Hooded empire: the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado

The decade of the 1920s conjures up a unique cluster of images. A few broad, organizing conceptions dominate as people and events are filtered through a screen of memories, books, and films. This was the era of "normalcy," prohibition, "flaming youth," and the "golden glow." George Babbitt, Al Capone, and Charles Lindbergh reign unchallenged in America's mind. Looking backward, Middletown seemed to have revolved around the acquisition of automobiles, radios, and washing machines. Beneath this perceptual facade, poorly focused, were ordinary Americans who lived and worked much the same as their ancestors and descendents. The needs, fears, and resulting activities of some of these men and women are the subjects of this study. Alongside the flapper and the bootlegger stands the hooded figure of the Ku Klux Klansman as one of the enduring symbols of the decade.

HOODED EMPIRE THE KU KLUX KLAN IN COLORADO ROBERT ALAN GOLDBERG University of Illinois Press Urbana Chicago London© i g81 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Goldberg, Robert Alan, 1949- Hooded Empire. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Ku Klux Klan (1915- )-Colorado, Case studies. I. Title. HS2330.K63G57 322.4'2'09788 81-7625 ISBN 0-252-00848-0 AACR2CONTENTS Preface vii Glossary of Klan Titles and Terms xvii one The Kluxing of Colorado 3 two Queen City of the Colorado Realm 12 three Thrust toward the South 49 four Triumph at the Polls 68 five Under Invisible Rule 84 s 1 x Twilight on the Eastern Slope 96 seven Hooded Progressivism: Canon City's Imprint upon Colorado Klanism 118 eight Grand Junction and the Western Slope 149 nine The Ku Klux Klan as a Social Movement 163 Appendix A: Classification of Occupations by Status Group 183 Appendix B: On the Relationship between the Colorado Klan and the Protestant Churches 187 Notes 189 Bibliography 219 Index 245 1. Occupational Distribution of the Leaders of the Denver Klan, 1924-26, Compared with the Occupational Distribution of Denver's Male Population in 1920 37 2. Age Distribution of Denver Klansmen, 1921-25, Compared with the Age Distribution of Denver's Native White Male Population in 1920 (Twenty Years and Older), by Percent 39 3. Distribution of Birthplaces of Denver Klansmen, 1921-25, Compared with the Distribution of Birthplaces of Denver's Native Population in 1920, by Percent 40 4. Length of Residence of Denver Klansmen, 1921-25 (Prior to Joining) 42 , , 5. Occupational Distribution of Denver Klansmen, 1921-25, Compared with the Occupational Distribution of Denver's Male Population in 1920 46 , 6. Length of Residence of Fremont County Klansmen, 1924-28 (Prior to Joining) 134 7. Occupational Distribution of Fremont County Klansmen, 1924-28 135 8. Occupational Distribution of Selected Klaverns by Percent 176 Figure 1. Colorado's Counties, Principal Cities, and Rivers 6 2. Distribution of Denver Klan Sample in 1924 44 3. The Ku Klux Klan Mobilization Process 173 ' - ■ • ■ ■ ' f ' ' ■ ' • ' J . , ■ J ‘ • ■ ., ' ' ;. ^ •'' ' ' • ■' ' : ' V!''" *-£*' . LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table V %■PREFACE The decade of the 1920s conjures up a unique cluster of im­ages. A few broad, organizing conceptions dominate as people and events are filtered through a screen of memories, books, and films. This was the era of "normalcy," prohibition, "flaming youth," and the "golden glow." George Babbitt, Al Capone, and Charles Lind­bergh reign unchallenged in America's mind. Looking backward, Middletown seemed to have revolved around the acquisition of au­tomobiles, radios, and washing machines. Beneath this perceptual facade, poorly focused, were ordinary Americans who lived and worked much the same as their ancestors and descendents. The needs, fears, and resulting activities of some of these men and women are the subjects of this study. Alongside the flapper and the bootlegger stands the hooded figure of the Ku Klux Klansman as one of the enduring symbols of the decade. The images of these Klanspeople are faint, for the Invisible Empire of the twenties has been lost in the wakes of America's two more publicized Klan movements. The first Ku Klux Klan arose in the South during Reconstruction in response to black emancipation and Republican rule. The third movement appeared after World War II and grew steadily in reaction to black assaults upon the racial status quo. Only recently has it moved north and west to capitalize upon racial tensions. Violence was characteristic of both movements. Unlike these Klans, the movement in the 1920s was not pri­marily southern, terrorist, or white supremacist. Preaching a multi­faceted program based upon "100 Per Cent Americanism" and mili­tant Protestantism, it enlisted recruits in every section of the nation. Perhaps as many as six million Americans heeded its call to resist Catholics, Jews, lawbreakers, blacks, and immigrants. Despite the size and importance of this social movement, its character remains shrouded in mystery. Sixty years after its rise to power students of the Ku Klux Klan are still uncertain of its causes, rural or urban na­ture, and the socioeconomic disposition of the membership.HOODED EMPIRE Building upon the work of sociologist John Mecklin, scholars such as David Chalmers, John Higham, Richard Hofstadter, William Leuchtenburg, and Seymour Lipset maintain that the Klan was in message and membership a movement of the villages and small towns of America. Kleagles recruited those Protestants who had had the least contact with minority groups and who were left relatively unscathed by the emergent mass-production and mass-consump- tion