Hate thy brother
How college fraternities helped inspire the first Ku Klux Klan
Education is often seen as among the most important functions of a society. A well-crafted and organized education system provides the critical function of passing down knowledge from previous generations to the next ones. Education allows our society to continuously advance by creating new innovations in thought and human reasoning.
Colleges are especially important cornerstones of the pyramid that is a society. More than through their lectures and research functions, colleges advance society by offering students the ability to collide with other minds and create new ways of thinking. This is achieved in many ways, but none more important than by things outside of the classroom, intermingling through social clubs and campus organizations — especially Greek life.
Whether or not its name includes Greek-letters, or if it is socially-based or not, fraternal organizations come in all shapes and sizes. They have long acted as important beacons of influence over how students both approach and utilize their own post-secondary education.
Unfortunately, college fraternities are also a troublesome place to look for a whole host of reasons. Greek life has with itself an overabundance of issues related to sexual abuse, hazing, drug consumption and distribution, and an especially troublesome track record of racism. In spite of all this, the institution has proven time and again to be resilient against a growing tide of resentment and distrust from the general public.
Perhaps this is because fraternities are a difficult idea to wrap one’s brain around altogether. However, fraternal organizations are not necessarily an oddball concept. Frankly, fraternities are a concept as old as time and they are not built equally. Not all of them are tied to colleges — some are religiously-minded, such as the Knights of Columbus, while others are professionally-based, such as the Fraternal Order of Police.
There are historically Black fraternities, such as Alpha Phi Alpha, historically Jewish fraternities, such as Alpha Epsilon Phi, and academic honor societies, such as Phi Beta Kappa. The diverse nature of fraternal organizations makes it very hard to tell a blanket history, because many organizations represent a different aspect of the whole idea behind a secret society.
However, most of them — at least in America — are cut from the same cloth. Many fraternities in the U.S. were created in the spirit of white supremacy, and many others were created in response to the threat of that spirit. The degree to which white supremacy acts as a common element in the founding of many fraternities is troubling, to say the least, but it is a history long ignored.
In fact, without fraternities, it can be speculated that America would never have seen the formation of what has arguably been the country’s most proverbial terrorist group: the first Ku Klux Klan.
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The word “fraternity” derives from the Greek word “phratia,” or a group of people who hold a common interest. For many years, sororities were referred to as “women’s fraternities.” It should be noted that sororities are not exempt from the issue of white supremacy by virtue of their access to women. The author’s use of the word “fraternity” in this article refers to both men’s and women’s fraternities, whenever applicable to both, for purposes of historical accuracy and simplicity.]
Part One: Secret societies and colonial colleges
In order to properly understand the connections between fraternities and the first Ku Klux Klan, one must first understand how college fraternities came to play such a central role in the college experience.
Knowledge of how fraternities came to be inevitably opens itself up to many more avenues of discussion. There are countless things that have influenced the history of college fraternities in America. But, the question is less of why fraternities exist and more why they work the way they do — what causes them to be so elitist and secretive, and why are there so damn many of them?
The very long answer, as with many other questions in U.S. history, can be traced back to the most well-known secret society of them all: the Freemasons.
The birth of Freemasonry
Any organization which makes exclusivity and fraternalism its hallmark attributes is generally in one way-shape-or-form a secret society. No better-proven example of this exists than the Freemasons.
According to a master’s thesis from Andrew Thomas Bell, “all fraternal organizations, to some extent, owe their existence to the freemasons [sic].”
Freemasonry’s history is a bit sorted up until the 18th century. Some historians argue whether or not the practice goes all the way back to the Temple of Solomon in ancient Egypt. However, this can often become a problematic topic of discussion.
The Freemasons have been frequently mentioned in antisemitic conspiracy theories throughout history, such as the widely influential and highly-bigoted pamphlet the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This is caused partially by the society’s possible ancient roots. However, it is more likely a result of the secrecy and ritualism behind Freemasonry. Nonetheless, while their prominence has somewhat backslid from the forefront of conspiracist culture in contemporary times, Freemasonry can still be routinely found in the accusations of theories such as QAnon.
What is definite about the history of Freemasonry is that in 1717 the first Masonic “Grand Lodge” opened in London, which was a pivotal moment in the society’s history.
“The lodge of 1717, while a part of the same Masonic tradition, represented a new direction for Freemasonry. Prior to the Enlightenment, Freemasonry had been primarily an organization centered around the technical teachings of the Masonic craft, similar to the way that European guilds operated in early-modern Europe, but the Enlightenment allowed Freemasonry to change its course. […] This shift meant that Freemasonry was now able to admit men outside of the craft, introducing a new branch of ideas and mode of fraternal thought. Though more accessible, membership remained restricted to only those who sought out Freemasonry. […] Freemasonry became a tool to elevate the everyday man to a new moral height from which he became a benefit to both his family, community, and country.” (Bell, 2017).
As membership began to grow, so did the rituals and traditions of Freemasonry, and maintaining a distinct veil of mysticism and secrecy proved to be an important aspect of that.
“While Masonic lodges did become great centers of European thought, they still served the purpose of initiating new members via the Masonic ritual. This ritual initially featured two “rites” which were designed to recognize the new member’s induction to the order, but as the induction of members who were not practitioners of the craft of masonry the ritual was expanded. This expansion consisted of three “degrees” of Masonry […] These degrees each featured their own dramatic initiation ritual that was held in complete secrecy to all who had not become masons themselves. (Bell, 2017).”
