Colorado Experience: KKK

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This is actually showcased in the History of Colorado Museum.

👍︎︎ 7 👤︎︎ u/Sundance37 📅︎︎ Aug 23 2017 🗫︎ replies

But did the trains run on time?

👍︎︎ 7 👤︎︎ u/Lost_in_Adeles_Rolls 📅︎︎ Aug 23 2017 🗫︎ replies

I remember camping around Devil's Head a long long time ago and came across a klan gathering.

👍︎︎ 11 👤︎︎ u/cport1 📅︎︎ Aug 23 2017 🗫︎ replies

Now I get why the "Natives" get rustled over all us "liberal transplants changing our city".

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/soberpenguin 📅︎︎ Aug 23 2017 🗫︎ replies

IIRC, Indiana had the highest rate of membership. Also Woodrow Wilson. It is crazy how powerful they got.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/thatgeekinit 📅︎︎ Aug 23 2017 🗫︎ replies
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- Colorado once had the second highest per capita membership in the KKK. Hi, I'm John Ferrugia. The 1920s saw an unprecedented statewide wave of power and influence of the Ku Klux Klan. And the effect of this hate lingers today. And now, "Colorado Experience-- KKK." - Every so often, society goes crazy, and the fringe elements of our community becomes mainstream. And that was never more apparent than in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan took over politics in Colorado. - They spelled the state of Colorado with a K as opposed to a C. Everybody was determined by the grand dragon-- the governor, the state senators, city mayor, police chief, the sheriff. - It was almost 100 years ago, and here we are again with a similar environment, politically and socially. - It is a cautionary tale. If we are not in denial of the power of the Klan in Colorado, we are better set out to be more honest about ourselves and who we are now. - This program was funded by the History Colorado State Historical Fund. - Supporting projects throughout the state to preserve, protect, and interpret Colorado's architectural and archaeological treasures. History Colorado State Historical Fund-- create the future, honor the past. - With support from the Denver Public Library, History Colorado. With additional funding and support from these fine organizations and viewers like you. Thank you. [music playing] - Between 1921 and 1925, the Klan flourishes in Colorado. - The Klan was prominent throughout the state and had a chapter klavern in all 64 counties. - The original Klan, right after the Civil War for six or seven years in the South, was a crucial force for forcing black subordination. And then there's the Klan of the 1920s, which is more or less nationwide, and then in our time, there is a recreated third round of the Klan. - We need to study the KKK for the simple reason that the terror that they inflicted on this country in the past is not revisited in the present and doesn't move forward in the future. - It's really hard to imagine how casually racist American society was in the 1920s. And it was not unheard of to have lynchings of Italian immigrants, or Mexicans, or African Americans-- even in a place like Colorado. - One of the great indicators of this growing xenophobia was DW Griffith's movie, "The Birth of a Nation," probably the bestseller of its time-- picturing a picture of these innocent white women in the south being hunted by blacks, glorifying the old South, denigrating black folks. - It showed white males dressed up in Klan uniforms, standing up for the white race against a threat. They were depicted as knights. They were on horses, and they had lances. - And it really was a movie that was about the scourge of black folks in the country. - A Georgia businessman, a member of various fraternal lodges, named William Joseph Simmons revived the Ku Klux Klan. He created a social organization like the Rotary Club, except that it was based on Simmons' definition of 100% Americanism-- white native-born Protestant. And he created a hierarchy of recruiters. They called them kleagles, who would go around the country and start local chapters-- sell memberships to the Klan. - William Simmons shows up at the Brown Palace Hotel and in 1921, sets up a little group called the Denver Doer's Club. And this evolves into what becomes the Klan. - The Ku Klux Klan comes to Denver and quickly spreads across the state, with strongholds in Grand Junction and Cañon City. The Klan ideology mirrors the sentiments of the day. People are eager to try something new. - Coming out of the First World War, Americans were done with international adventures. - We were just coming off a period of tremendous reform, the Progressive Era. There was a tremendous crackdown against labor unions and others who might be affiliated with