On February 5,
1946,
The Adventures of Superman radio
program opened with a new introduction:
Yes, it’s
Superman. Strange visitor from another
planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities farbeyond those of mortal
men. Superman, defender of law and
order, champion of equal rights, valiant, courageous fighter against the forces
of hate and prejudice!
This announced the beginning of the radio
Superman’s
struggle with post-war social issues, especially a campaign against racial and
religious intolerance. In this
adventure,
Jimmy Olsen
infiltrated the Guardians of America, a
fictional
stand-in for pro-
Nazi
groups that were operating in the
United States
at the time. This was only the
beginning. Later that year,
Adventures would feature a 16-episode
story in which Superman took on the Clan of the Fiery Cross, a stand-in for the
Ku Klux Klan
(
KKK).
Behind these fictional stories of Superman were real-life
adventures. The KKK was attempting to
launch a new national membership drive, playing on the insecurities people felt
after
World
War II. There were real infiltrators
of the KKK and other organized hatemongers who exposed the workings of these
organizations in the media.
Rick Bowers
tells the story of these men and the producers of the
comic
book and radio Superman in
Superman
versus the Ku Klux Klan.
Superman had been dealing with cultural concerns from his
beginning. When
Jerry Siegel
and
Joe
Shuster,
Jewish
high-school students in
Cleveland,
created Superman in the
1930s, they pitted
him against
criminal
gangs and crooked
politicians. As Nazi
Germany began to
rise as an aggressive
European power,
the hero opposed Nazis at home and abroad.
During the
war,
he protected the home front. Though it
is not the focus, Bowers describes how Superman has changes with the concerns
of the times.
The Klan has roots going back to the
Reconstruction
era after the
Civil
War. It started as a jokey order of
former
Confederate
Army officers in
Tennessee who
imitated the mystery
religion-inspired
fraternal orders that were popular at colleges, with mysterious rituals and
strange names. It spawned imitators that
secretly gathered in
Nashville to
organize themselves in
1867. Former
Confederate
General
Nathan
Bedford Forrest was the first Grand Wizard, who lead the Klan in opposition
to Reconstruction, including domestic
terrorism
against blacks and white proponents of racial equality and Reconstruction
policies. The violence of the Klan
members, called Ghouls, eroded the organization’s popularity.
William
J. Simmons launched a campaign to revive the Klan, taking it national in
1920. For Simmons it was largely a moneymaking
scheme, though he seemed happy to promote intolerance of
blacks,
Jews,
Catholics,
immigrants and
anyone else who wasn’t a
white,
male Protestant. (I’m a white, male Protestant and I find
nothing in Protestantism, or
Christianity
in general, that justifies the intolerance promoted by the Klan.) Successors led the Klan to political activism
in the 1920s, and it became very powerful, but front-line violence and
leadership hypocrisy undermined their position.
The post-war membership campaign, led by
Samuel Green
who was Grand Dragon of the
Georgia Realm,
was thwarted by law enforcement and equal rights advocates with help of medial
like
Adventures.
The library helpfully labeled Bowers’ book with a sticker that reads, “
TEEN.” I suppose it is a
young adult
book, though I think it is within the grasp of many middle school
students. It is an unusual introduction
to the history of bigotry in American and the movements that promoted equality,
but the tie to a popular superhero might make the subject more appealing to
kids in school. It made me pick up the
book, and I’m far passed my school days.
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