Initiation ceremonies would involve an entire lodge, headed by the lodge’s “master,” and featuring every member dressed in a ceremonial garb “which signified their status as a member and what degree they completed within Masonry,” according to Bell’s thesis.
However, the distinct air of mysticism and secrecy surrounding Freemasonry gave way to harsh criticism from some members of the public. Some people feared the Freemasons — they thought it represented something against God and in defiance of traditional Judeo-Christian values.
To combat public scrutiny, a master mason named William Preston was allowed by other masons to publish a text in 1772 titled Illustrations of Masonry. Preston’s text explains, among other things, the traditions, morals, and lessons emphasized by Freemasonry. It is, arguably, the most reliable primary source for understanding the traditions and ideological hallmarks of Freemasonry.
For example, Preston stated the importance of respect for one’s fellow members, despite the notion of rank:
“You are to salute one another in a courteous manner, agreeably to the forms established amongst masons; you are freely to give mutual instruction as shall be thought necessary or expedient, not being overseen or overheard, without encroaching upon each other, or derogating from that respect which is due to any gentleman were he not a mason; for though as masons we rank as brethren on a level, yet masonry deprives no man of the honour due to his rank or character, but rather adds to his honour, especially if he has deserved well of the fraternity, who always render honour to whom it is due, and avoid ill manners. (Preston, 1772).”
Moreover, Preston’s writings are perhaps the best for understanding why the Freemasons emphasized varying degrees of secrecy. In essence, the text allowed the Freemasons to behave with more secrecy because it disclosed just enough information to dispel some concerns without compromising all its rituals. In fact, Preston’s text ended up expanding the reach of Freemasonry — lodges soon began to spring up all around the world, particularly in port cities across Europe and the American colonies.
According to Bell, “Preston’s text did not completely eliminate skepticism by the general public on the nature of Freemasonry,” however, “it did keep it at bay long enough for Freemasonry to expand its membership, and thus its influence.”
Old Dominion, new friends
As it grew, Freemasonry also inspired the formation of other fraternal societies that frequently mimicked aspects of Freemasonry. This was particularly true at institutions of higher learning in the American colonies.
As Bell puts it, secret societies were a common result of the atmosphere at a handful of “colonial colleges” in 18th century America. During this time, student life was highly regimented and often dominated by religious clergy, so secret societies offered a way to act more freely.
Two of the earliest examples come from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia: Phi Beta Kappa (ΦΒΚ) and the Flat Hat Club.
The Flat Hat Club (or FHC Society, as it was commonly referred to in the 18th century) was founded in 1750 and is where the William and Mary student newspaper, the Flat Hat, derives its name. The Flat Hat Club is generally regarded as America’s first secret society. Some of its members include Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe.
ΦΒΚ was founded in 1776 as a secret society dedicated to free debate and discussion and is believed to be the spiritual successor to the Flat Hat Club. ΦΒΚ was America’s first Greek-letter organization of any kind, but it is an example of an academic honor society, not a social fraternity. Its members have included “17 U.S. Presidents, 42 Supreme Court Justices, and more than 150 Nobel Laureates,” according to ΦΒΚ’s website.
At its beginning, ΦΒΚ primarily served the function of allowing students at William and Mary to hold debates on topics that could be seen as seditious during the British occupation of the colonies.
“[ΦΒΚ] did start out in terms of being rooted in free expression very early on in a society,” said Anne Wise, ΦΒΚ’s Director of National Arts & Sciences Initiative. “There were other student groups at the time — I think the Flat Hat Club would be an example of one. The founders of [ΦΒΚ] really wanted to create something that was much more serious-minded and academic.”
Unlike ΦΒΚ, the Flat Hat Club can be more accurately described as a social fraternity. However, like most other secret societies at the time, both organizations barred membership from anyone who was not a white male, which certainly limited the scope of perspective.
For example, one of Phi Beta Kappa’s founding members was John Heath, who later became the organization’s first president. Heath served Virginia in the House of Representatives as a Democratic-Republican from 1793 to 1797, and is for whom the town Heathsville, Virginia, is named after.
Heath and his family also owned slaves. And while it is known that the society did at one point hold a debate on “the justice of African slavery,” no records exist of what was said at the debate, according to ΦΒΚ.
“Phi Beta Kappa’s early development took place at a time when slavery fundamentally shaped American colleges and the nation’s revolutionary experiment,” the organization’s website states. “The uncritical participation in a slaveholding society by many early members reflects a serious moral failing.”
Selective secrecy
Nicholas Syrett, a professor at the University of Kansas, spends a great deal of time explaining the significance of secret societies and what they offered young men at colonial colleges in his 2009 book titled The Company he Keeps: a History of White College Fraternities. Syrett’s book is regarded by many as one of the greatest works of research tracking the history of white supremacy in college fraternities.
“At a time in their lives when, by contemporaneous standards, college students were neither boys nor fully men and yet were often treated as the former by their instructors, ‘secret societies’ — and the term was often used interchangeably with ‘fraternities’ during this period — allowed their members to assert an independence and autonomy that was rarely available to them otherwise.” (Syrett, 2009).
But, fraternities and other secret societies were still not terribly common throughout the U.S. and were widely banned on college campuses until the mid-1800s — some colleges continued to ban fraternities up until the early 20th century. According to Syrett, this was heavily influenced by a rise in student outbreaks and revolts during this period, so campus authorities struck back.
“They saw it as only logical that one way to do this was to regulate when, where, and for what purposes students met. The faculty of many colleges regulated not only established secret societies but also meetings of any group of student.” (Syrett, 2009).
