A Feud Most Foul: Socialists versus the Klan in South Texas

By Steve Rossignol
The political atmosphere in Texas after World War I was markedly different. The
several years of patriotic fervor that had stemmed from U. S. involvement in the
European war had created a very uncomfortable climate for those who had
chosen to oppose the American intervention.

Before the World War, the Socialist Party of Texas had grown to a political force
which had elected dozens of local office holders in the state as it championed the
cause of tenant farmers and industrial workers, but its opposition to the War had
resulted in its leaders being jailed, its newspapers being shut down, and its
members subject to physical and political attacks.

Thomas A. Hickey, the Texas socialist firebrand who himself had been detained
without a warrant in the early months of the War and who had seen his
newspaper, The Rebel, the first in the nation to be shut down by the federal
Espionage Act in 1917, was determined to revitalize the Socialist movement in
Texas, but his efforts to reestablish a couple of new newspapers simply fizzled.
The Socialist Party of Texas itself had almost evaporated; its state secretary had
been among the arrested, its state chair had resigned,1 many of its speakers and
organizers were imprisoned, and, faced with ongoing government pressure, the
bulk of the membership had simply faded away. In a letter to his wife Clara,
Hickey announced that at its convention in Dallas in October 1919, the Socialist
Party of Texas had declared itself officially dead.2 It may have been Hickey
himself, however, who possibly had severed his ties with the Socialist Party, as
the Socialist Party of Texas had another statewide meeting in June of 1920.

The political mood in Texas had definitely continued its pendulum swing towards
the right. Political repression and an anti-union climate, clothed in the vestments
of patriotism, continued against socialists, labor organizations such as the
Industrial Workers of the World, and the Non-Partisan League. On the national
level, the U. S. Attorney General’s office under A. Mitchell Palmer began a policy
of police raids and deportations against suspected foreign radicals. In 1919, the
American Legion was organized by a group of twenty Army officers under the
leadership of Theodore Roosevelt Jr. with a stated goal of opposition to socialists,
the I. W. W., and conscientious objectors.3
The years after the World War also saw a dramatic increase in the membership of
the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan. Formed in Atlanta in 1915, the resurgent
organization developed a warped sense of righteousness and Americanism which
involved a hatred of African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Jews, Catholics,
immigrants, bootleggers, socialists, and all others falling short of the Klan’s
parameters of morality. Its marketing-based membership program attracted
white middle-class businessmen. It had reached into Texas by 1920; by 1924 it
had elected a U. S. Senator, controlled the Texas Legislature,4 and elected a large
number of judges and court officials, as one of its stated goals was to control the
judiciary.5 Klan growth in Texas was marked by an increasing reign of terror; one
report in the files of the U. S. Bureau of Investigation cites dozens of instances of
Klan violence over a three-month period in 1921.6

After an unprofitable stint as an organizer for the Non-Partisan League, Tom

Hickey found himself cast in the role of an oil operator when the black gold boom
was launched in Desdemona, in Eastland County. Hickey knew Desdemona and its
socialist citizenry well; he had been a yearly speaker at the socialist encampments
in nearby Ellison Springs. With other socialists Hickey established the National
Workers Drilling and Production Company.

The new company was primarily established to manage the oil leases on the
properties of the numerous socialist farmers in the area and had been roughly set
up as a collective ownership corporation; shares of stock in the company were
sold to the public. One of the many stockholders was Jay R. Secrest, who had
been Tom Hickey’s secretary and stenographer since at least April of 1916. 7

Jay Secrest was born on May 2, 1892, at Koerth in Lavaca County, Texas, the son
of Thomas Allen Secrest and Mary Jane Hogan. He attended public schools in
Halletsville and business college in Yoakum, where he studied law and trained in
stenography. His father had established a Socialist Party local organization in
Koerth in 1915, but J. R. Secrest was a socialist in his own right, becoming one of
the primary directors of the Socialist Printing Company, publishers of The Rebel.8

Secrest registered for the military service draft on June 5, 1917, as required by
law, and noted in his enrollment that he had a “conscientious objection to war.” 9
He served with apparent distinction in the Argonne Forest as a corporal in
Company A of the 128th Infantry Regiment in the 32nd Infantry Division,
returning to the United States on May 5, 1919.10
Jay R. Secrest’s draft registration card with his conscientious objection and in military uniform, from Ancestry.com.

