It is commonly said that art imitates life, and Comic books are no exception. For example, notable figures and events such as Howard Hughes, Jack Kirby, David Bowie, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Patriot Act influenced the creation of Iron Man, The Thing, Lucifer, the X-Men, and Marvel's Civil War, respectively.
However, what many forget is that this relationship between the fantastic and the mundane is not one-sided. Reality can be just as vulnerable to the influence of fiction, which can cause tangible effects felt by oblivious everyday people. Such was the case in 1946 when Superman took down the KKK in both the fictional city of Metropolis and the actual American South with the help of a radio show, a folk writer, and a dangerous undercover mission to unveil the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.
Postwar Racial Anxiety and the Rise of the Man of Steel
With the Second World War over and humanity attempting to resume its regularly scheduled programming, racial tensions in the United States continued to boil over the proverbial melting pot. This rising racial tension would provide a group known as the Ku Klux Klan with the opportunity for resurgence.
For those unfamiliar, the Ku Klux Klan otherwise known as the KKK, is a hate organization composed of disgruntled right-wing white men (and at times their families) who blame minorities for their troubles and use a combination of prejudiced rhetoric, poor costuming choices, and violence to instill fear in minority populations to further their goal of white supremacy.
The name Ku Klux Klan is believed to be sourced from the Greek word kyklos or kuklos (κύκλος), meaning circle or band. This name, as well as their many rituals and customs, were intended to appear esoteric and lend them an air of mystery.
This initially worked, but now has the opposite effect when one realizes that their name is rooted in the inability of their clumsy southern drawls to pronounce an ironically foreign word redundant to their name anyways given their identification as a clan purposely misspelled as "Klan" in order to further force an ineffectual alliteration.
It's all rather poorly thought out and imbecilic, which you'll see is a recurring theme with the KKK, or more accurately, their main defining quality. This is not surprising considering their preference for wearing dunce caps and impractical white robes
This idiocy all started in the aftermath of the Civil War among failed southern rebels who had their initial KKK quashed by the government. They sprouted up again like a cold sore jutting out on America's bottom lip in the early 20th century, only to repeat their organization's penchant for failure by getting stamped out by the government yet again.
KKK Resurgence in the 1930s-40s
This history of failure did not dissuade many men from joining the racist organization. Many would be drawn in by curiosity over the Klan’s mysterious practices, anonymity, and rhetoric blaming racial equality as the cause of their inability to fulfill their destinies of success and affluence, which they believed they were entitled to as white protestant American men.
After all, why would these paragons of white supremacy ever consider that their problems would be caused by something like their own shortcomings? They would be yet another group of aggravated bigots that prove it is easier to stomach your mediocrity by pushing down on those a rung lower on the social ladder.
As with most assemblies of right-wing white supremacist nationalists, the KKK would learn that there are consequences that come with being a bigot, but from a source both unexpected yet appropriate. The man of steel. The son of Krypton. The blue Boy Scout. Superman.
The Adventures of Superman Radio Show
The Adventures of Superman radio serial was one of the most popular programs across America in the 1940s and was built on the success of Superman in Action Comics first released in 1938.
Despite only relaying stories of Superman’s escapades through audio and the theatre of the mind, the Adventures of Superman managed to capture the imagination of a generation of children before the advent of television and would actually contribute a variety of elements to Superman’s story that would become mainstays. Characters like Jimmy Olsen and Perry White as well as Kryptonite were all originated in The Adventures of Superman radio show instead of the comics.
By 1946 the war was over and Superman had knocked out the fuhrer and a coterie of Nazi ne’er do wells with his trademark moxie. The show needed a fresh new antagonist for their daring hero to combat to keep the audience and sponsors happy. It was at this point that the runners of the show were contacted by a man named Stetson Kennedy who would provide just what they were looking for.
Stetson Kennedy: Civil Rights Activist, Folklorist, KKK Infiltrator
William Stetson Kennedy was born in 1916 Jacksonville, Florida to an affluent white southern family descended from plantation owners and Confederate officers.
His mother was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization bent on perpetuating a “lost cause” memory of the Confederacy that glorifies a rebellion predicated on protecting the legal right to own slaves. Their lauding of the KKK in the organization’s past literature and funding of a monument in their honor pretty much seals the deal on their stance on racial egalitarianism. Stetson’s uncle also was a high-ranking member of the KKK putting to rest any doubts regarding his family’s bias towards racial intolerance.
Despite this pedigree, Stetson would become a man notable for fighting to undo the Southern institutional bigotry his ancestors fought for. Stetson credits this change in course to a specific event in his childhood.
Like many children of Southern aristocrats, Stetson was raised more by his family’s African American maid known as “Flo” than by his actual parents. In Stetson’s youth, Flo was attacked by several members of the KKK who beat and assaulted her after she had talked back to a white bus driver about being given the incorrect change.
Seeing a maternal figure attacked like this because of something so trivial left an indelible impact on Stetson. Children who witness their parental figures harmed whether it's in a Gotham alley, a dying planet, or Jacksonville, Florida tend to be shaped by such intense events.
Southern Exposure and The Klan Unmasked
Stetson Kennedy grew up to become a prolific chronicler of Florida folk history, with books such as Palmetto Country that recounted just about every local tall tale, legend, and folk story typically recounted orally from Key West to Pensacola. All through that time, his disdain for Jim Crow practices persisted.