However, another significant influence behind the widespread ban of fraternities on college campuses was the rise of the Anti-Masonic movement in America during the early 19th century.
The Anti-Masonic Party was a short-lived political faction that grew in opposition to the Freemasons and other secret societies. The movement was, for the most part, a response to the classism and elitism often exhibited by secret societies and their members during a period of noticeable wealth inequality. What kicked off the Anti-Masonic movement was the mysterious murder of William Morgan, which exacerbated many of the fears lower-class individuals had of secret societies and their members, especially Freemasons.
According to Syrett, “college fraternities, whose secrecy and rituals led many to associate them with Masonry, were targeted by extension.” In response, preexisting fraternities were forced to grapple with the idea of abandoning their secrecy, and a handful of members began to see the logic in doing so. As Syrett puts it, “secret societies existed, at least in part, to protect secrets, the greatest secret of all perhaps being that there was nothing particularly unique about the original secret.”
Some reshaped themselves into academic honor societies or introduced more inclusive hallmarks, while others went in a different direction. Most societies that refused to adjust slowly disappeared, while those that did conform also faced damages to their reputations.
“In 1831 Anti-Masonic sentiment forced Phi Beta Kappa to strip away its secret aspects,” Bell states. “With the secrecy, so went the prestige.”
This response, however, was in many ways counterproductive for the Anti-Masonic agenda. “However paradoxical it may seem, it was during the anti-Freemason fervor that many college fraternities came into being,” Syrett’s book states.
By the time the Civil War broke out, fraternities were here to stay in their less-secretive form.
A numbers game
Syrett credits the beginning of today’s intercollegiate social fraternity to the Kappa Alpha Society. In November of 1825, five senior classmen at Union College in Schenectady, New York, met to form the society — all of whom were part of a military company at Union that had recently been dissolved.
“Feeling what was described by one as ‘an aching void’ left by the company’s dissolution, they decided to form a society for literary and social purposes,” Syrett states in the book.
Union College would see the formation of two additional Greek-letter organizations — Sigma Phi and Delta Phi — within two years of the Kappa Alpha Society’s founding. By 1832, Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, had two of its own Greek-letter organizations, with Miami University of Ohio joining the trend soon after.
“By the 1850s, secret societies with Greek-letter names had a firm footing on virtually every college campus in New England and the mid-Atlantic region, as well as some in the South and Midwest,” Syrett’s book states.
Admission rates are generally believed to be the reason for this. A 1993 report from the National Center of Education Statistics found that between 1900 and 1930, “the ratio of college students to 18- to 24-year-olds rose from 2 to 7 per 100.”
In the early parts of the 20th century, college admission rates had begun to steadily increase, but were still far lower than they would be in decades soon to come. The report credits the Great Depression for slower growth in the 30s. But by the late 1940s, college admission rates began to skyrocket.
“Enrollment growth accelerated in the first 30 years of the 20th century, driven by population growth and continuing rises in participation rates,” the report states. “Large numbers of World War 2 veterans entered colleges assisted by such programs as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act which provided education benefits.”
But that still doesn’t quite answer why there are so damn many fraternities in colleges today. The answer to that may — or may not — come as a surprise: housing.
Gimme Shelter
A surge in students near the turn of the century meant over-occupied colleges were struggling to provide adequate amenities. The Anti-Masonic movement had also recently passed, putting pressure on fraternities to become less discreet. Together, this meant fraternities had to find a new way to maintain their prestige, exclusivity, and secrecy while also maintaining a good reputation with the general public.
The role that housing has played in shaping Greek life still exists today. In his 2017 book titled True Gentlemen: The Broken Pledge of America’s Fraternities, author John Hichenger notes that U.S. fraternities collectively own roughly $3 billion in real estate across 800 different colleges.
But, according to Syrett’s book, “fraternity members did not generally live together in one house until after the Civil War, and the now-common ‘frat house’ did not become widely popular until the late nineteenth century.”
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, is an especially prime example of how fraternity houses have shaped the institution’s history and culture. Cornell is the college where Alpha Phi Alpha, America’s first historically Black intercollegiate fraternity, was founded in 1906.
Christine O’Malley states in her essay “First of All”: The Founding of Alpha Phi Alpha and the Search for Fraternal Space at Cornell University, 1905–1920 that “housing decisions made by the university administration in the late 1860s and 1870s directly contributed to the emergence of residential fraternities at Cornell University and effectively shaped student life on campus for decades.”
According to O’Malley, from the day it opened in 1868, well into the 20th century, Cornell failed to provide adequate housing for its male students. As a result, most male students “rented rooms with families down the hill in Ithaca or roomed in boarding houses that soon cropped up along streets adjacent to the campus.”
Inadequate housing created an overflow of angry white men on already overcrowded college campuses, which is what led to the formation of many male fraternity houses at Cornell — within its first year of classes, the school saw the establishment of seven chapters for preestablished national fraternities. And, now that fraternities were operating with less secrecy, they became a prime resource for on-campus living quarters.
“Fraternity houses, often called chapter houses or lodges, quickly appeared on streets leading to the university, with the first, the lodge of Alpha Delta Phi, erected on Buffalo Street in 1878,” O’Malley’s essay states.
But, this was not the case for African American students, who struggled immensely to find adequate housing both on and off campus.
