Note: This story by the late Ernie Pyle historian Owen Johnson was originally published in the Winter 2020 Friends of Ernie Pyle newsletter.
Partially in response to a tweet by an Indiana University student this spring that Ernie Pyle must have held racist views, I have been looking at the historical evidence to ascertain Pyle’s thinking about Black people as expressed in his columns, or at details of his life that might help us draw some conclusions. Part of the story takes place in Indiana.
For complicated reasons — a falling out with a journalism professor and a failing romance — Pyle left Indiana University in January 1923, a semester short of graduation. to take a position at the La Porte Herald in northern Indiana.
* * *
Pyle arrived in La Porte in late January 1923 to join a five-member staff, all of them college-educated, a rarity for the time. He took up residence in the YMCA and reported to the Herald, which assigned him to a “City Beat,” including the court house, the fire and police departments, City Hall and a few other departments, just about the time the Ku Klux Klan was trying to organize in town. Right when he arrived the Klan mailed out invitations to some residents of the city:
As a red blooded, 100 per cent American (which your friends state you are) you will be given an opportunity to hear the REAL TRUTH about the GREATEST MOVEMENT of all time in the history of our Glorious country, at an Admission by THIS CARD ONLY. DISCUSS THIS WITH NO ONE.
Ray E. Smith, the City Editor, apparently came into possession of one of the invitations and assigned Pyle to report on the meeting. Because Pyle was such a newbie, he wasn’t recognized as he took notes and collected quotations from the Klan organizers.
Perhaps unbeknownst to him, Pyle had allies. The meeting took place in Richter Hall, above the offices of the La Porte Gas and Electric Co. Several cars parked in front of the building with their headlights shining on the entrance to deter people from attending. A crowd also gathered to demonstrate their opposition to the Klan and scare people away. One car of would-be Klansmen decided not to stop when it saw the gauntlet. Twenty-two men walked up the stairs to the meeting room, but eight were turned away. One report had it that only six of the remaining 14 were potential recruits, the others already being members of the Klan. Five cars of Klansmen showed up in cars with licenses from Elkhart, South Bend and Michigan City.
Pyle “loitered in the . . . hallways long enough to catch the drift of the Klan’s grand-opening plans” presented by C. E. Weller of Kokomo. “A few local merchants and residents who attended the meeting that day, hoping to avoid recognition, were somewhat shocked the next day to read an account of the meeting in The Herald.”
After the meeting, several men followed Pyle back to his room in the Y. When he told them that he was on assignment for the Herald they warned him not to publish anything. Pyle refused, perhaps because he knew he had the support of his editor. His article appeared on the front page of the Jan. 31 edition.
“We revealed some of the things the Klan didn’t want known, which had a great bearing on their failure to get organized here,” Pyle boasted. “They found out who the reporter was that got the dope, and now all the ‘klanners’ are talking about it.”
Indiana was a center of Klan activity in the 1920s. Some 300,000 men, about a third of adult white males in the state, were members. Its members played important roles in the state’s politics during much of the decade, although the Klan never completely controlled the state. The police chief in Michigan City claimed that he was removed from his job because he refused to join the Klan; in fact, the organization disagreed with his principles.
The Klan primarily opposed Catholics and Jews, as the number of Blacks outside the larger towns and cities was small. The 1920 census listed only 127 “Negroes” among La Porte’s population of 15,158.
For a number of years, Indiana had “Sundown Towns,” where people of color were warned not to spend the night. Dana, Bloomington and La Porte were not included on Loewe’s website list of 240 sundown towns in Indiana.
Pyle’s courage in his reporting in La Porte might have reflected his upbringing:
“My mother is a devout Methodist and a prohibitionist. Yet she and my father voted for Al Smith in 1928, because they thought he was a better man than Hoover. Some of their neighbors wouldn’t speak to them for months because they voted for a Catholic and a wet. But they didn’t care. They are always doing things they think are right.” (Sept. 25, 1935 column)
Pyle and his family were ahead of the time in their thinking about race.
— Owen Johnson, historian, associate professor emeritus, Indiana University and author of “At Home with Ernie Pyle.”