Later that year Secrest’s entire family moved to Simmons City in Live Oak County,
where patent medicine manufacturer Dr. C. F. Simmons had broken up his
60,000-acre ranch into parcels for sale to small farmers. J. R. became a real estate
broker in the partitioning and sale of the Simmons tracts of the new town and
was later hired as the teacher and principal at the newly formed Simmons City
school.

Secrest followed in the footsteps of his mentor Tom Hickey and became the
associate editor at the George West Enterprise, and he was also elected as the
commander of his American Legion post at George West. In this connection, it is
remarkable that he authored an anti-Ku Klux Klan resolution for his post which
was unanimously passed by the membership, even while other American Legion
posts in the state and around the country were disrupting socialist meetings and
meeting halls.11

Thomas Aloysius Hickey. From the Hickey Papers.

Tom Hickey visited Secrest at Simmons City in July of 1921. In a letter to his wife
Clara Boeer Hickey, he talked about how that voting box in Live Oak County was
“one of the most Socialistic boxes in the United States”, that it had cast 41 votes
for Socialist Party Presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs in the 1920 Presidential
election as opposed to 15 votes for Republican Warren G. Harding and 12 votes
for Democrat James M. Cox. Hickey was staying at the hotel of “comrade” Hugh
Davis House, a former Socialist Party candidate for county attorney in Fisher
County.12

Hickey also noted in his letter to Clara that he and Secrest were “out to secure
members”, presumably for the Non-Partisan League, adding that the “comrades”
there had secured many abandoned land tracts from the breakup of the Simmons
Ranch which might prove to be attractive to other “comrades.” 13 Given Hickey’s
previous track record as an advocate for tenant farmers, he may have been
involved with Secrest in an attempt to provide affordable land to disenfranchised
farmers; toward that endeavor, former Socialist Party activist and co-publisher of
The Rebel Ernest R. Meitzen, then an organizer for the Non-Partisan League, had
visited Simmons City in an organizing spin that January.14

The influx of new people to Live Oak County and the new city of Simmons,
especially those of a political persuasion which may have been deemed by some
as not patriotic enough, may have raised the dander of the old-timers in the
county. Hickey had written to his wife that the county was divided into two
camps, “old settlers who want no improvements v the progressives who want
schools road and bridges.”15 Jay Secrest also commented on this political climate
when he wrote to Hickey that a mutual acquaintance nicknamed “the fortune
teller” had received a “bogus K.K.K. notice recently and has wanded her way to
the Alamo City. The rest of the citizenry is up in arms and there is very little
talking, gosiping [sic] and meddling just at present.”16

By the middle of 1922, the political tension in the county had intensified. Secrest
reported to Hickey that at the first of the year [1923] the Klan would “take charge
of everything:”17

Bro. Buck18 and I fought the KuKoo Krowd to a finish but they swamped us at
the polls. Do you think that an Anti-sheet could be made to pay if it was run
on a large scale? I want to get into something there is some fight to—damn
this dignified school room stuff.19

One of the candidates “swamped at the polls” in Live Oak County was County
Attorney Emmett W. Smith, a political ally of Secrest and Hickey.

Secrest also remarks that H. D. House had defeated “our friend” John H. Casey,
the long-time County Commissioner from Whitsett in Precinct One of Live Oak
County; House apparently had enjoyed the endorsement of the Klan in the
commissioner’s race.20 Secrest was contemplating leaving the county: “Do you
blame me for wanting to skidoo?”21

In a November letter to Hickey Secrest repeated his desire to leave Live Oak. “[I]
want to get away just as soon as I can connect up with something that there is a
living in.”22
Simmons City today. Photo by the author.

In 1923 Jay Secrest was able to leave Simmons City and Live Oak County, but he
did not go far. Petroleum production was beginning in earnest in the small
hamlet of Guffeyola by the Calliham Ranch, about eighteen miles west of Three
Rivers, just inside the McMullen County line. Oil developer William M.
Stephenson worked with ranch patriarch Joseph Thomas Calliham to establish a
town site at the small settlement and the new town was renamed Calliham. In
July, Secrest published the first four page issue of the Calliham Caller and Three
Rivers Oil News and was working to make it the anti-Klan “sheet” he had
discussed with Hickey the previous year.

Things had changed for Hickey as well. His editorial employment at the Kosse
Cyclone had not panned out, and his job at the National Oil Journal fizzled out as
well when that paper went belly up. Jay Secrest invited him to help on the
Calliham Caller, an offer which Hickey accepted, arriving in early December.