According to O’Malley’s essay, “many of the early male students boarded with Ithaca’s African American families or lived in the servants’ quarters of the white fraternities where they worked to support themselves during their studies.” And as consequence of this discrimination, it galvanized the desire to establish a fraternity for African American students.
“White fraternities only accepted African American students in their fraternities as employees working as waiters or servants. To counter this racism, African American male students constructed a social space for themselves, one ultimately removed from campus,” O’Malley’s essay states.
Syrett also spends a good portion of his book discussing the importance of housing for the success of fraternities as organizations. Living with one another did what it does for so many college students, regardless of their living situation — it allowed fraternity members to “assert an independence and autonomy that was rarely available to them otherwise.”
But, Syrett’s book also states that “this independence was one of the ways that fraternity members sought to demonstrate their manliness.” And it doesn’t take much imagination to see how a house full of adolescent, heterosexual, wealthy white men can lead to some problems.
According to Syrett, the initial functions of these fraternities “were relatively benign; the ways that fraternities chose the men who would have access to the benefits of brotherhood, however, were more wrapped up with concerns of class status than simply with camaraderie and congeniality.”
One should not need to go much further into how classism is inextricably intertwined with fraternities — that topic more-or-less speaks for itself. Racism, however, is where things start to get a bit messy, because it’s not exactly a one-to-one issue. When discussing America, the topic of classism is almost always going to lead to a discussion of race and racism as well. So, when considering that, it stands to reason that if a fraternity has an issue with classism, white supremacy is probably not far behind, right?
Perhaps not; it is true that classism and white supremacy are closely interwoven with one another in America, but this only creates a “chicken or egg” scenario to speculate upon. However, it is effervescently clear when overt, active racism became a common hallmark of fraternities as organizations, rather than the racism being more a result of the beliefs of individual members.
Part Two: Postwar Fraternities and the Rise of the First KKK
The American South is perhaps the best place to look for answers on the history of white supremacy within Greek life. This is especially true for Virginia because it is the location where three particularly significant fraternities came into existence, two of which have already been discussed.
Historical records and plenty of academic research have shown that social fraternities, such as the Flat Hat Club, hold many similarities to secret societies, such as the Freemasons. And, while some fraternities, such ΦΒΚ, are not quite as socially-minded as others, they certainly are — or once were — secret societies.
But many of the same historical records reveal these secret societies by and large find their roots in classist and white supremacist values. In fact, the values upon which a handful of fraternities were founded are fairly interwoven with innately white supremacist values. This is largely to do with white supremacy having been a zeitgeist of American culture for the country’s entire history, and still today.
Case in point: most Greek-letter organizations remained fully segregated based on race until the early-to-mid 20th century. Moreover, the transition away from racial segregation was a bumpy one that continued to influence the morals and traditions of some of these fraternities for years to come.
One particular fraternity led to a truly horrific spinoff and is the third and final fraternity of importance which was formed in Virginia.
Desegregation of fraternities
According to a 2010 study by Matthew Hewey titled A Paradox of Participation: Nonwhites in White Sororities and Fraternities, from ΦΒΚ’s founding to WW2, most “U.S. Greek-letter societies reflected the dominant portion of the college population: white, male, Christian students of ‘proper breeding.’”
“As the homogeneous demographic of colleges lessened, most [white Greek-letter organizations] incorporated racially exclusionary policies into their constitutions, which became their ‘hallmarks,’” Hewey’s study states.
Dr. Collin Campbell, a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha, says the organization and other historically Black fraternities came to be out of these discriminatory hallmarks “because no Black person could be a member of the other organizations.”
“[People] say, ‘well, you know, it’s 21st century post-racial America, why do they have predominantly Black colleges and universities?’” Campbell said. “Well, if America had been more inclusive of Black people from the very beginning, they probably wouldn’t have existed.”
By the end of the Civil War, fraternities were here to stay. They began to spring up in more numbers, particularly after the war, as well as in the late-1900s and mid-1950s. However, bear in mind that students of color had no chance of joining most fraternities prior to the early-to-mid 20th century.
This was due to the infamous “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The Supreme Court ruling declared it constitutional for any public or private space to be segregated on the basis of race. It was not until 1954, in the landmark ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, that separate but equal was overturned, thus beginning the arduous process of desegregating public colleges and universities — all of this according to a report on Historically-Black Colleges and Universities from the U.S. Department of Education.
However, desegregation still came slowly and often at the expense of African Americans and other minorities.
“Many of the public HBCUs closed or merged with traditionally white institutions,” the report states. “However, most black college students continued to attend HBCUs years after the decision was rendered.”
But, then Congress passed Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ensures protection under the law “from discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance.” From there, all colleges and universities, as well as their fraternities, had to make a choice: fully desegregate or forfeit all federal financial assistance.
According to the DOE report, 19 states had racially segregated higher education systems when Title VI was enacted.
Syrett’s book explains how desegregation resulted in a hodgepodge of reactions, one of which was the formation of many multicultural fraternities. Unfortunately, pushback against desegregation was often inevitable as well, especially in the South.
“Although the racial controversies would lead some students across the country to found fraternities that explicitly embraced a multicultural membership, others clung to more outdated forms of racial exclusivity and prejudice. Indeed, social scientists studying fraternities continued to find that their members were more ethnocentric than their nonaffiliated peers and harbored more prejudice toward nonwhites and Jews. And many of these fraternities, with or without explicit discrimination clauses, continued to select their members based on skin color and religious affiliation.” (Syrett, 2009).