socialism. - Prohibition, women's suffrage, urban reform, immigration reform-- Americans by the 1920s had enough. There were massive strikes in the United States. A lot of this unrest was blamed on eastern and southern European immigrants. - And also this ties into the Prohibition issue. Those Irish were still drinking their whiskey. The Germans still want their beer. The Italians still drink their wine-- despite the law. These were lawless foreigners. We should send them back to wherever they came from. - In places like Pueblo and Trinidad, coal companies were importing huge waves of new immigrants. On the Western Slope, fruit orchards needed cheap seasonal labor as well. - Well, there are people who believed that our nation was changing and not in a way that was positive for them. This provided fertile ground for the Klan to recruit in Colorado. - The widespread failure of Prohibition seemed to many Americans to indicate that America's morals were sliding. The automobile created these new private spaces for young people to get together. - The appeal in the 1920s for a lot of women was to get out and work-- the Roaring '20s, shorter skirts. The Klan was aghast at these kinds of things. - The Klan, to this day, always did see themselves as a law and order institution-- that they were protecting America. - This crime fixation, free floating anxiety, what do we do after a world war? We have to get things pulled back together. We have to have the central values of 100% Americanist. - And the Klan, they were going to stop the corruption and bring law and order to the Queen City of the Plains. - The Klan, it's always been, at least historically, a very broad-based organization. - It opposed alcohol. It opposed extramarital sex, pregnancy out of wedlock, Catholics. - It was based upon discrimination against minority groups-- the Negro, and the Catholic, and the Jew. There are a lot of people who fall for that kind of thing. - There's that weird hierarchy of titles. The Imperial Wizard is the national leader. That was Simmons. The leader of a state was known as the grand dragon, and Colorado's grand dragon was a man named John Galen Locke. John Galen Locke had moved to Colorado as a young man. He had served in the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. And then he got a medical degree in homeopathy. - He was a person of excessive confidence and vision, very arrogant. He was a figure who knew how to work systems, and how to be not an elected official himself, but to manipulate them within an inch of their lives. - John Galen Locke was an odd looking man. He was rotund. - He weighed 250 pounds. He was short. He was fat. Some people called him a toad. He set up a private office at 1325 Glenarm Place. You would see John Galen Locke sitting there in a throne, guarded by two Great Danes and also bodyguards. - He was reasonably intelligent. His office was filled with armor and things that came from the Middle Ages. He was a romantic. He thoroughly believed in what he was doing. - He kept as his personal secretary a Catholic. He was married to a Catholic. His lawyer was Jewish. - He was really a quite courageous man indeed. Doctor Locke had no animosity whatsoever for Jewish, or Catholic, or Negro. He loved these people. He would do anything to help them if they were ill. And he was so unconscious of the social consequences of what he was doing, it never occurred to him that he was doing a great disservice. To him, the Klan was a wonderful opportunity for showmanship. Oh, believe me, those Klansmen were sincere. They thought this was good. They were going to make Klansmen out of every Catholic in the state. They were going to make Klansmen out of every Jew before they got through. - they thought they were saving the world. - And they preyed upon these people, and it scared them to death. They applied economic pressures that were fantastic. And many, many, many bankruptcies were caused by the ostracizing of the people. - Locke's primary motivation was not racism but power. Under his rule, he turned Colorado's Ku Klux Klan into an extremely powerful voting bloc. - John Galen Locke had 138 paid organizers, would start out usually with the respectable established institutions, such as the Masons or the Protestant churches. And they would appear all of a sudden in their regalia in the middle of a service and donate, give money, build up goodwill, and say we will protect you against these foreigners, against these evil elements. - Some of our best men got sucked into this thing and found out afterwards just how badly they had been misled. - We were Klan central. Colorado had the second highest per capita membership after Indiana. There were maybe 35,000 or 40,000 