Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate. Richard Bowers
Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate
his most loyal followers into Christian Front organizations to oppose equality for Jewish Americans.
As the Great Depression wreaked economic havoc on the nation, another frightening fringe organization was becoming more and more active. With unemployment at a record high and clashes between striking workers and employers turning into bloody melees, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) sought to exploit public fear. Preaching a gospel of racism and religious intolerance, the KKK called upon white protestant men to band together to fight the Jew’s demand for social acceptance, the Negro’s plea for just treatment, and the immigrant’s call for decent jobs and fair pay. To keep up with the times, this secret society of hooded vigilantes had expanded its traditional hate list from Negroes, Jews, and Catholics to include union organizers, liberal politicians, civil rights advocates, crusading journalists, and supporters of the New Deal—President Franklin Roosevelt’s program to restore the economy by putting people to work. As tensions rose, new recruits came forward to join the nation’s most militant defender of white protestant rule. Although the KKK recruited only members who were white and protestant, it boasted of standing for the principle of “100 percent Americanism.”
On summer days the streets of Glenville buzzed with kids riding bikes, skipping rope, and playing stickball or hide-and-seek. On summer evenings teenage boys and girls walked hand in hand down the sidewalks, and gaggles of kids hung out on spacious front porches, told jokes, flirted, and talked about the future. Throughout the week pedestrians flowed down lively East 105th Street, where Solomon’s Delicatessen piled corned beef and pastrami high on fresh rye bread and Old World restaurants served classic European fare like brisket, cheese blintzes, matzo ball soup, and lox and bagels. On Saturdays, worshippers flocked to more than 25 synagogues, the men wearing the traditional yarmulke to cover their heads and the women dressed in the fashions of the day. The jewel of Glenville was the grand Jewish Center of Anshe Emeth (a synagogue) at East 105th and Grantwood Avenue, a modern building with a sculpture of the Star of David crowning its roof. It was the central gathering place for the community—the place to go to shoot basketball, to swim laps, or to take classes on subjects ranging from Hebrew tradition to American culture. By the early 1930s more than half of Cleveland’s Jewish population lived in Glenville, and more than 80 percent of the 1,600 kids at Glenville High were Jewish.
JERRY SIEGEL WAS DIFFERENT from most of the other kids in Glenville. While they were playing ball in the street, shooting hoops at the community center, or shopping on 105th Street, Jerry was holed up in the attic with his precious zines. He also loved to take in the movies at the Crown Theater, just a couple blocks from his house, or at the red-carpeted and balconied Uptown Theatre farther up 105th. Scrunched in his seat with a sack of popcorn in his lap and his eyes fixed on the screen, he marveled as the dashing actor Douglas Fairbanks donned a black cape and mask to become the leaping, lunging, sword-wielding Zorro. Jerry admired Fairbanks and all the other leading men—those strong, fearless, valiant he-man characters who took care of the bad guys and took care of the gorgeous women too. Jerry worshipped Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, whose names he would later combine to form Clark Kent.
Jerry usually sat in darkened theaters alone as he absorbed stories, tracked dialogue, and marveled at the characters. After the movies he would walk to the newsstands on St. Claire Avenue to pick up a pulp-fiction novel or a zine. Soaking in every line of narrative and dialogue, he would read the books and magazines cover to cover—then read them again. Turning to his secondhand typewriter, he would dash off letters to the editors, critiquing the stories and suggesting themes for future editions. He would scour the classified sections for the names and addresses of other science fiction fans and send them letters in which he shared his ideas for stories, plots, and characters. For kids like Jerry, science fiction provided a community—a network of fans bound together by a common passion.
One of Jerry’s favorite books was Philip Wylie’s Gladiator. Initially published in 1930, it was the first science fiction novel to introduce a character with superhuman powers. Jerry moved through the swollen river of words like an Olympian swimmer, devouring the description of the protagonist, Hugo Danner, whose bones and skin were so dense that he was more like steel than flesh, with the strength to hurl giant boulders, the speed to outrun trains, and the leaping ability of a grasshopper. Danner’s life is a tortured pursuit of the question of whether to use his powers for good or evil. That made Jerry think about how hard it was to choose right over wrong.
Then there was that unforgettable image of the flying man—the one he had seen on the cover of Amazing Stories. Jerry would hang on to that image for the rest of his life. The flying man, clad in a tight red outfit and wearing a leather pilot’s helmet, soared through the sunny sky and smiled down on a futuristic village filled with technological marvels. From the ground, a pretty, smiling girl waved a handkerchief at the airborne man and marveled at his fantastic abilities. In this edition of Amazing Stories Jerry saw a thrilling new world of scientific advances and social harmony—a perfect green and sunny utopia to be ushered in by creative geniuses with more brains than brawn, more natural imagination than school-injected facts, more good ideas than good looks. Jerry wanted to help create that utopia. Luckily, he had a partner in his quest.
* CHAPTER 2 *
KINDRED SPIRITS & CREATIVE FORCES
JOE SHUSTER WAS A fellow science fiction fanatic, a talented illustrator, and another skinny, bashful kid with thick glasses and no girlfriends. Jerry and Joe were kindred spirits and tireless collaborators. Sequestered in an attic work space after school and on weekends, the boys spent hours talking about science fiction, conjuring up story ideas, and drawing illustrations. Over time they would create a world of mad scientists and futuristic space travelers, smooth-talking detectives and supernatural beings. Although he could draw a bit, Jerry generally took the role of writer, his more assertive personality driving the action. Writing in pithy sentences that could be squeezed into small narrative boxes and thought bubbles, he would conjure the concept, plot the story line, and develop the narrative. As the illustrator, Joe would envision the characters and scenes and then put pencil to paper as he brought the characters to life on cheap, brown butcher paper laid across his mother’s favorite cutting board.
Early in 1932 Jerry and Joe went to work on their own typewritten magazine titled Science Fiction: The Advanced Guard of Future Civilization. Once they had their densely typed, roughly illustrated master copy in hand, they dashed off to the library to mimeograph copies and began mailing them to fellow fans within the free-ranging science fiction network. Science Fiction would also be sent to the publishers of the best zines, in hopes that one of them would purchase a piece of content, or, at least, recognize the talent of the young creators.
The third edition of Science Fiction featured a story entitled “The Reign of the Super-Man,” in which a bald, diabolical chemist sets out to use a substance derived from a meteor to turn himself into an evil genius with the power to dominate the world. Although most of the stories in Science Fiction were written by Jerry and illustrated by Joe, “The Reign of the Super-Man” was signed with the byline Herbert Fine. The two amateurs probably thought the pen name was a professional touch that would create the illusion that there was another writer in their limited stable of contributors. Plus, it added a bit of protection against any prejudiced publishers who might like the story but suspect that the writers were Jewish based on their real names.
Jerry and Joe’s “The Reign of the Super-Man” played off the grim realities of the Great Depression. In the story, treacherous Professor Smalley lures destitute, homeless men from soup kitchens to serve as guinea pigs for his hideous experiments: “With a contemptuous sneer on his face, Professor Smalley watched the wretched unfortunates file past him. To him, who had come of rich parents and had never been forced to face the rigors of life, the miserableness of these men seemed deserved.”
It was a good tale, but it was not the page-turner the duo had hoped for. What was it? Jerry and Joe would tackle that question later. The pair were in what should have been their last year at Glenville High, and the world of work was looming ahead—although