The Kappa Alpha Order (KAO) is, to date, perhaps the most notorious of these organizations. When desegregation began, KAO continued a long-held tradition of proudly affiliating itself with confederate values, symbols, and ideologies, which became a form of quasi-protest for the organization.
“The Kappa Alpha Order, a southern fraternity, held its Old South Ball throughout the postwar period; members of the fraternity and their dates dressed in costumes designed to recall the antebellum period, with men wearing Confederate uniforms and women wearing elaborate dresses and bonnets. They attended a Sharecroppers Dance and hired black bands to provide the entertainment. In 1957 more than 250 Kappa Alpha brothers from across North Carolina marched through the streets of Charlotte and listened as a fellow Kappa Alpha man read the proclamation declaring North Carolina’s secession from the United States. Kappa Alpha brothers regularly displayed the Confederate flag on their house and at fraternity events.” (Syrett, 2009).
Antebellum resistance
[Author’s Note: The Kappa Alpha Society from Union College is a completely different organization than the Kappa Alpha Order (KAO) — they are not to be confused as being the same.]
KAO was founded in December of 1865 by four students at Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. Washington College is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in the Commonwealth of Virginia, second only to the College of William and Mary.
Not long after General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army surrendered to the Union Army at Appomattox Court House in April of 1865, Lee became Washington College’s president. After Lee’s death in 1870, the school underwent a rebranding, now operating under the name “Washington and Lee College,” which it still uses today.
KAO formed there mostly under admiration for Lee, often referring to him as their “spiritual founder” and the “last gentle knight.” In fact, KAO proudly affiliated itself with confederate iconography and sentiments from its start, the most notable example of this being its admiration for Lee. Although no evidence exists linking Lee to the actual formation of KAO, the organization’s “practical founder” is credited as Samuel Zenas Ammen, who fought in the Confederate army. However, it is important to note that Ammen did not help to create KAO — he merely redirected it.
Most importantly, Ammen was a virulent white supremacist and continued to hold a great deal of admiration for the former Confederate States long after the war had ended. In 1922, Ammen co-authored the Directory of the Kappa Alpha Order, in which he places blame on racist fallacies typical of the postwar period as having influenced KAO’s founding:
“The political situation was disheartening. White citizens were disfranchised, to give control of the States to negroes, led by scalawags and carpet-baggers. At the Lexington Court House students saw the riffraff of the local mountaineers in charge of state and county affairs, while capable persons were ineligible for office. There was a policy of degrading the people by discriminatory legislation. Citizens animated by Southern sentiments were proscribed. Civilization was in danger. To the Southern people who had been the efficient actors in creating the Federal government, this situation seemed intolerable. (Ammen, 1922).”
Moreover, Ammen, as well as another founding member of KAO, William Nelson Scott, were both Freemasons. Indeed, Freemasonry and other fraternal organizations had a noticeable impact on the early days of KAO.
“The first session of Washington College, after Gen. Lee became President, began Oct. 2, 1865. Among the matriculates were Jas. Ward Wood, of Lost River, West Virginia, and Wm. Nelson Scott, of Lexington, Virginia, who had known each other some years before. Wood, at this time was in his 20th year; Scott in his 18th year. Both had seen military service. The two friends enjoy the distinction of having first conceived the idea of organizing a fraternity of which the K.A. of today is a transformation. The elder of the two was much given, we are told, to the perusal of Masonic books, and before coming to College liked to spend long winter evenings with a Royal Arch friend who related entrancing stories of the magic and wonders of the higher degrees. (Ammen, 1922).”
Thus, KAO was born. However, KAO went by a different name at the time of its founding: Phi Kappa Chi, and with this came a conflict.
According to Ammen’s writings, three fraternities existed at Washington College when KAO was founded in 1865: Phi Kappa Psi, Beta Theta Pi, and Alpha Tau Omega. But the college only had 146 students in total, so the existing fraternities bitterly opposed the creation of a new one — resistance proved to be persistent.
“In May 1866, a member of Phi Kappa Psi sought an interview with Wood, and asked that the name, Phi Kappa Chi, be changed because of excessive similarity of names and badges. The shields of the two societies were of the same shape, and the names differed in only one letter, with the alleged result of confusion and inconvenience for pledged men. It was urged also that the new fraternity should abandon its undertaking, as being hopeless, by reason of paucity of fraternity material. ‘Two others,’ it was argued, ‘started here before the Civil War; both went down.’ (Ammen, 1922).
Wood refused to abandon forming Phi Kappa Chi and its badges, but he did agree to change the name, which ultimately became the Kappa Alpha Order. But in Ammen’s eyes, this was not enough.
According to a 1922 biography titled Samuel Zenas Ammen and the Kappa Alpha Order, written by then editor for the Kappa Alpha Journal, William Kavanaugh Doty, KAO lacked clear direction and substance from its genesis. This shocked Ammen on account with his experience with and admiration for Freemasonry. So Ammen sought to change this almost immediately upon his initiation into the fraternity.
“Mr. Ammen, already familiar with the splendid ceremonials of Masonry, ‘was impressed with the inadequacy of the Ritual, and at once urged the necessity of improvement.” Certain grave shortcomings in the Ritual were perceived: he thought it lacking in dramatic interest ; it was unimpressive. He knew that to be effective a ritual must tell a story-must touch the heart — with appropriate action.’” (Kavanaugh, 1922).
KAO is important mostly because of its foundational hallmarks and traditions, many of which would go on to help form what is arguably America’s most proverbial terrorist group, the first Ku Klux Klan.