In short time Hickey became secretary of the McMullen County Chamber of

Commerce and was actively selling oil leases and real estate with Secrest. Even
while he remained a stalwart progressive, Hickey the socialist had become Hickey
the capitalist entrepreneur. Perhaps realizing that he was not getting any
younger and that his health was not getting any better, Tom Hickey probably
decided he wanted to finally settle down with Clara; his letters certainly try to
convince her to move to Calliham.23

Jay Secrest announced for the Texas Legislature from House District 76 in January
1924, filing for the seat vacated by Frank H. Burmeister, who had filed for the
State Senate. Tom Hickey also displayed political ambitions, filing for County
Commissioner. Both races added fuel to an already heated election season which
would prove to be one of the deadliest in Texas history.

Hickey did not waste any time at the Calliham Caller in continuing the feud with
the Klan. His February 8, 1924 column in the paper recounted the recent history
of a criminal libel lawsuit filed by then Live Oak County Attorney Emmett W. Smith
against Klan preacher and well-known evangelist Walter James Bugg of the Hyde
Park Baptist Church in Austin, who had addressed a Klan revival at George West.
That case in November 1922 had so inflamed tensions in Live Oak County
between the Klan and anti-Klan factions that the Texas Rangers had to be called
out to maintain order.24

His February 15, 1924 column was more aggressive:

In the name of peace they rend communities asunder and put neighbors at
each others throats, and break all family ties and this is done, all of this is
made possible simply and solely because the founders of the modern klan
have made their millions by dragging the word hate from the jungle….
Klanishness and hate are synonymous terms and in that one word we find
the origin of the KLAN.25

Hickey heightened his attacks in a February 29 column which revisited the Rev.
Bugg. The account implied that the Reverend had purportedly been involved in a
Klan-style sado-masochistic whipping with a confessed sexual deviant in a
Philadelphia hotel room. Hickey’s account appears to be an error or a fabrication,
as the person involved in that whipping was not named Bugg and the alleged
whipping had happened in 1917,26 but it led Hickey to conclude that “I will not for
a moment claim that every K. K. K. is a sexual degenerate…I will dare any K.K.K. to
deny that every sexual degenerate in the United States is a K. K. K.” 27
Another Hickey column on March 28 continued the attacks on the Klan, calling
them “ignorant,” “intolerant,” “bigoted,” and “self-righteous.” 28

The feud was quickly boiling to a head. In late June, Jay Secrest was arrested and
jailed by McMullen County Deputy Sheriff James Valentine Stitz for the discovery
of illegal alcohol in the business premises of the establishment adjoining the
offices of the Caller. Many friends of Secrest charged that the whole thing was a
set-up instigated by the local leaders of the Klan; such was the report coming out
of George West which Stitz would deny, even traveling out of his legal jurisdiction
of McMullen County to confront the source in Live Oak County. 29 “Secrest had
aroused the ire of Kluxers by his pronounced anti-Klan views,” reported the
United Press.30 Hickey passed the information along to his wife: “There has been a
very bitter Ku Klux fight here. Jay was framed up and arrested as you read in the
Caller.”31

Deputy Stitz was born July 14, 1893 at Runge, in Karnes County. His father, John
Stitz, moved his five children to McMullen County in 1911 after the death of his
wife and purchased 880 acres adjacent to the property of Joseph Thomas
Calliham. John Stitz’s eldest child, Lillie May, would marry Joseph Calliham’s son,
Joseph Edward Calliham.32 John Stitz and his oldest son James V. Stitz leased
numerous oil plots to developer William M. Stephenson in the years prior to
1924, would develop at least eight productive oil wells, and their estate would be
involved in legal litigation with Stephenson until as recently as 2017. 33

Some newspaper accounts of the time reported that the differences between
Secrest and Stitz had been of “long standing;”34 Secrest had resented Stitz’s
conduct as a deputy sheriff.35 The two men may have had additional conflicts over
the legislative race, there may have been competition over the sale of oil leases,
and there may also have been personal animosities.

Stitz was unavailable for testifying before the grand jury investigating the charge
against Secrest in spite of efforts to get him to appear; the jury found no evidence
of any wrongdoing by Secrest even while indicting two others.36 But there were
apparently serious enough reasons resulting from the circumstances of the arrest
for Sheriff William S. Goff of McMullen County to dismiss Stitz from his post.
Following Secrest’s release, Stitz “was relieved of his badge and his gun.” 37 It
appears that Stitz may have had a hand in fabricating the charges against Secrest.
Stitz was most probably a member of the Ku Klux Klan; he is identified as such by
Tom Hickey’s biographer, Peter Buckingham.38 While the Klan did not appear to
have had organized “klaverns” in Live Oak or McMullen counties, they did have an
active membership there and had established groups in the nearby communities
of Alice, Bee County, Mathis, Bishop, and Kingsville.39 Membership rosters of the
“Invisible Empire” are not usually accessible; the Klan’s shrouded white hoods
demonstrated their desire for secrecy. In reference to Stitz, the Calliham Caller
would assert that the Klan had rejected him. Stitz was more than likely operating
at the behest of others in his capacity of deputy or was seeking to gain
recognition from or membership in the Klan.

