Ten Dollars to Hate: The Texas Man Who Fought the Klan (Volume 23)

Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life, sponsored by Texas A&M University-Commerce

by Patricia Bernstein

Ten Dollars to Hate tells the story of the massive Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s—by far the most “successful” incarnation since its inception in the ashes of the Civil War—and the first prosecutor in the nation to successfully convict and jail Klan members. Dan Moody, a twenty-nine-year-old Texas district attorney, demonstrated that Klansmen could be punished for taking the law into their own hands—in this case, for the vicious flogging of a young World War I veteran.

The 1920s Klan numbered in the millions and infiltrated politics and law enforcement across the United States, not just in the Deep South. Several states elected Klan-sponsored governors and US senators. Klansmen engaged in extreme violence against whites as well as blacks, promoted outrageous bigotry against various ethnic groups, and boycotted non-Klan businesses.

A few courageous public officials tried to make Klansmen pay for their crimes, notably after Klan assaults in California and Texas and two torture-murders in Louisiana. All failed until September 1923 when Dan Moody convicted and won significant prison time for five Klansmen in a tense courtroom in Georgetown, Texas. Moody became a national sensation overnight and went on to become the youngest governor of Texas at the age of 33.

The Georgetown cases were the beginning of the end for this iteration of the Klan. Two years later, the head of the Klan in Indiana was convicted of murdering a young woman.  Membership dwindled almost as quickly as it had grown, but the Klan’s poisonous influence lingered through the decades that followed.   Ten Dollars to Hate explores this pivotal—and brutal—chapter in the history of America.

384 pages, Hardcover

Published January 20, 2017

About the author

After earning a Degree of Distinction in American Studies from Smith College, Patricia Bernstein founded her public relations agency in Houston.
In 2018, her third book was named a Finalist for an award from the Texas Institute of Letters. The Austin American Statesman named the book to a list of 53 of the best books ever written about Texas. Patricia's nonfiction is previously published by Simon & Schuster and Texas A&M University Press.
A Noble Cunning is her debut novel and was the winner in the American Book Fest category of Religious Fiction and a finalist in the categories of Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction and Inspirational Fiction.
Today Patricia lives in Houston with her husband, journalist Alan Bernstein, where she pursues another great artistic love, singing with Opera in the Heights and other organizations. She also basks in the glory of her three amazing daughters.

Reviews

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Patricia Bernstein is not a disciplined historian, and it shows in this episodic and somewhat rambling account of the second KKK, its rise in Texas, and its conjunction with the career of Texas Governor Dan Moody. Bernstein tracks the origin of the KKK in 1915, as a cult spinoff of "The Birth of a Nation," and its timeliness in the post-WWI world of red scares and xenophobia, detailing many of its period atrocities. Well and fine, though this has been done at length elsewhere. Unlike the earlier Klan, which posited itself as a guerrilla resistance to Reconstruction and the rescue of white supremacy, its new incarnation seemed more like a '20s pyramid scheme run by hucksters. But thousands bought it: preachers and policemen and local bar-room bullies - all those in hundreds of local communities used to running their towns and its people their own way. But it also found resonance in big cities, like Dallas, where uprooted white working men from evangelical backgrounds could wage an authorized "class war" against "liberal elites." If this scenario sounds familiar, it's a sad reminder that the structures of US society haven't changed as much as we like to think; toxic divisiveness is nothing new. The ambivalence of mainstream opinion regarding "Hooded Americanism" - even those of white supremist inclinations - ensured that undisciplined terrorism had little chance in American political life. Fortunately this lesson endures, and will guarantee the wild elements of post-2016 won't long prosper either.

Young Dan Moody built his career on the pushback of Texas business elites ("liberalism" being relative). In an age when the South was widely condemned for lynchings and chain gangs, when smalltown America was mercilessly ridiculed by H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis' "Babbitt," state leaders like Moody and LBJ's father, Sam, fought tooth and nail to recast their state as a vanguard of progress and modern culture. The contest was a draw, and former allies eventually turned sour. But Moody's legacy must be remembered by urban non-southerners quick to equate the Klan with the region and its people.

An ironic note in Moody's career - not explored in the book - was the disastrous riot in Sherman, Texas, in election year 1930. The Grayson County courthouse was burned and dynamited in a violent, Klan-led lynching, necessitating the dispatch of seasoned Rangers like Captain Frank Hamer and the Texas National Guard. But Moody's desire to avoid bloodshed only emboldened the mob into further destruction. Moody was castigated as "Lyncher Dan" by a press which surely knew better, considering his anti-Klan career. His political enemies thus used his caution against him as surely as they would have exploited any firm military action. Gleefully branded a hypocrite this "hesitation" helped end his governorship. He retired into private life as a distinguished attorney, never again to hold a responsible public position in Texas political life. Sadly, his career as an oil and gas lawyer pushed him to the right as an anti-New Deal Texas "Dixiecrat," aligned with the very forces he'd once opposed. To his mind, however, there was still a difference between embarrassing Klan vigilantism and "civilized" white rule.

A good read - despite the author's floundering - reminding us that the past is not really the "other country" many smugly suppose.

[S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and filled with quite a few gruesome details about the reality of the second wave KKK attacks on other people.

My only complaint is becoming typical from me, in regards to historical non-fiction--the personal opinions of authors (whether it is about what a person looked like, or how a modern political figure is or isn't like a historical figure) do not belong in historical non-fiction. They belong in a personal blog, in a Facebook post, on a personal twitter. Not in published works. I don't need to know that you think someone could not possibly have been charming because they are overweight and didn't smile for one picture (?!?), etc. and so forth.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book very hard to read, hard to believe there were men so evil, but a book that needed to be written. Those were dark days in the early 1920's in Texas. Fortunately, there were still courageous men who stood up to the Klan and Dan Moody, a young lawyer later to the governor of Texas, was prominent among them.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book painstakingly went through the history of the rise of the KKK. This important knowledge was conveyed in a way that exposed the Jim Crow south as a movement that nearly toppled the country. An extraordinary piece of work that really makes you think. Well done.

[Jaime Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book hoping it was about my grandfather, who reported in Klan doings under a pseudonym. The Klan was still very active in my childhood years. Their deeds are hard to read about but reading about those who put them in their place was uplifting:

[Stephen Boiko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and sad, sad, sad.

[Miracle Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly riveting and timely. Should be part of the standard curriculum for junior high Texas history classes.

[Loree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good history to know. At times this book seemed to drag for me.

[Mills College Library]

322.420973 B5317 2017