![]() Two years later, the same chapter held a corn roast. In Indiana, Pa., the KKK sponsored a potluck picnic, ballgame, fireworks, refreshment stands at a local farm, noted the local Gazette Indiana on Sept.People were bused in from outlying counties for a parade and music and fireworks and even a KKK wedding. A similar to-do was held in Bristol, Tenn., according to the June 24, 1924, Kingsport Times.The May 28, 1924, edition of the Indianapolis News told of a planned three-day KKK festival including a pageant - with a cast of 2,000 men and women in robes - music, a parade and a high-dive exhibition by a Kokomo man from the top of a 100-foot tower into a net.Scheible, who was elected by "an overwhelming majority over five opponents." 8 that the Klan held a victory celebration for Charles F. The Zanesville Times Recorder reported on Nov. In the fall of 1923, an outspoken member of the Ku Klux Klan was elected mayor of Youngstown, Ohio."A fiery cross will be burned and the American flag will be raised at half-mast." Four days later, a countywide rally of the Ku Klux Klan and its women's auxiliary - with a parade around the town and three bands playing - was expected to draw 10,000 people. 4, 1923 - at the Franklin Fairgrounds in Franklin, Ind., the Evening Star reported. Harding died of a heart attack in early August 1923, the KKK scheduled a silent memorial service - at midnight on Aug. In February 1917 - on Long Island in New York - the Patchogue High School basketball team stretched its win streak to 16 with a 16-to-15 victory over the Ku Klux Klan basketball team of East Moriches, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.There were KKK public initiations in many states - including California, Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas - and KKK public parades in Florida, Oregon, Tennessee and other states. And in communities where the KKK really took root, "this meant that a very sizable part of the eligible population was in the Klan." The KKK was even successful at "block recruiting" of whole clubs or congregations at one time.Īnd the Klan insinuated itself into otherwise polite society. In the 1920s, membership in the KKK reached several million people - almost exclusively white, native-born, Protestant women and men, Blee says. They were virulently anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-Catholic, and some of their main leaders promoted expulsion and economic retribution against their 'enemies.' "īut for a while, some American communities flirted with - even loved - the hate group. Of course, Blee emphasizes, the KKK was not "the innocuous club they pretended to be. "In some places I studied in Indiana," she says, "the local KKK was listed in the city directory, along with sewing clubs and agricultural societies." Blee.įemale Ku Klux Klan members in the 1920s march through Binghamton, N.Y., holding American flags. In fact, the Klan was so mainstream in some parts of the country that local KKK groups "sponsored, in public, baseball teams, father-son outings, beautiful baby contests, weddings, baby christenings, junior leagues, road rallies, festivals," says Kathleen M. And, as it turns out, the Ku Klux Klan was considered by many to be an accepted group in society. The 1920s were a bawdy, gaudy time in America: jazz wafting, flappers dancing, gangsters bootlegging, Wall Street rocking. So, I wondered, if the KKK fielded a baseball team, what were some of the group's other seemingly innocuous, All-American activities? After all, it was known as the Invisible Empire. I had always envisioned the repugnant and reprehensible lawbreakers operating in the cowardly shadows. Imagine: There was a time when the KKK was an out-in-the-open, part-of-the-community organization. The Ku Klux Klan once had a baseball team? ![]() Recently I tumbled on this story from Kansas Humanities - and an earlier post from Only A Game - about a 1925 baseball game between Wichita's African-American team, the Monrovians, and the Ku Klux Klan. Ku Klux Klan members hold a march in Washington, D.C., on Aug.
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