In any event, Stitz would continue the next phase of the feud by filing a lawsuit
against Secrest for “interference with an officer.”40

The July 18, 1924 issue of the Calliham Caller would unleash on Stitz even while
mentioning his name only once:

Mr. J. W. Wright has been appointed deputy sheriff to take the place of Jim
Stitz. The Caller editor happened to be the first person upon whom it was
Mr. Wright’s duty to serve papers. [These legal papers would presumably
have been the Stitz lawsuit.]41

Secrest and Hickey had apparently been digging up as much dirt as possible on
Stitz:

A lady [has] a board bill that this alleged officer refused to pay. The bill was
made last January and has only been due four or five months. We wonder if
the lady won’t be charged with “undue respect to an officer”.

Please don’t ask us why we do not mention his name. We do not want to
make a smudge in the columns of our paper by printing the name of a man
who was once charged with incest---a crime against his own sister.

We have said many hard things about the ku klux klan as an organization….
As we have said before it is the organization that we have fought, but it
could be worse. The commonest piece of humanity we ever knew lives at
Calliham and the ku klux would not have him.42

While Stitz’s name was not mentioned specifically in regards to the Caller’s incest
accusation, it would have been known gossip in the community to whom the
newspaper was referring. The reference to “once charged” indicated that the
accusation was not a recent matter; but there does not appear to be any available
documentation of any such charge against Stitz in the existing court records of
McMullen County, whose courthouse burned down in 1929. On the other hand,
the incest charge or rumors thereof might have been the reason that Stitz was not
accepted for formal membership into the moralistic Klan.

At about seven in the evening of July 21, five days before the Democratic Party
primary, Jay Secrest was returning from the oil fields accompanying former
county attorney Emmett Smith to Smith’s hotel in Calliham. They were confronted
by Jim Stitz, who had been following them. Stitz blocked the passage of Secrest’s
Ford roadster with his own vehicle and at the point of a rifle demanded an
editorial retraction from Jay Secrest. When Secrest refused, Stitz, without a
further word, shot the unarmed Secrest twice on the street in Calliham.

Headlines from the Brownwood Bulletin, July 22, 1924, p. 1

One shot pierced Secrest’s jugular vein; the second round hit Secrest in the heart.
He was killed almost instantly.43 The partially paralyzed Emmett Smith, who was
running for County Attorney in McMullen County, was the sole witness to the
shooting. Stitz drove on to the county seat of Tilden and calmly turned himself in
to Sheriff Goff.

Hickey reported to Clara from Jourdanton, where had finished getting out what
was presumably the last edition of the Calliham Caller. “Jay was shot and killed
and died in my arms last Monday at 7 pm. I cannot tell you how it shocked me.” 44

In the same letter to Clara he “expect[s] the paper to live and I will be in
charge;”45 but Tom Hickey never returned to Calliham, even abandoning his
County Commissioner race. He dropped a brief line to Clara on August 3 from an
express office in San Antonio: “The killing of Jay in cold blood has demoralized me
temporarily. There is no hope for Calliham now….The town is hopelessly split into
KKK and Anti-camps.…The Caller is suspended and I believe forever….Human life is
still very cheap in Texas.”46 He continued on to Fort Worth, where he again wrote
Clara in early August.

From the front page of the final issue of the Calliham Caller, July 25, 1924
It may very well be that Hickey fled Calliham in fear for his life. “I am about
recovered from the terrible shock of Jay’s death: you will never know how near I
came to being buried in the same grave with Jay...The leaders of the klan are
murderers at heart….,” he wrote Clara on August 22. 47

Jay R. Secrest was buried on July 25 in Lavaca County, about thirteen miles south
of his home town of Hallettsville. It does not appear that Tom Hickey attended his
friend’s funeral, as he was in Jourdanton at the time and was not listed among the
attendees.48

Hickey may have been feeling a sense of guilt over his friend’s death. The
paragraphs with no by-line in that fateful issue of the Caller bore a striking
similarity to Hickey’s writing style, and Secrest was referred to in the third person.
The attacks on Stitz were sharp while Secrest’s signed adjoining column was more
moderating. It is quite possible that Hickey was the author of the incest charge
against Stitz, continuing the Hickey motif of Klan “degeneracy”, whereupon
Hickey’s apprehension of being “in the same grave” as Secrest would have been a
valid concern.

