In 1925, the Ku Klux Klan held a two-day regional rally at Yates County fairgrounds, and a four-day regional rally at Chemung County Fairgrounds, culminating in a fourth of July fireworks spectacular by 250 Klavaliers from Altoona, Pa. The Klan openly held meetings and rallies in dozens of our communities, and burned crosses in dozens of our communities. They held parades in the streets of our communities, and motor cavalcades along our country roads. Members in dozens of churches applauded when Ku Klux Klan members paraded in wearing their robes. Very often the ministers were members. So were police chiefs, county treasurers, presidents of common councils. In several counties they controlled the Republican Party for years.
How did this happen?
In 1915 there appeared a silent spectacular of the silver screen, Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan, depicting blacks as monsters and their white sympathizers as dupes. Canny organizers (who made fortunes on memberships and sales) took advantage of this free advertising, adding in whispered warnings about “the foreign:” Jews, Catholics, immigrants, and city dwellers, in addition to African Americans. Rural whites were already being pressured economically – SOME ONE must be responsible, and the Klan had ready answers, PLUS a program to do something about it! AND all the usual benefits of joining a lodge.
These people were also angry (or frightened) at modernization. Votes for women; independent, educated African Americans; movies and radio making people long for something more; new technologies changing the economy; strong unions; religious ideas different from what they’d been used to; modern art; new advances in science; the fact that more Americans now lived in the city than in the country. AND Al Smith was our governor! Catholic! Urban! Progressive! Child of immigrants! He didn’t even believe in prohibition! “Take back our state!”
It’s hard for us to fathom today, but people were fiercely proud of their membership. There was a K.K.K. filling station in Bath, and another in Painted Post. There are K.K.K. gravestones in Canisteo. Members painted K.K.K. on a cliff in Cameron Mills, and maintained it for decades. The Klan had its own meeting house in Cameron Mills into the 1950s. Newspapers reported K.K.K. funerals, and K.K.K. weddings.
Yates County Historical Society has a minute book from the ladies’ auxiliary, the Keuka Klub. They had meetings with 20 to 40 members present, gathering at Milo Second Baptist Church, Penn Yan Methodist Church, and a Grange hall, then rented the Moose Hall for $125 a year.
They had lectures, singing, quilting bee, relief for the sick, etc. In June 1925 they minuted “stores in Penn Yan who are Prodident.” The spelling was not even phonetic, making us wonder whether they even understood what Protestantism was historically.
On one occasion Klan members marched in a circle in front of St. Michael’s church in Penn Yan. Father Hugh A. Crowley (pastor 1922-1930) came out and told them that if they didn’t leave he’d kick their asses. He was a big man, and they left. At a rally in Bath the speaker demanded that any Catholics in the audience leave, insisting that he only wanted to spare their feelings.
The N.A.A.C.P. fought the Klan, and so did the Grand Army of the Republic, though those Union veterans were growing few and frail by then. A mob chased Klan speakers off in Elmira in 1923. When 6000 people in Buffalo joined up the mayor had a policeman infiltrate the group and steal the membership list, which the mayor then published. African Americans from Bath crisscrossed the region jawboning mayors, who generally said they couldn’t stop peaceful parades. But anti-mask laws sprang up, and statewide the 1923 Walker Law, with some exceptions, required organizations to report annually on their memberships, oaths, and bylaws.
The Klan reportedly was still burning crosses on people’s lawns – in Prattsburgh, for instance – into the 1970s, and they still exist in small numbers today, but the big fever died out by the end of the 1920s. Scandals involving the national leadership disillusioned many. Al Smith left the scene. The N.A.A.C.P. conducted a vigorous campaign educating American about lynchings, and finally the Depression got everybody’s minds onto other things.
It’s a very ugly part of our history, but sad to say it’s also a significant part. I’ll be reporting on these chilling days in Steuben County Historical Society’s next Winter Lecture, 4 PM Friday March 6 in Bath Fire Hall – free and open to the public.