The Emporia Gazette

November 21, 2009

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A FEW YEARS ago, I was at the home of a friend, who was showing me some well-preserved horse equipment with a family history. A dark stain on one of the saddles, he said, was blood.

His ancestor, who had owned the saddle, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and had been wounded in a shoot-out. In this part of the country, we’re pretty close to our history. There are hundreds of family stories like this one. But we’re close not only in place, but in time. The incident involving our friend’s saddle happened in the late 1920s, during the lifetime of people still living.

I’d almost forgotten about it, until I was speaking to a Historical Society in Valley Falls a while back. In informal discussion, we were talking about Civil War history. In the 1860s, there were pockets of Union and Confederate sympathy in eastern Kansas, often very close to each other. Rival towns sprang up to offset the other’s claim. A prime example might be that of Lecompton, oriented to the South, sandwiched between Topeka and Lawrence, two of the most extremely “Yankee” of the frontier towns. Valley Falls, in the general area, was also Union oriented. I was surprised, then, when someone mentioned that the Ku Klux Klan had been active there. Not in the post-Civil War days, but in the 1920s. Edith Harden, secretary of the Valley Falls Historical Society, has done quite a bit of research on the Klan and has sent me some material about that time period.

After World War I, there was a resurgence of KKK activity across the country. Not merely anti-Negro, but very strictly against a lot of other things, too. The anti-German hatred left over from the war must have been a major factor. A different sort of Klan activity swept over the country, not limited to the South. The Klan purported to be a patriotic organization, holding meetings openly, with speakers and recruitment rallies. They stood for “full-fledged Americanism,” which they saw as white, English-speaking Protestant Americans. At the height of their activity in the 1920s, they claimed four or five million members. There were large-scale Klan rallies in towns across the country, with a lot of newspaper coverage. There were efforts to start new chapters. Apparently many people saw this as a lodge, similar to the Masonic organization, or Elks, Odd Fellows, fraternities, even the American Legion without the military requirement. Theoretically, no one knew who the other members were.

In the Valley Falls situation, the local chapter, Klan 69, was helped considerably by the fact that their leader, Clayton Wyatt, was owner and editor of the local newspaper, the VALLEY FALLS VINDICATOR. He was also the postmaster and a deacon in the Church of Christ and a highly respected citizen.

In 1925 and 1926, the VINDICATOR published news of Klan activities and charter membership in Klan 69 was included in obituaries, along with church affiliation. There was a report of remodeling and dedication of the Klan Hall at 501 Frazier, Valley Falls, and the principal address by “Mr. Chas. H. Brayer, Grand Dragon of Kansas.” The Klan was praised for this community effort. (We have to wonder how the members managed to remain anonymous with this sort of publicity).

The Imperial Wizard, Hiram Wesley Evans, a dentist from Texas, speaking to Kansas Klansmen, urged them to oppose all Negroes, foreign-born, Jews and Catholics. In Valley Falls, traditional hate activities were somewhat limited, there being very few blacks, Jews or foreign-born citizens not already assimilated. But there were Catholics. (“Everybody knows the Pope was a foreigner,” said the Imperial Wizard). Crosses were burned to “ — warn Catholics to keep their place, not get into politics, nor marry children of Decent Protestant American Families.” Yet, apparently there were no violent events in the area.

Nationally, the Klan suffered considerably in 1926, from the convictions of several top leaders for crimes such as murder, extortion and corruption, and Klan 69 faded into history, without the formality of dissolving. Hate may not be dead, but we’ve come a long way.

See you down the road.

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