It would not have been the first time that Hickey’s journalism would have caused
havoc. An investigative article in 1914 about probable financial mismanagement
among the City Hall gang in Hallettsville would result in the shooting of former
Lavaca County Judge Edward Otto Meitzen, publisher of The Rebel and father of
Non-Partisan League organizer E. R. Meitzen, when the elder Meitzen pursued the
investigation. Meitzen would survive the attack by City Marshall O. T. East. 49

Hickey again expressed his angst to Clara on September 3: “…physically at least I

am over the shock of my poor pal’s death altho I can never never never forget it.
The anguish of soul and spirit when he died in my arms is unforgettable. Nobody
can ever tell how much damage the infamous klan has caused.”50 From Fort
Worth he published the first issue of Tom Hickey’s Magazine on October 1,
returning to his progressive politics and again rallying for Texas tenant farmers,
but nothing was mentioned about Jay Secrest or the Klan. 51

Jim Stitz did not remain in Calliham either. He apparently was not jailed following
the murder, as he appeared in Uvalde in November as the informant on the death
certificate of his stillborn son.52
If there was any redeeming quality to Jay Secrest’s murder, it might have been
that the election of 1924 marked the beginning of the end of the Klan in Texas.
Miriam A. “Ma” Ferguson handily defeated Klan-backed candidate Felix E.
Robertson in the Democratic primary for Governor with one of the heaviest votes
in one of the bloodiest election cycles in Texas history. In addition to the Secrest
murder, anti-Klan sheriff’s candidate Mel J. Dwight had been assassinated in his
own garage in Childress County, and Klan attorney Levi Old was shot and killed in
Uvalde.53 Hickey reported to Clara that former governor James E. “Jim” Ferguson
had escaped an assassination attempt.54

Ironically, E. W. Smith was appointed as Justice of the Peace in Calliham in early

1925, replacing Jim Stitz’s brother-in-law Joseph Edward Calliham. Ma Ferguson
beat Robertson by a two-to-one margin in McMullen County, but unexplainably
no second primary election was held in Live Oak County. The Klan had been
predicted by political analysts to predominate in Live Oak, continuing its hold on
the county from the 1922 election cycle.55

On January 12, 1925, a McMullen County grand jury indicted Stitz for murder,
charging that Stitz “did then and there unlawfully and with malice aforethought
kill Jay R. Secrest by shooting him with a gun.”56 Following the indictment, a
warrant was issued for Stitz’s arrest and he was apprehended on the 13th. Stitz
made an application for a writ of Habeas Corpus on the same day and bail was set
at $10,000, which was met by his father, John Stitz, and one A. E. Pursch. 57

The case was set for trial on January 19. District Attorney Sid D. Malone began
issuing subpoenas for witnesses for the State; interestingly, one of the first
witnesses subpoenaed was Mrs. Lillie May Calliham, Jim Stitz’s sister. As Mrs.
Calliham does not thereafter appear in any of the court proceedings, presumably
her questioning by the District Attorney was relative to the incest charge. 58

Neither Tom Hickey nor E. W. Smith could be located and subpoenaed as

witnesses in San Antonio, where they were determined to have gone. E.W. Smith
was eventually served with process at his home town of Chireno, in Nacogdoches
County in east Texas, where apparently he too had fled following the shooting,
leaving behind a law practice in Simmons City.59

It soon became apparent that an impartial jury could not be had in McMullen
County:
 …[T]hat a trial of this action alike fair and impartial to the State and to the
defendant cannot be had in this McMullen County, Texas, because of the
condition hereinabove set out, as well as because of the general notoriety
given this action, as well as because of the interest and friendship of the
prospective jurors in this county for the parties involved in the transaction
out of which this prosecution arose….60

On January 21, 36th District Judge Thomas M. Cox ordered a change of venue to
neighboring Live Oak County, with a new trial date set for January 26.

McMullen and Live Oak counties in the Twenties.