members. Nobody really knows. The Klan claimed as many as 75,000 or even up to a quarter of a million what they called loyal residents. - From the high and mighty to just your average everyday coal miner, everybody was in the Klan. - Locke was pretty good in familiarizing himself with the powers that be, with people like Gano Senter, who ran a very popular restaurant here, and he changed its name to the Kool Kozy Kafe. And he also sold CYANA cigars-- the Catholics, You Are Not Americans. - Gano Senter was a grand cyclops, which is a regional director of the Ku Klux Klan, and there were very few people in Colorado who were more enthusiastic about Klan membership than Gano and Laurena Senter. - Laurena Senter organized the women's auxiliary of the Klan, which got to be a pretty big deal here. They were particularly worried about orphans going to any Catholic orphanages. - So the Klan has women members and women leaders. There's nothing surprising about that. - In 1921, the liberal labor-oriented newspaper, "The Denver Express," begins covering the Klan. In reaction, the KKK closes its Denver recruiting office, and its kleagles set up in Colorado Springs, where they have little luck. They are welcomed in Pueblo, with promises to enforce law and order against the many immigrants working in the steel mills and coal mines. Back in Denver, the Klan exerts its power. Warren Gash received a letter in January of 1922, threatening him. - This colored man, who had been ordered out of town by the Klan, simply because he was a caretaker for some widow, and the rumor went out that he was too familiar with her. - This letter said your hide is worth more to us than to you. We're going to get you. And he took this to Philip Van Cise, the city district attorney. - Van Cise was appalled. He couldn't believe that a citizen of Denver would receive such a virulent, nasty death threat. Philip Van Cise, he was in the Colorado National Guard. He served as a peacekeeper at Ludlow. As soon as the Klan reared its head, Philip Van Cise became one of its earliest and most vocal opponents. - He was the type of man who would prosecute his own grandmother if she violated the law, and by George, that's the kind of public official we needed. For instance, the packing of juries-- - The jury commissioner, being a Klu Kluxer himself, the jury lists were made up in the office of Dr. Locke down on Glenarm Street. - I would say 75% of the police department belonged to the Klan. - You didn't get a promotion if you weren't a member of the Klan. - Van Cise decides to investigate the Klan, gets five members of his staff to join-- infiltrate the Klan to try to build up evidence against them. - In the summer of 1922, the Klan holds its first public meeting in Estes Park, with thousands of hooded Klansman gathering. Within one year, Denver's Mayor Benjamin Stapleton, openly supports the Klan and offers city space for them to spread their message. While the Klan's popularity grows, so does their illegal actions, including kidnapping and conspiracy. - Patrick Walker, the 19-year-old old supposedly had intimate relationships with a young woman. John Galen Locke found out about this, and so they kidnapped him, and they threatened to beat him or even kill him if he didn't marry the young woman. And so walker did so, but then he went to the police. Ultimately, Locke and other conspirators were indicted for kidnapping. There are dozens of accounts of harassment, of intimidation, of cross burnings in people's yards, of bombs on people's front porches, of beatings, of kidnapping. - Walter Walker was described as a little Napoleon. He was already the most powerful Democratic politician on the Western Slope. He runs the "Grand Junction Daily Sentinel." He wanted to be the grand cyclops of the Grand Junction Klan. It was in August of 1924. "The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel" described it as silent and impressive display, estimated at 500 fully gowned clansman walking down Main Street, three crosses burned in the night. Dr. John Galen Locke himself had come over. So the clan is fully here. - In the fall of 1924, things did not go as Walter Walker planned and Grand Junction Klansmen choose realtor DB Wright as their first Exalted Cyclops. Walker, who helped to bring the Klan to the area, did not take rejection well and slowly begins to use his newspaper to thwart their efforts. In Denver, the district attorney, Phillip Van Cise, and 100 prominent Republicans formed the visible government league to fight the KKK. Van Cise holds a public meeting to expose clan secrets, but it's disrupted. According to "The Denver Express," it was a meeting hall packed with enraged, shouting, shrieking men and women