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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
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GUEST COLUMN
Clatsop County Historical Society
A 1924 Klan rally in Astoria.
THE CHILLING THREADS
OF OUR RACIST PAST
W
hite.
That is the overwhelming
impression.
White.
The material is like a sturdy cotton sheet, the
type they use in hospitals.
I’ve never handled one of these garments
before, have never seen one, except in hundreds
of images of the Ku Klux Klan.
My fingers feel the fabric, trace some of the
seams. Someone made this. It’s not pulled from
a bed, it’s been carefully crafted.
There’s a burst of color on the breast where
one’s heart would be. A red
badge, not unlike a Scout’s
badge but bigger. It’s a red
stitched circle with what looks
like a white cross forming an
“x.” In the middle is a square
with a red drop that looks like
KNUTE
half of the yin-yang symbol.
BERGER
Only it looks like a drop of
blood.
There’s a belt and a cape.
And there’s the hood. The hood is stiff and
flat with cardboard inside to keep its pointy
shape. It’s topped with a blood-red tassel.
But the thing that gives me chills is the face
of the hood with its eyeholes cut in oval shapes.
Hoods are scary things, especially when they
come with torches, carried by strangers. That
was the point of this garment, to terrify. The
eyeholes look worn from use, perhaps from
sliding it on and off. The holes look as if they’ve
been widened to fit a particular man’s eyes. A
Klansman’s got to see, especially at night.
The Klan hood seems less generic as I look
it over. Someone wore this. Not a faceless
person, but someone’s father, uncle, grandfather.
It’s not a costume, but a weapon. Someone
hung it in a closet in Astoria, probably in the
1920s and left it for their descendants to find
along with the old dark suits. White like a
skeleton.
How many Astoria residents have found
KKK robes in a family closet or attic trunk
is unknown, but fortunately at least four
people have anonymously donated these old
Klan robes and hoods to the Clatsop County
Historical Society’s Heritage Museum. (The
museum has more Klan relics too: a ceremonial
sword, belts, patches, a felt pennant — as if the
KKK were a sports team.) I say “fortunately”
because this is Northwest history that is easily
lost, forgotten, and buried. It’s important that
this history, hateful as it is, be saved so people
can look at it, feel it — not only in their hands,
but in their hearts. To me, the horror of the Klan
became touchable, less abstract.
Klan had power
Photographer Matt McKnight and I came
to Astoria largely because of the reason such
things have wound up in the local museum:
Back in the early 1920s, as the KKK bloomed
nationwide, Oregon was one of the top two
states in membership, with Indiana. With an
estimated 35,000 members at one point, Oregon
was the center of the Klan in the West.
Astoria was second only to Portland in being
the state’s biggest Klan center. In the 1920s,
Astoria’s population was peaking at around
14,000 — with at least 1,000 KKK members
and thousands more who sympathized with
the Protestant, native-born, white supremacist
agenda. The Klan had power to dominate
elections in the city and helped influence
government across the state of Oregon, and to a
lesser extent in Washington.
The Pacific Northwest has all sorts of
shameful but important history around the Klan,
anti-Semitism and bigotry directed at blacks,
Asians, Native Americans and Catholics. Over
the past few years, I’ve written about Seattle’s
racist mayor of the Civil War era, the Seattle-
based pro-Hitler presidential campaign of the
leader of the 1930s Silver Shirts, and racial
exclusions and expulsions of people of color
throughout the region’s history.
So, the strength of the KKK in Astoria
caught my eyes and seemed like an intriguing
case of a community succumbing, for a time, to
its worst fears and prejudices.
We came to find out why its history had
gone awry. And we wondered: What do you do
when you have artifacts like these? And what
might they tell us about the Northwest today?
To the first question, why was the Ku Klux
Klan such a big deal in Astoria? It was a boom-
town with the demand for Northwest products
— timber, canned salmon, ships — growing
after World War I. It was a rough and tumble
city with a longstanding vice district — called
Swilltown — to feed those workingmen’s appe-
tites for gambling, sex and booze.
It was full of immigrants — most from
Nordic countries, especially Finland, whose
residents — in one of the stranger twists of
racist thinking — were sometimes regarded as
non-white.
History professor David Horowitz of
Portland State University has studied the Klan
in Oregon. “Astoria may have been a magnet
because it was a port and potentially a place
of entry for illegal booze, merchant seamen,
Chinese immigrants, and the various vice trades
associated with that status,” he tells me. It “also
had a large population of Finns, known for
their political radicalism after the Bolshevik
Revolution.”
In the years following World War I,
anti-communism became strong in America.
So too had a trend toward uber-nationalism,
a sense of worry that America was become
“mongrelized” and subverted by foreign influ-
ences. It’s easy to forget that Oregon had racial
exclusion laws — yes, laws excluding blacks
and mixed-race people altogether — dating
back to the mid-19th century. Oregon banned
blacks in its state constitution, a provision still
there until 1926. These laws discouraged racial
minorities from living within the state’s borders.