With all the Klan influence in the Texas judiciary and in Live Oak County during
those early years of the Roaring Twenties, some speculation occurred as to
whether Judge Cox himself was a member of the Klan. During the 1922 elections,
Cox was asked point-blank by his opponent, L.D. Stroud of Beeville, if he were a
Klan member. Cox declined to answer,61 and he was endorsed by the Klan in that
election.62
While Cox’s Klan membership was undetermined, the Klan membership of his
predecessor on the bench was known. Judge Cox was named by Governor Pat
Neff in August 1922 to fill the vacancy of Marvin A. Childers, who was entering
private practice. Childers became Grand Dragon of the Texas Klan in October
1924.63 Childers was also one of the trustees of oil speculator W. M. Stephenson’s
Grubstake Investment Association, and was specifically named as a defendant in
the lawsuits by the Stitz family.

After a series of continuances and delays, Stitz’s trial finally convened at the Live
Oak county courthouse in George West on June 13, 1925. James V. Stitz pleaded
not guilty. He was represented by four attorneys, including powerhouse attorney
James R. Dougherty of Beeville and State Representative Frank Burmeister of
Christine in neighboring Atascosa County. Dougherty had represented the Stitz
family on a number of other matters, had invested deeply in the Calliham oil
fields, and was an active member of the Catholic Church. Interestingly, Dougherty
was also a high ranking member of the Knights of Columbus, an organization
which found itself at great odds with the Klan, and a leader of the anti-Klan forces
in Bee County.64

Dougherty and his associates argued that the “defamatory statement” in the July
18, 1924 issue of the Caller “appears from the uncontradicted testimony that such
statement was untrue.” The lawyers then presented an argument of self-defense
to the court and jury, arguing that Stitz had the right to demand a retraction from
Secrest and had the right to arm himself, because “there was a reasonable
probability of some character of attack upon him by deceased…that might be
anticipated.”65

The trial lasted three days. Judge Cox read the standard statutory charges of the
court to the jury which explained the various legal standards for homicide—
malice aforethought, self-defense, manslaughter, and the “adequate cause” for
murder. Then Judge Cox added his own eyebrow-raising last charge to the jury:

Insulting words or conduct of the person killed towards a female relation of

the party guilty of the homicide are deemed adequate causes.

And in this connection you are charged that the article published in the
Calliham Caller charging the defendant with incest with his sister is, under
the law, deemed adequate cause.66
On June 16, jury foreman I. B. Rice delivered the verdict: “We the Jury find the
defendant Not Guilty.”67

Jim Stitz would not stay in Calliham. By May 1929 he had abandoned his wife,
Georgia Elia Canion Stitz, and his two daughters and left Texas. Georgia Stitz was
granted a divorce in March 1930 citing “harsh and tyrannical treatment” and
“excessive and cruel treatment and outrages.”68 Stitz appeared in the 1930
Wyoming census and had remarried, quite possibly bigamously. According to local
history, he was declared dead by his relatives, yet he reappeared in McMullen
County in 1937 at the settling of his father’s estate. 69

Calliham would see continued oil production for the next several decades, but the
original town, as well as the location of the original Stitz wells, would disappear
under the waters of the Choke Canyon Reservoir in June 1982. The current town
population of about 165 is located about three miles south of the old Calliham
town site.

Seven months after the initial publication of Tom Hickey’s Magazine, Tom Hickey
would succumb to throat cancer on May 4, 1925 at the age of 57.

Jay Secrest is interred in the Salem Cemetery near Ezzell, in Lavaca County.

Jay R. Secrest’s gravesite, Salem Cemetery, Ezzell, Lavaca County. Photo by the author.
Steve Rossignol is a retired member of IBEW Local 520 in Austin, Texas, and a
member of the Blanco County Historical Commission.

