- 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.
This is actually showcased in the History of Colorado Museum.
But did the trains run on time?
I remember camping around Devil's Head a long long time ago and came across a klan gathering.
Now I get why the "Natives" get rustled over all us "liberal transplants changing our city".
IIRC, Indiana had the highest rate of membership. Also Woodrow Wilson. It is crazy how powerful they got.