More than 80 people gathered this week at the Pine River Library in Bayfield for a history lesson about the town’s uncomfortable past involving the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Bayfield residents shared family anecdotes, asked questions and absorbed knowledge about the rolling political tides that stirred fear, racism and resistance to change that the Klan leveraged to spread its influence.
Until the 1980s, the detailed history of Bayfield’s KKK chapter remained buried in the attic of the Akers garage on Mill Street, just feet from the Pine River Valley Heritage Society next door. Curt Brown, author, columnist and history buff, said a man named Jeff Bryson was renovating the garage when he came across a trunk in an attic crawl space.
The garage used to be occupied by Akers Motor Co. And Clyde W. Akers was actually a Klingrapp (secretary) for the Pine River Klan No. 69, according to the Center of Southwest Studies.
Bryson thought he’d hit the jackpot, Brown said. But instead of finding money or gold in the trunk, he uncovered 1920s Klansman hoods, membership records and order forms for Klan garb.
The artifacts, some of which were on display at the library Wednesday, were donated to Fort Lewis College’s Center of Southwest Studies.
“I do find some poetic justice in the fact that these men who dressed up to hide their identities are now listed on membership roles in two boxes of research material in the center’s library,” Brown said.
“Back in the ’20s, Bayfield’s old guard felt threatened by immigrants flowing in after World War I,” he said. “Between 1880 and 1920, 23 million immigrants entered the U.S. and the KKK fed off those fears.”
There is no evidence that Bayfield’s KKK chapter resorted to physical violence or lynchings like other chapters across the country, he said. Members were content with intimidation tactics, such as cross burnings and marches down Durango’s Main Avenue intended to instill fear. Bayfield's Black population was small and the Klan’s common targets were Latinos, Catholics and Jews.
On one occasion, a Catholic priest at the Sacred Heart Church in Bayfield purchased a double-barreled shotgun after a cross was burned at the church.
Brown cited a history lesson he received from Andrew Gulliford, a history professor at FLC, in which the professor illustrated how Klan activities in Bayfield reflected movements across the country in the 1920s.
“Farms were failing. Women had just gotten the right to vote and were smoking cigarettes and hiking up their skirts,” he said. “Communists were asserting themselves from Russia to the labor unions in this country. And change was coming and small towns like Bayfield were digging in their heels.”
He said fraternal organizations such as the Elks Lodge and Moose Lodge were popular forms of entertainment in small towns like Bayfield, and the Klan “mimicked” them in fostering camaraderie.
Brown said although the subject of the KKK doesn’t offer much in the way of humor, “an old-timer told me that the Klan would gather down behind the cemetery on (County Road) 501. Oftentimes as they climbed the barbed wire fence their robes would get caught.”
Per capita, Colorado had the nation’s second highest Klan membership in the 1920s with chapters in all 64 of the state’s counties.
“History Colorado recently digitized 1,300 pages of Klan ledgers containing more than 30,000 entries including KKK members’ names, addresses, personal information and affiliates in Denver and other areas of the state in the 1920s,” he said.
At that time, Klansmen were infiltrating state and city governments, including school boards, police departments and other bodies of authority in Denver, Montrose and Gunnison. Colorado Gov. Clarence Morley, who served one two-year term from 1925 to 1927, was a member of the Klan, as was a justice on the state Supreme Court, Denver’s mayor, police chief and other judges, Brown said.
He said the Klan nearly achieved turning its movement of hatred into a full-fledged political party.
The 1920s KKK was the group’s second iteration, its first being Southern Confederates pushing back against Reconstruction in the 1880s after the end of the Civil War, and its third emergence occurring amid the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. But while those versions of the Klan exist only in history, their influence can still be felt today, Brown said.
He read from a Colorado Politics report about former state historian William Wei: “While the KKK no longer exists in its 1920s form, its shadow continues to hang over America with politicians promising a return to the good olé days and old fashion values. He (Wei) said they often take their strategy right out of the Klan’s old playbook.”
The idea of the Klan’s rhetoric and strategies manifesting in modern politics resonated with attendees Wednesday at the Pine River Library.
Bayfield resident Pamela Smith said she’s concerned the polarization of politics in the United States could lead to something like the KKK’s resurgence. She said she knows three members of the Klan in attendance at the library on Wednesday, though she did not name anyone.
She asked presenter Paul Kuenker, history professor at FLC, what can be done about political polarization. He said community dialogs and history lessons such as the History Live presentation at Pine River Library are part of the solution.
“There’s a lot of people who think talking about these things is itself polarizing,” he said. “... When we talk about coming to terms with this past, we’re not talking about one racial group that has to feel shame or atone for some sins. We’re talking about collective responsibility.”
Another Bayfield resident asked Kuenker what caused the rises and falls of the KKK in the past, and how might another fall be brought about for modern white supremacist movements.
“(When the KKK) went dormant, what caused that? And how can we get back to that?” she said to applause from other attendees.
Kuenker cautioned that dormancy isn’t necessarily a good thing.
“One of the reasons they go dormant at times is because they didn’t need to be active anymore because their ideologies were entrenched,” he said.
He said many white politicians in the early 20th century saw themselves as “reformers” and reasoned that white supremacy cannot be enacted through violence, it must be enacted through law.
Similar “code words” used by the Klan and other extremist groups are still around today, he said.
He showed the audience a letter to President Dwight Eisenhower from the 1950s written by someone upset with the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling on Brown v. Board of Education that marked the downfall of segregation in public schools.
The letter says: “Please help keep states’ rights. Help southern states keep their right to decide their own educational system. If your grandchildren and my grandchildren lived in the south we wouldn’t want them to go to a colored school ... .”
The same types of rhetoric reverberate through modern times. Viewpoints such as wanting to have “local control” over schools or wanting to maintain one’s ideology hold legitimacy, he said. But at the same time, groups like the KKK feed off those views.
“They understand when those views are there they can capitalize off of them,” he said.
cburney@durangoherald.com