A “Circle” of boredom and hate
[Author’s note: while the Ku Klux Klan is often thought of as one ever-present organization, it is worth pointing out that most historians discuss the KKK in a two-part fashion. This is because the First KKK came to be during post-Civil War “Radical Reconstruction” and was more or less non-existent by the turn of the century. The Second KKK was a revival of its postwar predecessor and did not form until the late 1920s. As such, it is important to note that any reference to the KKK in this article is only in reference to the first, postwar KKK.]
Kuklos Adelphon was a secret fraternity founded in 1812 at the University of North Carolina. But, thanks partly to the Anti-Masonic movement of the early-to-mid 1800s, Kuklos Adelphon had a falling out and was all but disbanded by 1855. KAO formed ten years later, in 1865, following the end of the Civil War.
Many historians have called KAO a spiritual compatriot to the KKK. Some onlookers argue this is untrue. But that argument falls flat when reading Kavanaugh’s 1922 biography of Ammen.
In explaining what inspired Ammen and his brothers to continue the formation of KAO against the wishes of their classmates, Kavanaugh notes a similarity in the driving spirit of KAO and the Klan:
“In its means to an end, their Fraternity [sic] differed thus widely from another order then forming in the South. The Ku Klux Klan was of contemporaneous origin and had an identity of purpose with Kappa Alpha; but the Klan arrived at its ends by the institution of force against force, by interposing might against might, and by curbing the influence of the arms of an alien army in whatever manner the exigencies of the time seemed to require — exitus acta probat. The Klan appealed to fear and to the wholesome dread and respect inspired by a mysterious and unconquerable physical power; Kappa Alpha appealed to character, born of conviction to principle, which under stress and trial comes to its finest fruition. ‘Adversity doth best discover virtue.’” (Doty, 1922).
What is undeniable is that Kuklos Adelphon laid much of the groundwork for the formation of the first KKK. A March 1975 report from the Illinois Legislative Investigative Commission tells the history in abbreviated detail:
“Originally the Ku Klux Klan was established innocuously enough as a social organization by six ex-Confederate officers in the small Southern town of Pulaski, Tennessee. In the spring or early summer of 1866 the six men gathered one evening in the Pulaski law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones, the father of one of the founders, to create their new fraternity. All of the men were fairly well educated, members of prominent families in the area, but they were bored. They wanted to form some organization that could offer them entertainment in their spare time.
Consequently, they found an organization patterned after a previously prominent college fraternity, Kuklos Adelphon. They adopted the basic ritual of this fraternity with some changes. They took the first part of the name, Kuklos, Greek for circle or band, altered it slightly to Kuklux and added Klan for alliterative appeal. Thus the Ku Klux Klan was born.”
These six ex-Confederates included: James R. Crowe, J. Calvin Jones (son of Judge Thomas M. Jones), John B. Kennedy, John C. Lester, Frank O. McCord, and Richard R. Reed. All six men had also been members of a college fraternity before the war.
Some historians argue the first KKK was not necessarily formed to terrorize newly-freed slaves right from its start. In many ways, the first KKK was nothing more than a fraternal organization when it was first established.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, it was the boredom of small-town life that led these six young men to create their secret society, with a distinct goal of creating “something unusual and mysterious.” Because the founders were all college-educated and had been fraternity members while in school, they turned to the Greek language to achieve this.
“The selection of the name, chance though it was, had a great deal to do with the Klan’s early success. Something about the sound aroused curiosity and gave the fledgling club an immediate air of mystery, as did the initials K.K.K., which were soon to take on such terrifying significance.” (SPLC, 2011).
To celebrate the founding of their new organization, the founders then supposedly took part in a raucous midnight ride, which soon became a staple tradition.
“[…] they decided to do a bit of showing off, and so disguised themselves in sheets and galloped their horses through the quiet streets of tiny Pulaski. their [sic] ride created such a stir that the men decided to adopt the sheets as the official regalia of the Ku Klux Klan, and they added to the effect by donning grotesque masks and tall pointed hats.” (SPLC, 2011).
To further accomplish the air of mysticism and secrecy, the six men also created a series of hallmarks and rituals, many of which are common of fraternities today. This included secret handshakes and dramatic titles, such as “Grand Cyclops,” “Grand Turk,” and “Nighthawks.”
Most importantly, the founders kept admission to the Klan highly guarded.
“It maintained secrecy of its membership by admitting only those people known and vouched for by other members and by requiring each new member to swear never to reveal the secrets of the group to outsiders. These requirements were not unlike the requirements of other secret societies and fraternities then and now.” (Illinois Legislative Investigative Commission, 1975).
Initiation rituals were also a staple tradition, which bears a striking resemblance to what many would call “hazing.”
“They also performed elaborate initiation ceremonies for new members. Similar to the hazing popular in college fraternities, the ceremony consisted of blindfolding the candidate, subjecting him to a series of silly oaths and rough handling, and finally bringing him before a ‘royal altar’ where he was to be invested with a ‘royal crown.’ The altar turned out to be a mirror and the crown two large donkey’s ears.” (SPLC, 2011).
But, by 1867, the first Klan had become something entirely different. Most researchers credit this as having been caused by a sharp increase in new members.
“Had that been all there was to the Ku Klux Klan, it probably would have disappeared as quietly as it was born. But at some point in early 1866, the club added new members from nearby towns and began to have a chilling effect on local blacks. The intimidating night rides were soon the centerpiece of the hooded order: bands of white-sheeted ghouls paid late night visits to black homes, admonishing the terrified occupants to behave themselves and threatening more visits if they didn’t. It didn’t take long for the threats to be converted into violence against blacks who insisted on exercising their new rights and freedom. Before its six founders realized what had happened, the Ku Klux Klan had become something they may not have originally intended — something deadly serious.” (SPLC, 2011).
