The Klan Rags: A true story of a fight against bigotry and for freedom
This is a true story about my great-uncle, Louis Miller, my
grandfather's younger brother. I put it out now because we need to
remember that people fought to preserve freedom and against hatred,
bigotry and racism. Published many years ago in a Huntsville, AL paper.
The Klan Rags
The Ku Klux Klan was all-powerful in Huntsville. It controlled the politicians, made its own laws and had its own judges and juries.
No one dared oppose them except for one young Jewish emigrant who worked as a rag dealer.
He had traveled thousands of miles to come to the land of the free and no one was going to take his dream away from him.
If Louis Miller had to fight for the right to call Huntsville his home he was ready.
By Larry Weiss
When Louis Miller, owner of the Tennessee Poultry and Hide Company, arrived at work one morning sometime in the 1920s his attention was riveted by a crude handwritten notice nailed to the front door. "GET OUT OF TOWN. [Signed] KU KLUX KLAN."
Feelings of shock, anger and disappointment clouded his mind as he read and then reread the scrap of paper.
He had thought America was going to be different.
Many years later Miller told his son Buddy, how he felt after he read the notice: "I was mad as hell. I had traveled half way around the world to find a place where I could live in freedom, and I'll be damned if I was going to let those sons of b..... s run me out of Huntsville!"
Miller had immigrated to the United States in 1913. "Ever since I could remember, I wanted to leave Russia and come to America," he would tell his children in later years. In the Czar's Russia, Jews were periodically attacked by anti-Semitic thugs who stole property, burned homes and businesses, and vented their hate by murdering Jews. Louis only had a seventh grade education by the time he arrived in New York because anti-Jewish quotas in Minsk schools prevented him during some years from attending class.
Miller later said that the most beautiful sight he had ever seen was the Statue of Liberty as the ship which brought him to the United States pulled into the harbor of New York. The statue represented a dream that he had ever since he was "old enough to think." He wanted to come to this country, and now he was here. Freedom from quotas and murdering gangs. Here he was in America!
His father had been a Melamed in Minsk, Russia - a teacher who taught young boys Hebrew. It was an honorable profession, but very poorly paid. Just before Louis left Minsk to come to America, his father said to him, 'We have a lot of famous Rabbis and people well known in our family. If you change your name as most people do when they go to America, nobody will know who you are."
Label Mishkind - Louis Miller's name at birth - promised his dad that he wouldn’t change his name in America. It turned out, though, that Label couldn't keep his promise. He stayed with his older brother in Brooklyn who had already Americanized his own name to "Miller" when he first came to this country. Before Label could speak English people had already started calling him "Louis Miller" because of his brother. After some time, Label Mishkind legally changed his name to Louis Miller because everybody called him that anyway.
Miller thrived in the freedom of the new land. By day he worked for his brother who owned a small candy store, and by night he went to school to learn English and take citizenship classes. Patiently, he studied, worked, and saved his money, determined to become an American citizen. He had already fulfilled the dream for which generations of his family had prayed - he was in a country where a person was judged by his own merit and free to practice his own religious beliefs.
After a few years in New York, Louis ventured out to Paris, Tennessee, to visit a sister who lived there. His first exposure to Southern culture came as somewhat of a shock. He later laughed as he told the story
of how people he passed in the railroad station would smile and say, "Good morning, how are you." As he walked down the street complete strangers greeted him in a friendly manner. This was quite unusual, but certainly pleasant for the young emigrant. Miller chuckled in later years as he remembered his feelings, "I thought I must have looked like somebody they know, otherwise they wouldn't be speaking to me. In New York people who lived next door to each another rarely spoke to one another, much less complete strangers."
After Miller realized it had not been a case of mistaken identity, but rather that the South was simply a friendlier place than New York, he decided to settle here. Traveling down to Decatur, Alabama, he quickly found a job, and sent his brother a telegram asking him to pack up his stuff and send it south.
Hard work and attention to details soon made Miller a prized employee, and when his boss purchased another company in Huntsville in 1918, he asked Miller to manage it for him. The company, named the Tennessee Poultry and Hide Company, dealt in items such as poultry, hides, eggs, furs, wild roots, scrap iron, and wiping rags. The store quickly became a boon to the community and began to prosper. For many of the rural farmers it proved to be a blessing in the off-season when they were unable to farm. Whole families would gather ginseng and run trap lines for furs which Miller bought, often providing the only income they had during the winter months.
