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Mary Elizabeth Tyler (July 10, 1881 – September 10, 1924) was an Atlanta public-relations professional who, along with Edward Young Clarke, founded the Southern Publicity Association. Their organization helped to turn the initially anemic second
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
into a mass-membership organization with a broader social agenda. They also worked with the
Anti-Saloon League The Anti-Saloon League, now known as the American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems, is an organization of the temperance movement in the United States. Founded in 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio, it was a key component of the Progressive Era, an ...
during the same period.


Early life

Mary Elizabeth Cornett was born on July 10, 1881.


Civic engagement

Tyler became active in the " better babies" movement as a volunteer hygiene worker in the 1910s. With Clarke, she formed the Atlanta-based Southern Publicity Association, which promoted temperance and public health causes such as the Anti-Saloon League and Red Cross. Like Clarke and the second Klan's initial organizer William Simmons, Tyler was active in fraternal organizations—in her case, in a women's auxiliary called the Daughters of America. Starting in 1920, Tyler and Clarke were extremely successful in building the organization of the Klan and in promoting a broader agenda for it, including temperance,
anticommunism Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism, communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global ...
, antisemitism, and anticatholicism. They did well for themselves financially, pocketing 80% of every new klansman's initiation fee, all the while investing in businesses that manufactured Klan robes and paraphernalia.W.C Wade,''The Fiery Cross'' (New York, 1987) Tyler owned the ''Searchlight'', the Klan's newspaper. She built a large classical-revival house on fourteen acres in downtown Atlanta; the house is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Klan was organized in the fashion of a fraternal organization. Clarke and Tyler's sexual relationship was not a well kept secret, and Clarke's wife May sued him for divorce on grounds of desertion. In 1919, Clarke and Tyler were rousted out of bed by Atlanta police and arrested on charges of disorderly conduct. They initially gave false names. Notwithstanding the Klan's temperance activities, they were fined for possessing whiskey. Their sexual relationship was in tension with the prominent role played by the purity of white womanhood in the organization's foundational mythology, which revolved around the real-life figure of Mary Phagan and the film ''
The Birth of a Nation ''The Birth of a Nation'' is a 1915 American Silent film, silent Epic film, epic Drama (film and television), drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and ...
'', which featured the fictional martyr Flora Cameron. In 1921, the Columbus Enquirer-Sun and the
New York World The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 to 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers as a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publisher Jo ...
published articles accusing Clarke and Tyler of financial and sexual misconduct. An internal power struggle ensued within the Klan, and as a result Tyler was forced out of the Klan in 1923, Clarke left the country to escape charges under the
Mann Act The Mann Act, previously called the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, is a United States federal law, passed June 25, 1910 (ch. 395, ; ''codified as amended at'' ). It is named after Congressman James Robert Mann (Illinois politician), James Rob ...
, and power shifted to Hiram Wesley Evans. Tyler moved to
Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...
.


Personal life

Tyler was first married at age 14 or 15, and then abandoned, and later married multiple times. Likely names of her husbands were Andrew M Manning (married 1897; divorced 1906), Owen C. Carroll (died Washington D.C. in 1913), Tyler, and Stephen Wolcott Grow (married 1922).


Death

Tyler died on September 10, 1924, in
Altadena, California Altadena () is an unincorporated area, and census-designated place in the San Gabriel Valley and the Verdugos regions of Los Angeles County, California. Directly north of Pasadena, California, Pasadena, it is located approximately from Downtow ...
, of
apoplexy Apoplexy () refers to the rupture of an internal organ and the associated symptoms. Informally or metaphorically, the term ''apoplexy'' is associated with being furious, especially as "apoplectic". Historically, it described what is now known as a ...
and
arteriosclerosis Arteriosclerosis, literally meaning "hardening of the arteries", is an umbrella term for a vascular disorder characterized by abnormal thickening, hardening, and loss of elasticity of the walls of arteries; this process gradually restricts th ...
. She was buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery.


Further reading

* Henry Peck Fry, The modern Ku Klux Klan, Small, Maynard, 1922 * Michael Newton, The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi: a history, McFarland, 2010 * Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: racism and gender in the 1920s, University of California Press, 2009 * Kevin Boyle, The Not-So-Invisible Empire, ''The New York Times'', Nov. 27, 2011 * National Register of Historic Places, reference number 05001598; scans available at


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tyler, Bessie 1881 births 1924 deaths American temperance activists American Ku Klux Klan members Former Ku Klux Klan members Deaths from arteriosclerosis Burials at Inglewood Park Cemetery