So, the black population was small and limited
mostly to Portland; there were a few Jews and
some Japanese farmers.
Journalists stood up
In the early 1920s, the KKK took off and
extended throughout the North, Midwest and
the West Coast — not so much as nightriders
terrorizing blacks but as a middle-class move-
ment that was white supremacist as well as
virulently anti-Catholic. Oregon’s population
was white, Protestant, and native born, which
met the KKK’s male membership requirements.
Linda Gordon, a New York University professor
and Bancroft Prize-winning author, has written
a new book, “The Second Coming of the
KKK,” that focuses on the Klan’s
1920s revival. She writes, “The
combination of economic and
cultural factors and a rich vein of
possible recruits contributed to
the Klan’s high-velocity Oregon
success.”
The Klan sought to eliminate
the “anti-democratic,” foreign
influence of the Pope and his
followers. Its members distrusted
immigrants. They wanted
Prohibition enforced. They
feared change and urbanization.
For many, the KKK became
their vehicle for “reform” and
restoring traditional American
values — for making America
great again.
Oregon’s Klan began to grow
in 1921, but the following year was a watershed
one. The Klan pushed a statewide initiative
in 1922 to ban all private schools, especially
Catholic schools. The vision was that Oregon
children should all go to public schools and be
thoroughly Americanized with the same cur-
riculum emphasizing god and country. Though
a similar Klan initiative in Washington would
later flop badly with voters, the Oregon initia-
tive passed, only to be eventually overturned in
court. Klan-backed candidates won the Oregon
governorship and many legislative seats, virtu-
ally controlling the state’s Legislature.
The Klan tide swept Astoria. The KKK had
installed their choice for Clatsop County sheriff
that year. They also used threats and intimi-
dation to run Catholics out of positions on the
school board and as the head of the Chamber of
Commerce.
Their campaign for control culminated with
the November election. The banner headline
in the Morning Astorian on Nov. 8 read, “Ku
Klux Klan Ticket Sweeps City.” The KKK took
the mayor’s office and all the city commission
seats. The Klan became City Hall.
The Clatsop museum has physical examples
of the tactics used to gain influence. One is
an anonymous “special delivery” threat from
an Astorian to a man with an Irish Catholic
sounding name, Tom McKay. “Your case
is not forgotten,” the note reads. “The right
opportunity will come. [Signed] K.K.K. 876.”
Accompanying the note was a clipping about a
series of brutal floggings doled out by the Klan
in Tulsa. Clearly, McKay was being threatened
with the same treatment. Oregon had its own
history along that line: When it banned all
blacks, those who exercised their constitutional
and human rights by remaining were threatened
with public whippings.
Some of the community pushed back. The
crackdown on saloons proved hard to enforce
no matter who was sheriff. Some clergy
protested, but most sided with the Klan and
many non-members said they agreed with
Klan values, if not tactics. One Klan stratagem
the clergy may have liked: KKK members in
full regalia had ceremoniously entered local
churches during services and donated money
with a flourish.
Journalists stood up against the Klan. The
KKK — on the letterhead of the “Imperial
Palace” of the national headquarters in Atlanta
— demanded the removal of the editor of
Astoria’s Evening Budget newspaper, M.R.
Chessman, who editorialized against them. In
lieu of that, the Klan offered to buy the paper
outright. Chessman stayed and the Budget
rejected the offer.
The KKK had their own PR machine.
Astoria became the headquarters for the Klan’s
Western newspaper, The Western American,
edited by Lem A. Dever, a former journalist
who, among other things, once worked for
the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. He helped
spread their virulent message far and wide.
The fever that saw the Klan’s torches shine
bright in the early 1920s broke later that decade.
The Klan organization fractured into camps,
and loyalists like Lem Dever split with the
organization over corrupt practices, internal
infighting and political power struggles. People
grew tired of the KKK’s intimidation tactics
and occasional vigilante behavior. By the
early 1930s the Great Depression came and
Prohibition was overturned.
As the KKK diminished in strength, white
robes ended up in closets.
Raking up the past
Fast forward to the late 1990s
when the Clatsop Museum’s
curator at the time, Mark
Tolonen, mounted a museum
exhibit on Astoria immigration
(Tolonen himself is from an
old Astoria family with Finnish
heritage). Astoria was a town
of immigrants, and for a time,
anti-immigration activists. The
exhibit included some of the
Klan artifacts, among them a
white robe.
Stories appeared in regional
newspapers from Portland to
Seattle about whether or not
exhibiting such artifacts was
appropriate. Some thought
they glorified the Klan. Others
objected to raking up a shameful
past. Some contended it wasn’t a significant
enough matter to warrant attention — the KKK
was, supposedly, a mere blip in the history of
the Northwest coast’s oldest Euro-American
settlement, better forgotten.