The community soon learned that Miller was a fair man, paying fair prices and keeping his word.
In time, his reputation literally became the business, a fact that his employer probably realized when he agreed to sell the company to Miller.
Louis Miller was an asset to his adopted hometown. He joined the local Temple, became active in community affairs and was an outspoken advocate of the individual right to freedom. Unfortunately he was so outspoken he soon came to the attention of the local Ku Klux Klan.
Huntsville's original Klan had been founded in 1867 as a means to combat the consequences of Reconstruction. In 1872, after a Congressional hearing held in Huntsville exposed many of its brutalities, the Klan disbanded only to rear its ugly head again in the early 1900s in response to the release of the film, "Birth of a Nation."
By 1920 the Klan had become a powerful organization in Huntsville. They had their own laws and government and even conducted their own trials. They had become, as one historian put it so aptly, "the invisible government."
Businessmen felt they had to belong in order to do business, and politicians felt, they had to belong in order to do politics. Even if you did not agree with them, the local wisdom was that it was better to keep your mouth shut. In a perverse fairness it must be stated that the local Klan did not discriminate. They hated everyone equally --Blacks, Jews, foreigners, and Northerners.
Miller fitted most of the above criteria, a fact that the Klan quickly realized.
Louis Miller hated the Klan, and he publicly took issue with them. He simply could not understand how, in a land of the free, a group of bigoted nightriders could intimidate a whole community. In his anger at the Klan, he said in public more than a few times that one day, he was going to buy those Klan robes and tear them up into wiping rags.
He had no idea at the time of how prophetic his words would prove. Miller’s threats infuriated the Klan who soon put out word that he was a marked man.
After finding the Klan eviction notice on his door, Miller sent word to the Klan leaders that if they came after him, he would be ready for them. At five-foot-four he was not physically a very imposing man, and
he wasn't really a very good shot, either. However, at that time there was a shooting gallery next door to the Tennessee Poultry and Hide Company. Every day Louis visited the gallery, plunked down his money, and practiced shooting with rifles and pistols. After a while he became a superb marksman, a fact he made sure that everyone knew. He also made sure that the Klan realized that if they came after him, they might get him, but they were likely to lose some of their own in the process.
Still, despite his bravado, he realized the danger. He constantly kept a gun close by, at work and at home. His orders to his wife were: "If anybody knocks at night when I am not at home, don't open the door." Not knowing when the men might come after him, Miller would answer the door with a rifle or pistol in hand.
The citizens of Huntsville probably expected a bloody confrontation, most likely ending with someone lying dead in the streets, but suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Klan stopped its harassment of Miller. It would be years before he ever knew the reason why.
Miller had a few friends and business acquaintances who were also members of the Klan, and it was one of them who eventually told him the whole story.
The Huntsville Klan had put Louis Miller on trial in absentia at a special Klan meeting called for that purpose. Louis was charged with speaking in public against the Klan. Among other specific examples, he was charged with insulting the Man by threatening repeatedly in public to tear its robes into wiping rags.
The trial was a major event in the local Klan community. Both a prosecuting attorney and a defense attorney were designated. The man who eventually told Louis the story offered to serve as defense attorney. Klan members in the hall were the jury. When it came time during the trial for the defense attorney to say his piece, he argued, "I've known Louis Miller for a number of years. In fact I've known him ever since he came to Huntsville. He left Russia to find a place of freedom - I know that because he told me. Yes, he is in disagreement with the Klan. Louis Miller has a right to speak against us just as any other American does. He even has the right to speak against his government, but he is speaking against the Klan. I don't find that to be anything he should be put on trial for. I don't think it is wrong."
During his summation the defense attorney made his point as strongly as he could: "I joined the Klan because I thought it was a worthwhile organization but, I'm submitting my resignation from the Klan tonight, because I don't feel like it is the kind of organization I need to belong to."
He did resign, and eventually he told Louis about the trial. In part because one solitary person had dared to oppose the Klan, it quickly began losing public support. Members drifted away and in a few years the Huntsville Klan had almost disappeared.
The story might have ended there if it had not been for a phone call Miller received in the early 1930s.
"Louie, are you still dealing in wiping rags?"
