Locals filled the Pine River Library meeting room on May 26 for a presentation about the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Bayfield and Durango. Let's say up front that no local names were given, although there was reference to a Durango member who turned out to be a Jewish doctor.
Fort Lewis College history student Jessica Thulson, who grew up in Durango, gave the presentation from her senior thesis, but she had serious back-up from FLC History Professor Dr. Andrew Gulliford and retired history professor Dr. Duane Smith.
The Klan started in Tennessee in 1866, Thulson said. The white robes were ghosts of the Confederate dead taking revenge on the "undesirable classes." The Klan died out but was revived in 1915 with the racist movie Birth of a Nation. The movie "made African-Americans look dangerous and romanticized the Klan," Thulson said. The Klan gained more power in the 1920s. "The goal of my thesis was to determine how the Bayfield chapter and surrounding areas compared to the national Klan."
At the heart of it was fear of change, Thulson said. Someone in the audience muttered, "Sounds like Donald Trump, doesn't it?"
Thulson said there was a lot of change in the 1920s. Local news stories of the time were her primary source, including the Durango Herald and the Durango Klansman, and Klan records and artifacts found in the former Akers Motors building on Mill Street in the 1980s. Documents are available online at the FLC Center for Southwest Studies with search entry Bayfield KKK MO75.
The local Klan chapter #69 had 118 Bayfield members, not a large following compared to area population at the time, Thulson said. Bayfield and Durango had few if any African-Americans, not enough to be seen as a threat; so the main targets locally were Catholics in Durango and immigrants, especially "Mexicans" and Italians. Thulson said she didn't find evidence of Native Americans being targeted.
Klan meetings were in Bayfield, but their activities such as cross burnings were in Durango. The chapter had a women's branch in Durango, but Thulson said she couldn't find much information on that.
"There was a goal to maintain this ideal America that was threatened by the target groups. It was Protestant America very fearful of Catholicism. (Klan members) were supposed to be 'good' citizens, native born Americans." Target groups nationally were blacks, Catholics, Jews, "sexually adventurous" women, abusive or bad husbands, criminals, and drinkers, Thulson said. Targets were similar in other parts of Colorado.
Durango targets for cross burnings included Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the town's Italian neighborhood and a Mexican area called Stringtown. A cross was burned on Smelter Mountain. There were Klan rallies near the fairgrounds.
Sharon Greve, who has been compiling a history since 1881 for the Durango Police Department, added that the Klan had parades on Main Avenue. They rode in on horseback to disrupt funerals at the cemetery. Klan women disrupted the business of a hairdresser when they found out she was Catholic and drove away the other customers.
"People didn't feel safe to walk the street," Greve said. "The priest at Sacred Heart bought a shotgun to protect his people. There had been cross burnings at the church."
Thulson said, "The Klan is known for violence, but I couldn't find evidence of that in Southwest Colorado. It was more threats. So the history doesn't have a lot of shock value compared to lynchings in the South."
The Klan presented itself as a brotherhood, "men coming together to protect what they believed in," she said. "A lot of them didn't realize what the back burner agenda was at first."
Thulson characterized the Klan as a pyramid scheme, with members required to buy robes, rings, and other paraphernalia. Those items from the Bayfield chapter are in the Center for Southwest Studies archives along with many other collection items that aren't actually on display.
Gulliford added, "It really was a pyramid scheme. You had to get (a robe) for your horse too, even if you didn't have a horse." The Klan also had "sacred water" from a river in Tennessee for members to buy.
"It's important to understand the extent of the Klan in the '20s," Gulliford said. "We elected a Klan governor. So did Oregon. It was a national nativist movement, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish. It was all about fear. Things were unsettled. Women's skirts were going up. They were smoking cigarettes. Farms were failing. There was a lot of disruption. Bayfield represents what was going on."
He said the national Klan resurgence ended abruptly in 1925 when the Klan leader in Indiana "committed a crime so heinous that people had to quit" when the information came out, and the Klan disintegrated. But the Klan came back in the 1960s civil rights era.
"When I teach history, students don't believe we'd openly elect racist governors," Gulliford said. The Klan was so deeply rooted politically that it was hard to advance in national politics without Klan support, he said. Harry Truman risked his career by refusing to join.
"All those fraternal groups (in the 20s) like the Elks and Knights of Pythias, it was a night out" with the guys, he said. "The Klan masqueraded as a pro-American organization, mimicking those other organizations."
He said, "I think it's really important that these stories about the Klan in Durango be written down. ... An archive is never static. We are happy to build on this."
Gulliford commented, "It's an election year. I think it will be really interesting how the candidates position themselves regarding racist attitudes. Americans never learn. We have to learn again and again who we're supposed to be as a nation."
Smith said, "Colorado came to its senses in the late 20s or early 30s. Everybody was in the same boat ... People were scared of it. They were trying to get white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in control of Durango." He added, "It happened in a different day and time. Who can say most of the people in this room wouldn't have been Klan members?"
Smith said some actual Klan members agreed to talk to him if he wouldn't use their names. "It was an insight that was almost unequaled. The Klan was mostly small town rural America that saw its way of life disappearing."
Thulson's mom Donny asked Jessica how it made her feel to learn about how Sacred Heart Church had been targeted, because she is Catholic and attends that church herself.
Jessica Thulson said, "I can be thankful for the time I do live in, that my priest doesn't have to carry a shotgun."
