I’ve just read Fever in the Heartland, Tim Egan’s recent book on the KKK of the 1920s. It’s centered on Indiana, but there are enough stories from other states to make the case that the new KKK represented a national revival of the principles of the original, post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan: the derogation and denigration of Jews, Catholics, Blacks, and new immigrants to America, especially from non-British and Northern European places. The KKK supported prohibition and talked much about the sanctity of the family and the protection of women. In short, the KKK envisioned a white, Protestant, patriarchal, and chaste America.
The Klan grew across many states, but mostly in the North, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, and Indiana. In 1925, there was a march in Washington D.C., with 50,000 Klansmen and 200,000 mostly sympathetic bystanders. It was the largest march to that date in the nation’s capital.
We know now that Oregon was a big KKK state, and that Governor Walter Pierce (yes, Pierce Library at Eastern Oregon College was named after him) was a big sympathizer if not a member. Oregon had basically outlawed Blacks in our constitution, but we had plenty of Catholics, a few Jews, and some of Asian descent to spew pent-up hatreds. The State of Oregon, led by the Klan, passed a law outlawing private schools — private schools in the state in the 1920s were largely Catholic. (The US Supreme Court overturned the state on that one.)
La Grande had a large chapter, or “klavern” of some 200 members. We know that from Klan minutes found in a lawyer’s office in the 1960s and then published as a book, Inside the Klavern. The La Grande Klan talked about chasing Catholics out of town and burning crosses. Egan writes that Dr. Ellis O. Wilson, a La Grande dentist and Klan leader, was found guilty of manslaughter after raping his clerical assistant and killing her accidentally in a botched abortion…