End Notes:
1
“State Socialist Chairman Resigns,” Austin American-Statesman (Austin, Texas), July 16, 1918, p. 2.
2
Thomas A. Hickey to Clara Boeer Hickey, October 21, 1919, Thomas A. Hickey Papers, S 431.1, Southwest Collection,
Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.
3
“Soldiers Demand Vigorous Action Against Radicals”, Houston Post (Houston, Texas), May 11, 1919, p. 6; Norman D.
Brown, Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug: Texas Politics 1921-1928, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, Texas),
1984, p. 30.
4
Charles C. Alexander, The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, Oklahoma), 1995, p.
127.
5
“Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940,” Virginia Commonwealth University Library, November 23, 2015,
https://labs.library.vcu.edu/klan/, accessed August 17, 2020; Norman Hapgood, “The New Threat of the Ku Klux Klan,”
Hearst’s International, January 1923.
6
“Report of Gus. T. Jones, Week Ending July 23, 1921,” Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation 1908-1922.
Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Record Group 65, Publication Number M1085; National Archives,
Washington D. C..
7
T.A. Hickey to W.S. U’Ren, April 17, 1916, Hickey Papers.
8
The Rebel, (Hallettsville, Texas), March 6, 1915, p. 3; The Rebel, February 24, 1917, p. 2.
9
Registrar’s Report Registration Card, Precinct 14, Lavaca County, June 5, 1917.
10
“Passenger List of Organizations and Casuals Returning to the United States,” Authority Field Order #3, Headquarters
32nd Division, April 15, 1919, Ancestry.com, https://www.fold3.com/image/604257356, accessed August 29, 2020; Tom
Hickey, “Frontier Smashers: Jay R. Secrest,” Calliham Caller and Three River Oil News, (Calliham, Texas), January?, 1924.
11
Ibid., Calliham Caller.
12
Tom Hickey to Clara Boeer Hickey, July 3, 1921, Hickey Papers; W.T. Webb, State Secretary, “State Office Notes: Fisher
County”, The Rebel, April 8, 1916, p. 4.
13
Ibid., Tom to Clara.
14
Shiner Gazette (Shiner, Texas), January 26, 1922, p. 4.
15
Tom Hickey to Clara Hickey, July 17, 1924, Hickey Papers.
16
J. R. Secrest to Tom Hickey, August 6, 1921, Hickey Papers.
17
J. R. Secrest to Tom Hickey, September 20, 1922, Hickey Papers.
18
“Bro Buck” is presumably Frank William Buck of Swinney Switch in Live Oak County. He was the Independent Party
candidate for Constable Precinct 4 in 1924 opposed to the Ku Klux Klan-dominated Democratic Party ticket. The
Independents were backed by the Ma Ferguson Democrats in “solely a fight between the Ku Klux Klan and the Antis.”
(“Live Oak County Runs Independent County Ticket,” San Antonio Express, October 17, 1924, p. 4).
19
Ibid.
20
“Live Oak County Elects Pro-Klan Ticket Saturday,” Beeville Picayune (Beeville, Texas), July 27, 1922, p. 1.
21
Ibid. Secrest contemptuously refers to House as “Uriah Heep House”, after one of the main antagonists in Charles
Dickens’s novel David Copperfield, a character marked by insincerity and excessive servility.
22
J. R. Secrest to Tom Hickey, November 10, 1922, Hickey Papers.
23
Tom Hickey to Clara Hickey, December 1923 through May 1924, Hickey Papers.
24
Tom Hickey, “100 Percent,” Calliham Caller and Three River Oil News, February 8, 1924; “Fine of $1000 in Libel Case,”
Victoria Advocate (Victoria, Texas), November 24, 1922, p. 3.
25
Tom Hickey, “Origin of K.K.K.,” Calliham Caller, February 15, 1924.
26
“Freedom Is Sought by Slayer,” The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pennsylvania), January 3, 1924, p. 1.
27
Tom Hickey, “Degeneracy and the Lash,” Calliham Caller, February 29, 1924.
28
Tom Hickey, “The Know-Nothings”, Calliham Caller, March 28, 1924.
29
“Anti-Klan Editor Is Arrested at Calliham on Liquor Charge,” Beeville Picayune (Beeville, Texas), June 26, 1924, p. 1; “Jay
R. Secrest,” Beeville Picayune, July 24, 1924, p. 8; “Two Indictments Follow Liquor Raid in McMullen County,” Beeville
Picayune, July 3, 1924, p 1.
30
“Jay R. Secrest of Calliham Meets Death While Unarmed,” Victoria Advocate (Victoria, Texas), July 22, 1924, p. 1.
31
Tom Hickey to Clara Hickey, July 17, 1924, Hickey Papers.
32
“Calliham, Texas 78007”, McMullen County History, McMullen County History Book Committee, 1981, p. 232;
Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/25813232/person/26068703307/facts, accessed
September 3, 2020.
33