gone mad with fanatic Klan frenzy. - They were pretty roused up on both sides-- Klan and anti-Klan. - And it was just on the same line with the boycotts that the Klan put out. They would distribute these mimeographed sheets on who to patronize and who not to patronize. Catholics and Jews really the pressure. - These hoods and robes that were sold for a rather substantial price, added to the coffers of the Klan. They filled the heart of the Negro and the businessman of non Ku Klux connection with fear. They refused to patronize anybody who didn't belong to the Klan. The economic boycotting was fantastic. People sensing power-- they worked through the Republican Party. They took possession of the Republican Party. They worked in the precincts. Their leaders attended the caucuses, and they gained control practically 100% of the Republican Party at that time. - The membership increased very rapidly, and the members of the city council-- from the mayor on down, all those city officials with very few exceptions are members of the Klan. You couldn't get elected to anything in the city and county of Denver unless you were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan or had their blessing. - In the election of 1924, Klansmen won overwhelming control of the Colorado state legislature. - The peak of the Klan's influence in many ways was the embrace of Denver Mayor Ben Stapleton of the Klan ideology. In acceptance of their support and his use of them, it harnessed the power of a very angry white group that thought things were changing for them. - He was kind of mild-mannered nerdish-looking guy with his spectacles and does start to clean up the city. - Ben Stapleton was a politically ambitious person. So he gets elected, and then the disillusionment hits pretty fast. And he is up for a recall, and the only way to survive his recall election is to be very explicit in assuring the Klan leadership-- I'm with you. The Klan can trust me to be your official. So he does survive his recall with very clear Klan support. - Phillip Van Cise lost his re-election bid for Denver district attorney because of his war on the Ku Klux Klan. - Clarence Morley agrees to sell his soul. He wanted to be governor. He got to be governor, and he got to make statements about the great movement that he was a part of. - Clarence Morley is a tall, kind of spiny man. He looks almost mousy, particularly next to John Galen Locke, his hero. He's only in office for one term, and after that, he's actually indicted for mail fraud and our only governor ever to go to prison. The Klan kept meeting. And every time, they outgrew their facilities. So they finally went to this huge building, the Overland Park Mills, where they had huge gatherings. - Allegedly, more than 30,000 people showed up at a Klan rally. Large scale public rallies were one of the hallmarks of the Klan to show their power, to show their unity, and to show the potential for intimidation that they had. - So each of these Klan meetings would be plain rabble-rousing. Dr. Locke was very emotional. He was a very effective speaker. After anything he said, there was tremendous applause. - They were famous for their gatherings on Lookout Mountain, just outside of Golden. They would burn a cross there, have a big ritual, and you get a lecture on 100% Americanism. And of course, you'd be told how to vote. - By this time, Walker is not a member of the Klan. In fact, he'd been thrown out for not being supportive enough. The Klan not only takes over the city council, they start replacing some of their members with the Grand Junction police force. But they've made a very significant enemy in Walter Walker. - By 1925, the invisible empire is at the height of its power in Colorado. They are highly visible across the state, with public picnics, banquets, boxing tournaments, and performances by the imperial Klan band. - (SINGING) Ku Klux Klan has come to our town, and it comes to stay. Hear the kids talk 'roun'. This is what they say. - They have charity events. They have concerts. - For a group that claimed that it preferred to operate in secret, the Ku Klux Klan loved spectacle. And the Klan, of course, created its own newspapers-- "The Rocky Mountain American." The Klansmen were sophisticated marketers who would use popular culture in order to achieve their ends. - Your everyday average white person may not have had such bigoted views, but they certainly condoned it. It was made very clear in Denver that black folks couldn't live beyond a certain street. - They would post notices on the Immaculate Conception Cathedral or Temple Emmanuel's doors, reminding that the Catholics or the Jews were not Americans. They would pass out pink slips into the