Ultimately, the Klan formed into an insurgent terrorist group focused mainly on the formerly Confederate states. The traditions and rituals never disappeared, however — it remained a fraternal organization but re-centered itself onto violence. Its core unifying ideology was largely born of the economic impacts of postwar reconstruction, as well as irrational white fear of suffrage for newly-freed slaves.
For more information on the history of the Ku Klux Klan and how it has shaped white supremacy in America, visit the link above.
Part Three: A Lost Cause for Conclusion
What is someone to learn from all this information?
There are a lot of possible directions to go in. One could use this as reasoning to stay away from college fraternities because they have so many similarities to the Klan. One could also tie this back to how many fraternities in the U.S. have been suspended for accusations of racism and how they almost always seem to come back eventually. One could go so deep as to mention how countless police precincts throughout history are swarming with officers who are affiliated with the Klan, and how troublesome it is that the police even have a fraternity of their own — which is also their labor union.
Alas, it all feels too obvious. Researchers, historians, and activists have been documenting the links between fraternities and hateful influences for decades. The truth is that this information is not at all novel, so drawing conclusions is behind the punch — for that, you’re better off reading the conclusions made by the sources used to create this article.
Secret societies and fraternal organizations are not inherently flawed, but they are easily flawed by lapses in human judgment. And it’s somewhat of a natural human instinct to want to surround oneself with a select group of people who hold a common interest. There are plenty of examples of organizations that can be considered secret societies which have done many good things. But there are just as many which have done terrible things, and there are also some which are founded upon undeniably terrible ideas which still permeate their traditions. There is not a single one which is completely without flaw — just as we as humans are infinitely flawed, so are the institutions we build around ourselves.
So we’re left asking a question: what do we do about secret societies in our modern world, especially the bad ones?
KAO is still active today and is still based in Lexington, Virginia. In fact, there are KAO chapters at colleges all across the South.
At writing, there are 11 active KAO chapters in some of Virginia’s most high-profile colleges. These include: George Mason University, Hampden-Sydney College, James Madison University, Old Dominion University, Randolph-Macon College, Roanoke College, University of Richmond, University of Virginia, Washington & Lee University, the College of William & Mary, and Virginia Tech.
With such a deep-rooted history of racism and Confederate idolization, it begs the question of how KAO continues to exist with such pervasion. Perhaps the most likely answer is not a very surprising one — that being the ever-ruinous effects of Lost Cause ideology and propaganda.
Countless historical documents, such as Mildred Lewis Rutherford’s infamous A Measuring Rod, have continuously demonstrated the many ways in which Confederate leaders influenced education curriculums to provide a greatly disingenuous, falsified, and whitewashed look at slavery, the Civil War, and Confederate secession. This phenomenon came to be known as the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
Over the course of years, the effects of this phenomenon become effervescently noticeable. In Southern education systems, generations of students have been taken by a set of hands with vested interests. They have been taught the American Civil War was a cut-and-dried issue, and this has been achieved by pushing three central illusions into the American lexicon:
- that the war was a conflict over states rights to govern, not slavery.
- that slaves respected their masters and the masters did likewise.
- that secession from the Union was not a form of rebellion nor treason, but of heroism and patriotism.
However, Lost Cause ideology is a campaign which stretches far beyond education systems — it is, as the name suggests, a poisonous ideology; an identity that influences one’s entire outlook on life, leading people to misunderstand and bastardize what it means to be an American.
A 2020 dissertation from Whitney Jordan Adams of Clemson University lays this out in immense detail:
“Kappa Alpha shrouds their history just enough, even to its members as ‘insiders,’ that a broader critique of Lost Cause rhetoric is somewhat lost. Lee, plantation culture, and the Confederate battle flag are synecdoches for the white privilege of membership; reasoning into broader aspects of Southern history is mostly lost in the defensive arguments that members often espouse.” (Adams, 2020).
A brief look at the website for KAO’s national chapter demonstrates this quite effectively. The website’s “history” page features articles which explain the formation of KAO at Washington & Lee University and provide background on the fraternity’s founders. There is no mention of Kuklos Adelphon in any of these articles. Indeed, their history has been whitewashed and scrubbed clean — on their webpage titled “Our Founding Fathers,” the word “confederate” also does not appear once.
KAO is, for better or for worse, slowly undergoing a transformation that many other fraternities are also undergoing at this time. In a world where intolerance for racism is continuously becoming more mainstream, organizations like KAO represent a difficult decision many of these institutions now must face: abandoning an antiquated idea or repackaging that idea with a modern spin.
And, while this decision is not an easy one to make, continued inaction would be even more ruinous and controversial than either option as time goes on.
“Kappa Alpha Order reminds us that universities in large part reflect culture in ways that lock in place older notions of gender by excluding women from important circles of power, class by excluding non-dues-paying members and most obviously race, by de facto excluding minority students. Since Kappa Alpha’s founding, the fraternity has initiated well over 150,000 members (Huston). Kappa Alpha’s influence on the cultural makeup of the South and college campuses is undeniable, yet scholars of Southern history and culture have done little to include them alongside the Klan or Confederate groups as primary narrators of the Lost Cause. And yet Kappa Alpha is directly related to Lost Cause nostalgia and Confederate ideology.” (Adams, 2020).