County Court Records of McMullen County.
34
“Jay R. Secrest Shot and Killed at Calliham, Tex,” The Abilene Reporter (Abilene, Texas), July 22, 1924, p. 2.
35
“The Killing of Secrest,” Calliham Caller, July 25, 1924.
36
Beeville Picayune, July 3, 1924, p. 1; Beeville Picayune, July 24, 1924, p. 8.
37
“Oil Field Publisher is Shot to Death in M’Mullen County,” Austin American-Statesman, (Austin, Texas), July 22, 1924, p.
1.
38
Peter Buckingham, “Red Tom” Hickey: The Uncrowned King of Texas Socialism, Texas A&M University Press (College
Station, Texas), 2020, p. 295.
39
“Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan.”
40
Abilene Reporter, July 22, 1924, p. 2.
41
Calliham Caller, July 18, 1924.
42
Ibid.
43
Newspaper accounts of the shooting made headlines throughout the state. One of the more complete accounts is from
the San Antonio Light, “Former Deputy Kills Editor”, July 22, 1924, p. 1.
44
Tom Hickey to Clara Hickey, July 25, 1924, Hickey Papers.
45
Ibid.
46
Tom Hickey to Clara Hickey, August 3, 1924, Hickey Papers.
47
Tom Hickey to Clara Hickey, August 22, 1924, Hickey Papers.
48
“Funeral of J.R. Secrest,” Semi-Weekly Hallettsville Herald (Hallettsville, Texas), July 25, 1924, p. 2.
49
Thomas E. Alter II, “Dirt Farmer Internationalists: The Meitzen Family, Three Generations of Farmer Labor Radicals,
1848-1932,” Dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2016, p. 367; T.A. Hickey, “The Shooting of Judge E.O. Meitzen,”,
The Rebel, July 25, 1914, p. 1; John Edward Meitzen, The Meitzen Type: The Texas Socialist Party and E.O. Meitzen, 2001,
https://www.labordallas.org/hist/meitzen.htm, accessed September 5, 2020; J. J. Lawrence, “In Re Thomas R. [sic] Hickey
et. al. Investigation,” July 26, 1917, File #13792, Old German Files 1909-1921, Investigative Reports of the Bureau of
Investigation 1908-1922, Publication M1085, National Archives and Records Administration.
50
Tom Hickey to Clara Hickey, September 3, 1924, Hickey Papers.
51
Tom Hickey’s Magazine, Fort Worth, Texas, Vol. 1, # 1, October 1, 1924.
52
Texas State Board of Health Standard Certificate of Death, Reg. Dist. No. 36905, Uvalde County, Registered Number 43.
53
“Jury Probes Mysterious Shooting of Former Sheriff at Childress”, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas), August
18, 1924, p. 1; “Shooting Follows Election Dispute”, Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas), July 28, 1924, p. 1.
54
Tom Hickey to Clara Hickey, August 22, 1924, Hickey Papers.
55
The 1925 Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide, A.H. Belo and Company (Dallas, Texas), p. 88,
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth123783/m1/108/, accessed September 6, 2020; “Klan Likely to Control
Convention”, Houston Post, August 21, 1924, p. 1.
56
Case Number 347, District Court Records, McMullen County, January Term 1925.
57
“Transcript on Change of Venue in Cause No. 347: The State of Texas vs J.V. Stitz”, January 24, 1925, District Court
Records of McMullen County.
58
Case Number 347, State’s Application for Subpoena For Witnesses, January 19, 1925, District Court Records of McMullen
County.
59
Sheriff’s Return, Subpoena Out County Witness, File No. 347, McMullen County District Court Records.
60
“Transcript on Change of Venue in Cause No. 347,” p. 7.
61
“Judge Stroud Answers Questionnaire. How Does Judge Cox Stand?” San Patricio County News (Sinton, Texas), June 22,
1922, p. 4.
62
“County Results in Southwest Texas: Bee County,” San Antonio Express (San Antonio, Texas), July 25, 1922, p. 4.
63
“San Antonio to be New Klan Headquarters; New Dragon Named,” Victoria Advocate (Victoria, Texas), October 14, 1924,
p. 1.
64
“The Last Efforts,” Beeville Picayune, July 27, 1922, p. 8.
65
Defendant’s Special Requested Charge No. One and No. Two, Case Number 1249, The State of Texas vs. J.V. Stitz, District
Court of Live Oak County, May Term A.D. 1925.
66
Charge of the Court, Case Number 1249, The State of Texas vs. .J.V. Stitz, District Court of Live Oak County, May Term
A.D. 1925. Cox’s instructed charge is certainly compatible with the Klan’s moralistic attitudes towards the ‘purity of
womanhood.’ (Brown, p. 49).
67
Ibid.
68
“Citation by Publication,” Beeville Picayune (Beeville, Texas), March 6. 1930, p. 11.
69
McMullen County History, p. 232; Fifteenth Census of the United States 1930, Green River, Sweetwater County,
Wyoming.