And people have forgotten, or don’t want
to talk about it. I asked one multi-generational
Astorian about the KKK and he pantomimed a
10-foot pole and held me at bay with it.
Klan robes and hoods can absolutely make
people very uncomfortable. The Washington
State History Museum displayed a blue Klan
robe as part of a Civil War exhibit a few years
ago — I wrote a column about uneasily trying
to explain it to my then 9-year-old African
American granddaughter. When I told her what
the Klan was about, she dismissed them as the
Klu Klux clowns. Still, my grandkids need
to know our real past, and how it informs the
present. Museums can show us how we got the
way we are, warts and all.
The Oregon Historical Society collection
includes KKK robes, hoods and other artifacts
from Oregon’s Klan era gathered from around
the state. Some Klan artifacts were included in
an exhibit curated by Oregon Black Pioneers in
2013. Context is important. Neither generated
any memorable impact for their respective
museums, according to current curators.
Interestingly, even though there was a signifi-
cant KKK presence in Seattle, the Museum of
History and Industry has no Klan robes in its
‘Rather
than being
extraordinary,
evil is often
ordinary,
woven into
the fabric of
our history
and everyday
life.’
collection. Which means there are likely some
unopened closets around Seattle with cotton
skeletons in them.
Mark Tolonen is now curator with the
Benton County Historical Society and Museum
in Philomath. “The white robes and hoods in
that exhibition about immigration create a very
powerful spectacle,” he says now about that
earlier Astoria exhibit. Looking back he says the
larger message about immigration being part
of the community’s history “is easily lost when
powerful artifacts” like the robes and hoods are
displayed.
Museum holds history
Liisa Penner is the Clatsop museum’s archi-
vist. A Klan sword and pennant are on exhibit,
but the hoods and robes are in storage. When
Matt and I visited, they were brought out for us
to look at and photograph. Penner has files and
boxes of correspondence, clippings and other
documents related to the 1920s Klan in Astoria.
If the community is uncomfortable with this
history, the museum is certainly not averse
to making its files and collection available to
researchers and keeping some reminders on
display. Donors of KKK items often deny
knowing that their family members were Klan
members and they all have insisted that their
family names not be connected with the robes.
Still, the fact that they have been donated to
the museum suggests an understanding of their
historic value — and maybe a desire to get them
out of the house.
The Klan itself was secretive about mem-
bers, but also very public. Its members wore
hoods and conducted secret ceremonies. Some
saw it as just another fraternal organization,
like the Odd Fellows. Many were uncomfort-
able with its tactics and pageantry, but not its
messages of racism, nativism, anti-Semitism
and “Americanism,” just as many people
who would never wear Klan robes today find
themselves in sympathy with the ideas of the
nationalism and what some call the “alt” right.
After looking through materials and pho-
tographing the Klan garb at the museum, Matt
and I left. But we had a copy of a photograph
from the museum’s collection. It was taken at an
Astoria Klan rally in 1924. That year, the town
hosted a Klan convention and more than 10,000
Klansmen and their supporters came to town.
The photograph shows what appears to be
a ceremony inducting new members into the
Klan. They are wearing their white hoods and
robes and appear to be in a field. A grandstand
filled with spectators is in the background.
A newspaper account from the Astoria
Budget fills in the background of the photo:
A KKK parade led by five Klansmen on
horseback marched through town to Astoria’s
Columbia Club Park, where more than a score
of candidates were inducted into the Klan
in front of a large crowd while “a great fiery
cross blazed in the background.” They were
welcomed by the mayor, O.B. Setters, and the
Oregon KKK’s grand dragon, Fred Gifford
who “spoke eloquently upon ‘100 percent
Americanism.’” The paper described the scene
as “an unusual and interesting one.”
While I was going through my KKK notes
at our hotel on Astoria’s riverside, Matt called
me and said he’d learned that the park in the
photo still existed and in fact was very close to
the hotel. We’d driven by it a number of times.
We went over and looked. It’s a baseball field
— as it was in the ’20s — currently “Home of
Astoria’s Youth Baseball.” As in 1924, John
Jacob Astor elementary school sits above the
park — we could see and hear the children
playing on the playground likely near where
that fiery cross once burned near the banks
of the Columbia River and perhaps cast its
reflection.
The scene today is so normal: a school,
a ballfield right on the main road into town.
Seeing the Klan ceremony photo from 1924
and looking at the park now, Hannah Arendt’s
phrase about “the banality of evil” in reference
to the Nazis came to mind. Rather than being
extraordinary, evil is often ordinary, woven
into the fabric of our history and everyday life,
hanging in our closets, lingering as bad ideas.
Our discomfort with the history is evidence that
the resonance in the present is real.
That realization was as disturbing as han-
dling those white robes of common cloth.
Knute Berger is a columnist for Cross-
cut.com, a nonprofit, public media daily news
website.