After being sidelined during WW2 on account of a bad back, Stetson still felt the desire to contribute somehow. Stetson Kennedy realized that he didn’t have to take a boat to Europe to fight conservative hypernationalist racists. There were (and still are) plenty in the country that thrive in secrecy and pose a threat to democracy and the safety of marginalized groups.
Going by the alias John S. Perkins, Stetson in 1946 would pose as a disgruntled encyclopedia salesman to join the KKK and infiltrate the organization alongside several other collaborators to uncover their secrets. He would not stop with the Klan and would also go on to infiltrate another hate group known as the Columbians in Atlanta known for being among the earliest American neo nazi organizations.
Methods of verifying identity before the internet were astonishingly inept which allowed Stetson to surreptitiously gather a trove of information regarding the group’s practices like code words, meeting places, and crimes perpetrated against minority groups.
Stetson Kennedy and Superman
Uncovering KKK secrets is one thing but effectively utilizing them in the fight against right-wing extremism is another complicated matter entirely. In his infiltration of the KKK, Stetson discovered that he had underestimated the extent of police and government official membership within the organization. It turns out that the shoes and trousers of a police uniform tend to stand out against the backdrop of a solid white robe.
Barring only a select few officials he could trust, Stetson’s disclosure of KKK secrets would require more creativity. It was at this point that he contacted Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the producers of the Adventures of Superman radio show.
Stetson’s understanding of the power of a good story due to his folk studies background helped him pitch the idea of lambasting the KKK by portraying them as the newest goons for Superman to take down. With a need for a new villain and the idea’s compatibility with the ideals of Superman, the proposal was given a green light.
The Adventures of Superman: The Clan of the Fiery Cross
In June of 1946, Superman took down a group of racists known as “The Clan of the Fiery Cross” who bore a striking but legally distinct resemblance to the KKK. The new story arc would do everything it could to portray them as a group of bumbling idiots equated to the nazis beaten down previously much to the chagrin of many KKK members who viewed themselves as patriots.
The story arc revealed that the leadership of the Clan of the Fiery Cross did not actually buy into the rhetoric they peddled, and simply used it as a means to sucker racists into buying robes and paying dues they got a cut from.
Stetson Kennedy’s contributions would include the various codewords, terminology, and rituals of the KKK that at the time were particularly esoteric but in the context of a children's superhero radio show made them look asinine.
We take for granted the fact that we have a plethora of easily accessible knowledge regarding how a lot of these organizations work but in the context of the 1940s, the KKK self-named “invisible empire” really did have a menacing effect on the populace. They purposely used this secrecy to make themselves racist bogeymen in what ultimately is a textbook example of domestic terrorism.
This of course became a lot more difficult to pull off when an alien in blue spandex and a cape was beating up a group that sounded exactly like yours on the radio in a show that revealed your group had a bizarre penchant for using the letters “KL” in all their terminology. It is hard to take a terrorist organization seriously when they call their gatherings “klonvocations” and their initiation fee a “klecktoken”.
The Adventure of Superman’s Consequences Both Short and Long-Term
Following the airing of the Clan of the Fiery Cross story arc, KKK membership reportedly took a significant hit since potential recruits were apprehensive about joining an organization that had failed to prevent its secretive practices from being exposed but had also been relegated to a punchline for children, many of which belonged to members and potential recruits.
We know for a fact that The Adventures of Superman was effective in striking a nerve with the KKK since they actively called for a boycott of the radio show’s sponsor, Kellogg's PEP Cereal due to outrage over the unflattering portrayal of their organization. This boycott went about as well as you would expect and had no effect on sales of the Superman radio serial’s cereal sponsor.
The KKK would never reach the level of influence it had before and still continues to decline in membership to this day. What was once a powerful Southern terror organization (the first organized American terrorist movement) with a tangible effect on politics would never recover leaving only a scattering of decentralized chapters and spinoffs relegated to the far reaches of rural America.
The Adventures of Superman is of course not the sole reason for this. Many individuals and organizations played a role in calling out, prosecuting, and even fighting the KKK in the mid-20th century resulting in their decline.
However, the fact that Superman did play a role in destroying the mystique and secrecy of the organization and making them scatter like cockroaches under a flashlight proves that fiction has the power to fight bigotry here in the real world.
Fighting Bigotry Beyond the Adventures of Superman
The Adventures of Superman Radio show was aired over half a century ago but racial inequality not only affects millions across America but is still a polarizing issue in the United States politics to this day.
New hate organizations have crawled out from the cesspits of the internet as well as new demagogues using racial scapegoating to empower themselves. Against this backdrop, remembering the story of Superman fighting the KKK is more necessary than ever which is why the publishing of Superman Smashes the Klan as a graphic novel by DC Comics is something I recommend to everyone.
Superman Smashes the Klan was released in 2019 by Gene Luen Yang as an adaptation of the Superman and the Clan of the Fiery Cross storyline faithful to the old show but revised to smooth out some of the edges to better present a surprisingly relevant story. Despite the age of the material, Superman Smashes the Klan went on to win several accolades such as the 2020 Harvey Award for Best Young Adult Book, the Mike Wieringo Spirit Award, and the 2021 Eisner Awards for Best Publication for Kids and Best Adaptation from Another Medium.
Superman is not alone in creating positive change through the medium of comics. The X-Men’s God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and Maus by Art Spiegelman, show that the storytelling of comics can influence the world and make it just a little better. Consider picking up one of these stories and other similar works at your local bookstore or library. Who knows, you might learn something.