mailboxes of African Americans, or Jews, or Catholics, or immigrants, reminding them that they're not American. - (SINGING) Klansman, Klansman, of the Ku Klux Klan. Protestant, Gentile, Native born man. Hooded, knighted, robed, and true. Royal sons of the Red, White and Blue. - Older African Americans will tell you that the Klan initiated a major race riot-- marching in, burning houses, physically removing people, shooting, stabbing. There were deaths. - There were many people who stood up to criticize the Klan, to expose them for what they were. Clarence Holmes was an African American dentist who formed the Cosmopolitan Group, an interracial group of people who came together and socialized-- had a cross burned on his front lawn. "The Denver Catholic Register" made an intense effort to expose the inner workings of the Klan and the editor, Father Smith was almost run over in the streets. - Msgr. Gregory Smith makes a point of trying to get in and listing those people and then do a counter boycott. Don't go patronizing any of these people. So he kept fighting the Klan constantly. - With so many efforts going to take down the Klan, the tide started to turn. Grand Dragon Locke was arrested on charges of kidnapping. Sensing the change, Denver's Mayor Stapleton decides to turn on the group that helped keep him in office. - Stapleton, who is going to be their creature, their guy-- he ends up recognizing the vulnerability of the Klan. - They got too domineering for him. He just couldn't follow the orders of Dr. Locke and his subordinates. - And initiating some vice raids against Klan's members and actually being a force that points out the wickedness within. He seems to be a person who did what he had to do for political expediency. - He recruited and deputized American Legionnaires to raid Klan operated gambling dens and bootlegging facilities. He joined the Klan primarily to receive their political support. And when the winds of political fortunes blew against the Klan, he was one of the first people to turn on them. - Ironically, Stapleton comes up with one of the most eloquent denunciations-- true Americanism does not hide under a sheet. - And then when it became known that the Internal Revenue Service was investigating the income of the Klan and particularly Dr. Locke, they held a special meeting-- and Dr. Locke sitting there with his head in his hands. - The Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan Hiram Evans asked John Galen Locke to step down. He was accused by the national Klan of keeping more than his share of what you paid for membership dues. - Locke was ultimately indicted for tax evasion and spent some time in jail. And the Klan split into two groups in 1925-- the Ku Klux Klan, which moved its headquarters to Cañon City, and the Minutemen of Colorado, which was a nativist, white nationalist group run by John Galen Locke. Once America really began to enjoy the prosperity of the postwar boom, Americans felt that the anxieties that had driven them into the Klan were not as important anymore. And once the Klan was shown to be corrupt, the center couldn't hold. - There was a traffic stop in downtown Grand Junction. A Mexican-American bootlegger is actually killed by local Klan. Walter Walker now uses his newspaper to go against the Klan. And right after this, Walker is walking down Main Street, and he is accosted by one of the Klan policemen, beaten in broad daylight. The next day, Walker begins a strong editorial campaign against the Klan. Two weeks later, Walker's son is mysteriously accosted and beat up. The final blow was the 1927 Grand Junction City Council elections. His influence was strong, and the Klan is entirely swept out of power. Certainly his legacy has suffered. Was he a man of his times? Of course. A lot of people were joining the Klan in the 1920s. It was a big step down for the Klan to leave Denver and move to Cañon City. It represented the decline of the Klan-- that they could no longer operate in an intense public arena like Denver. - In Cañon City, there's a lot of Klan activity-- paving roads, building schools. That Cañon City Klan seems to have been more of a public works and institution-building Klan. - They come to power in '24. By '26, '27, they're already on the way out. - There's some theories among political scientists that when folks get a lot of power, unless it's checked, the power becomes unhinged. And so it was a hubris thing and an arrogance that caused the Klan to fall in Colorado. I mean, at some point, folks come to their senses-- at least, you hope they do. - In 1928, Grand Dragon Fred Arnold dies of blood poisoning, bringing the Colorado KKK to an end. The fiery cross on his headstone blazing for