Ominous Echoes of the KKK in Oregon and the Northwest

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.

Although there was no Wallowa County klavern, a local minister told me that the Christian Church in Enterprise had pews reserved for Klansmen. And Lola Hopkins, a Protestant descendant of early Johnsons who was married to Catholic Joe Hopkins, told me of cross burnings on the slopes outside of Enterprise that put fear in Catholic hearts.

In Egan’s telling of the power of the KKK in the 1920s, Indiana is a central focus. A shiftless chronic woman abuser and silver-tongued speaker from out of state named D.C. Stephenson became the Grand Dragon of Indiana’s Klan. Stephenson took $6 out of every $10 Klan membership fee, and got a cut from the sales of the famous white sheets; he became fabulously wealthy. Many mainline Protestant ministers and local politicians had their prejudices, and Stephenson had money to encourage them to help him build Klan membership.

He quickly gained wide clerical support, and sewed up most levels of city and state
governments, flaunting and sharing the wealth, preaching morality, and growing the Klan. He also had wild parties in his mansion, ignored prohibition, and took advantage of woman after woman. Eventually, one woman’s words would bring him down.