ Texans. . . . With the birth of the Ku Klux Klan, the hooded disguise of the secret organization gave many white Texans sanction to intimidate, terrorize, and even murder. By doing so they hoped to regain control of their state at least politically. Socially and economically, the Klan managed to keep the freedpeople subservient and to maintain them as a source of cheap, often free, labor.”
It strains credulity to believe that using “wet ropes” against former slaves was some benign fraternal practice. The history of the aftermath of the Civil War is replete with reports of violence done to former slaves. To suggest that members of the KKK merely held coffee klatches ignores the violence and intimidation directed at former slaves and their allies. It appears that Ed J. L. Green was one perpetrator of such violence.
Lamar W. Hankins San Marcos