eternity. - Between the 1920s and the 1970s, the KKK existed all over the country at various incantations. The KKK existed in the Denver, Colorado area, Lakewood, Colorado, and in Colorado Springs. It was not organized. That was one reason why I as a black man was able to conduct an undercover investigation, and place three undercover cops into their group, and conduct undercover investigation for approximately 7 and 1/2 months. There guys were always carrying guns, because all they talked about was wanting to kill blacks, wanting to kill Jews, wanting to burn crosses. At any time, my guys could have arrested about nine of these guys for illegal possession of firearms. But we let it go, because we were hoping to take this to more advanced criminal charges, which never materialized. We had two gay clubs in Colorado Springs at that time. They told us they wanted to bomb these two gay clubs. One of their aims was to try and steal automatic weapons from Fort Carson, Colorado. We determined that they had two military personnel assigned to NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command. So my investigation reached the Pentagon. The Grand Wizard David Duke-- on January 10, 1979, made an appearance in Colorado Springs. David Duke was the new face of the Ku Klux Klan. He never wore his Klan robe in public. He never used the so-called n-word. He was always very polite, very well groomed, very professional in public. In private, he was hell-fire. He changed the face of the Klan. He professionalized it. The case ended because the chapter president wanted Ron Stallworth to become the chapter leader. And when I went to my chief of police and told him, this he said shut the investigation down now. Ron Stallworth Klansman disappeared that day. During the entire 7 and 1/2 months of this investigation, no cross was ever burned in Colorado Springs. The KKK of the late '70s didn't end. People have to get out of their head the fact that the KKK ends. They never end. They go dormant. - In the 1920s, in the 1960s, in the 1990s, there was a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. - The ideals and the beliefs that allowed for the Klan to rise to power in Colorado-- those things never really left. The aftermath carried on for years and years. And some would argue it still does. And even in the way that we interact with each other, there's still that carry-over effect. - Hate-inspired vandalism continues to this day. "KKK" is spray painted on homes and vehicles numerous times in the Denver metro area in 2016, and swastikas mysteriously appear on schools and religious buildings every few years. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies 892 hate groups in the United States, with 14 in Colorado, including the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs. - They are a domestic terrorist group in any form that they take, in any generation. - One of the beauties of the First Amendment is that it provides the opportunity for us to go into a public space and have all those ideas compete. - Ben Stapleton, he and others like him are the most important cautionary tales about-- monitor your own ambitions, decide when your ambitions are tempting you. - People like Van Cise were these beacons of light in a very dark time in Colorado. It wasn't the crosses that were the beacons. It was the people who stood up for what was right. - And we do have these periodic cycles. We wanted to determine who was an American, define who was an American in the 1920s. We're doing some of the same things right now. - There's still a number of hate groups that find a home in Colorado, but there's a large number of people in Colorado who don't tolerate that. - With the now the anti-Muslim sentiment in this country, there's always a group to look down on and hate. - Have things improved? Yeah, they have improved. Are things perfect? No, and I don't think it will be until folks in this country really get real about having a conversation about race in this country. - We all should get along, but all it takes is one person who spreads hatred. - And if we look at the history of this nation, whenever we've been given the opportunity to do the right thing, we stand up. We do the right thing. Although we may slip and fall along the way, we eventually get around to doing the right thing.
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Channel: Rocky Mountain PBS
Views: 1,948,755
Rating: 4.4607363 out of 5
Keywords: kkk, kkk colorado, ben stapleton, colorado experience, kkk 1920s, rocky mountain pbs
Id: PO5PMbtF1t8
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 27min 59sec (1679 seconds)
Published: Tue Jan 24 2017
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