Miller, thinking it was just another business call in an already hectic day replied, "Yes, if the price is right."
The caller went on to explain the purpose of his call. "I've been renting a meeting hall to the Ku Klux Klan, but they haven't been active for a couple of years and they haven't been paying any rent. I'm going to have to rent it to somebody else, but I got a bunch of their old robes on the floor in a pile in the meeting hall, and I was just wondering if you would be interested in buying them."
Remembering his threats years earlier to sell the Klan's robes as wiping rags, he tried to control his excitement. 'Where are you now?" asked Miller.
The caller replied, "I'm at the meeting hall," and gave Louis the address. The rag buyer was already grabbing for his hat and coat as he yelled into the phone, "Don't you leave! I'll be there in ten minutes. I'll buy them from you. I'll buy them all from you!"
On the short trip to the now defunct meeting hall he began having second thoughts about the price, "I want to buy them, but there's only so much I can pay for them to make them into wiping rags." But then he thought about what was really important to him. "It doesn't make any difference," he thought to himself, "no matter what he wants for them, I'm going to pay that. I'm going to get them. I'm going to do what I said I was going to do."
So Louis Miller, Jewish dealer in wiping rags, soon showed up at the former Klan meeting hall to buy a pile of Klan robes. With little dickering, the deal was struck. They shook hands with Louis telling the seller, "I'll send two or three men to the hall in about an hour to pick up the robes and I'll send you a check today."
Actually, if it had not been for the hate the robes represented they would have been quite attractive. Made out of white linen, the robes were decorated with large colorful embroidered dragons and Celtic crosses.
If people were wondering what a Jewish dealer wanted with Klan robes they soon found the answer. Every morning Miller would have an employee push a pallet loaded with Klan robes out to the space between the sidewalk and the street. They would remain there all day, every day as a reminder to people of what the robes really were--simply a pile of discarded rags.
Miller often sat in his office watching the reactions of people as they walked by. The robes were in a pile, but you could tell what they were because all of the embroidered Klan emblems. Some people would stare. Some would do a double-take. Some people simply hung their heads and pretended not to see the pile.
After a couple of months of displaying the robes, a friend of Miller's called. "Louie," the friend said, "I know that you said you were going to buy these robes and make them into wiping rags, and I know you've had a lot of fun displaying them. But you know, I was a member of the Klan. Don't you think you've had enough fun with those robes now?"
Miller responded to his friend's question with a question of his own: “Let me ask you this; are you asking me, or are you telling me?” His friend gently, and probably sheepishly, replied, "I'm asking you."
Louis said, "Well, OK, but if you were "telling" me, those damn things would stay on display for years! But we'll take them in and I'll do what I said I'd do with them."
One day, shortly after he agreed to stop displaying the robes, Louis received a call from a widow woman who was a friend of his and who had heard about the robes.
"Louie," she asked, "what are you going to do with the embroidered emblems?"
"Well, I guess I'll have to take those off before we make them into wiping rags." The robes were made out of first class white cotton, and they would make a premium grade of wiping rag.
The widow woman then explained her proposition. "If you send those uniforms out to my house, I'll take the emblems off them, and all you have to do is wash them and tear them up into wiping rags. I won't charge you anything, but I want the emblems."
Miller quickly agreed to the deal and had an employee take the robes out to her house.
One day, long after Louis got the robes back without the emblems, and long after all the Klan robes had been torn into wiping rags, Louis got a call from his friend, the widow woman. "Come by the house sometime and I'll show you what I did with the emblems."
A few hours later Miller was standing in the lady's house, in awe of her creation. Transforming the symbols of hate into a thing of beauty, she had sewn a gorgeous patchwork quilt out of the emblems. The biggest emblem was in the middle, surrounded by the next biggest emblems, and those surrounded by the next biggest in swirling, colorful profusion to the very edges of the quilt. As he stared at the woman's extraordinary creation he said, half to himself, "You know, I would have never thought that something so bad could be turned into something so beautiful."
The daughter of the woman who made the quilt now has it, and she still lives in Huntsville. Louis Miller, the young man who emigrated from Russia in search of freedom, died in 1966. The Tennessee Poultry and Hide Company is now known as L. Miller & Son, Inc., and is operated by Louis' son, Buddy, and Buddy's son, Sol.