Cutting to the chase already, a seldom-discussed yet perhaps infinitely crucial aspect of this whole discussion is fascism. Many researchers of fascism, such as Robert Paxton, have suggested that the world’s first instance of what can be considered fascism was the first KKK.
As for college fraternities, especially KAO, fascism may sound like a far cry from reality. The irony here is that very perspective is actually evidence of an argument which goes against what it posits. This is because the issue at hand with fraternities bears a striking resemblance to the sociological concept of cultural hegemony and manufactured consent — a Marxist principle that social elites always dictate a society’s appearance because the elite wield all power and control over the dissemination of ideas and thought. And this dichotomy is only possible in America because of Lost Cause ideology.
“Through my time at the University of South Carolina, I was able to personally experience the power that Kappa Alpha held as an institutionally supported organization. This relates to the notion of Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), explored in his 1970 essay ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.’ Althusser calls ‘Ideological State Apparatuses a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions.’ Public and private schools are part of this ISA, in what Althusser terms the ‘educational ISA.’ Fraternal organizations like Kappa Alpha, part of the larger educational ISA, function by ideology. Althusser claims that Ideological State Apparatuses ‘also function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but only ultimately, this is very attenuated and concealed, even symbolic.’ They reinforce ‘ideal’ social formations, and in the case of KA the fraternity is reproducing elitism as many former members of the fraternity enter into local and state politics. For example, the University of South Carolina’s Kappa Alpha website lists former Congressmen Robert W. Hemphill and Floyd Spence as some of their distinguished alumni (‘Rho Chapter’).” (Adams, 2020).
The idea of cultural hegemony and manufactured consent comes from Italian Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci, who theorized the concept while serving a prison sentence under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. This is important to note because the Lost Cause ideology is among the most effective weapons at hand for successfully creating fascism in America. If one were to examine how the Lost Cause ideology has affected the mindsets of Americans over a long term, it would be a clear example of cultural hegemony and manufactured consent for white supremacy.
But, many people think of Lost Cause ideology purely within the confines of public education, which is not at all inaccurate. Part of this is because education is so impactful in shaping a country’s collective understanding of a topical issue. However, framing Lost Cause ideology as an issue purely of educational curriculum is a bit disingenuous because that only provides a glimpse of the full problem at hand.
Lost Cause ideology was and still is extremely successful at achieving what it sought out to do because of cultural hegemony and manufactured consent. Virginia is yet again a great example here, because it houses more Confederate symbols in public spaces than any other state; 244 according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 2020.
One of these symbols is the name of the college KAO formed at — Washington & Lee University. Earlier this month, the school’s Board of Trustees voted 22–6 against renaming the school, and each member’s vote was kept anonymous to the public. To make matters worse, of the board’s 28 members, more than 3/4ths are white and 23 are male. The iron grip of the Lost Cause’s manufactured consent continues to squeeze tighter, as it has for over a century now.
The aforementioned writings of KAO’s practical founder, Samuel Zenas Ammen, from 1922, demonstrates this as well. While explaining the early history of KAO, Ammen tries to debunk the link between it and Kuklos Adelphon with what seems like plausible deniability:
“This was effected by substituting K.A. on the scroll of the badge for Phi Kappa Chi. Our surviving founders do not remember the source of the name K.A., nor its original meaning. Outsiders guessed it meant Kuklos Adelphon, but of this there is no convincing evidence. No meaning of the letters was given [sic] me at my initiation. Other founders have assured me that the guesses of outsiders were wrong. One of them has told me that the original meaning was English, not Greek. The anomaly of a supposed Greek-letter society having an English name, might perhaps account for a degree of reticence. The change of name in the first week of May, 1866, was the only change made. The old ritual continued in use for a time. Similarly, in my opinion, the badge continued in use, K.A. displacing the three Greek initials.” (Ammen, 1922).
Plenty of historical records and academic research have provided compelling evidence which suggests KAO’s name and iconography was at least somewhat, if not entirely, inspired by Kuklos Adelphon. Some may doubt this, likely because there is yet to be a strong argument that disproves the link between Kuklos Adelphon and the first KKK. In other words, it’s intentional for the sake of PR.
However, whether or not this is true more or less takes a back seat to the undeniable — that KAO formed in admiration for Lee, who was a separatist rebel that would rather see his home state of Virginia suffer the horrors of war than have the Commonwealth give up its slaves. KAO’s founders were also obvious white supremacists, so how much Kuklos Adelphon actually influenced the founding is frankly nothing more than anecdote anyway.
What truly matters is knowing in the first place that these organizations find their roots in ideas that are hateful and disingenuous. Is it possible that organizations such as Phi Beta Kappa and maybe even KAO do not actively seek to uphold white supremacy in 2021? Perhaps — an argument could certainly be made for historically multicultural fraternities, and even Phi Beta Kappa. However, most if not all of these organizations do contribute to the problem in some manner; chiefly through self-serving classism by proxy of their sponsoring educational institution.
This is the reason discussing the effects of Lost Cause ideology is important: because its effect on societal progression is disastrously prohibitive. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and its effects make discussing why it is a dangerous ideology a non-starter for many people. It hides like a snake in the grass — ready to strike at any moment, in any context that is even remotely associated with the American Civil War and slavery’s impact on our country’s modern state of affairs. It makes it so something as conspicuous as a monument, or as inconspicuous as a white lie, is imperceptibly palatable.