urban culture. The Klansman living in a large city was merely a recent migrant who "brought his heartland values and his defen­siveness with him to the metropolis."1 Urban knights were thus a small minority and for all practical purposes indistinguishable from their country cousins.2 Local community tensions did not generate the Klan move­ment. The Klan was, instead, the last major gasp of small-town Prot­estant America in its struggle with the city for cultural hegemony. The Klan impulse, wrote Hofstadter, was not usually a response to direct personal relationship or face to face competition, but rather the result of a growing sense that the code by which rural and small-town Anglo-Saxon America had lived was being ignored and even flouted in the wicked cities, and especially by the "aliens," and that the old re­ligion and morality were being snickered at by the intellectuals. The city had at last eclipsed the country in population and above all as the imaginative center of American life. ... It was the city that enjoyed the best of the new prosperity, the coun­tryside that lagged behind. But above all, the city was the home of liquor and bootleggers, jazz and Sunday golf, wild parties and divorce. The magazines and newspapers, the movies and radio, brought tidings of all this to the countryside and even lured children of the old American stock away from the old ways.3 Spurred on by the "unspent hatreds" of World War I, the economic depression of the early 1920s, and the appearance of a new wave of foreign immigration, the alienated residents of provincial America rallied around the Klan. Klan-inspired racial and religious bigotry was, therefore, a manifestation of a deeper malaise. The real threats were "status deprivation," cultural change, and the "acids of moder­nity." The struggle against these unassailable specters was, from its inception, hopeless and irrational, a futile attempt to resurrect a past golden age.4 Historian Charles Alexander, while accepting the Klan as a vm Preface small-town phenomenon, has looked beyond such abstractions for an explanation of the order's rise. His survey of Klan activity in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas revealed that people joined because of widespread, flagrant violations of the law and moral codes. Against a backdrop of war-related tensions and eco­nomic hard times, southwestern Klansmen organized "to preserve premarital chastity, marital fidelity, and respect for parental author­ity; to compel obedience of the state and national prohibition laws; to fight the postwar crime wave; to rid state and local governments of dishonest politicians."5 In 1967 Kenneth Jackson issued a provocative challenge to the traditional interpretation. On the basis of detailed research in nine cities, Jackson contended not only that kleagles were extremely suc­cessful in recruiting members in large cities but that the Klan was predominantly an urban movement. The Klan's urban complexion was reflected in the lifestyle of the leadership, the source and char­acter of the order's newspapers, the places of residence of the ma­jority of members, and the influence of city klaverns on state and national decision-making. Jackson's analysis of urban Klans indicated that the hooded order's attention was focused upon the immediate concern of neigh­borhood transition. Klan growth was a result of the clash between the diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups which formed the ur­ban environment. Conflict was particularly acute in the "zone of emergence," the strip of land that separated the crowded ghettoes from the more affluent, outer residential districts. To this zone, peo­pled primarily with poorer, white, working-class families, turned those who sought to escape their ghetto existence. It was among the white, Protestant residents of this area that the Klan found its great­est success. "Not a reaction against the rise of the city to dominance in American life, the Invisible Empire was rather a reaction against the aspirations of certain elements within the city."6 The socioeconomic identities of the members of the Invisible Empire have also long been subjects for speculation and debate. Al­most every scholar agrees with John Mecklin's observation that the vast majority of Klansmen were "conventional Americans, thor­oughly human, kind fathers and husbands, hospitable to the strang­er. . . ."7 Consensus, however, ends at this point. Mecklin, an early and perceptive student of the organization, considered the Klan a movement of the "well-meaning but more or less ignorant and un­thinking middle class. . . ." It included "in many instances the best citizens of the community."8 Journalist Stanley Frost, also writing in IX HOODED EMPIRE the 1920s, agreed: "They are usually the good, solid, middle-class citizens, the ‘backbone of the nation."'9 In Oklahoma town merchants and professionals, rather than poor farmers and tenants, joined the secret society. Seventy-three Pennsylvania Exalted Cyclopses swore under oath in 1927 that the rank and file was "gleaned from the average walk of life and such as composes our Protestant church­es, our lodges, commercial clubs, and other civic organizations."10 The Klan's economic and social respectability has been chal­lenged with qualitative and quantitative data that portray the orga­nization's membership as overwhelmingly lower middle and work­ing class. While it is conceded that prominent men did appear in the klavern hall initially, they were among the first to defect when the Klan swelled with members of lesser rank. Allegedly, Klan violence and blatant appeals to prejudice repelled the better educated pro­fessionals and businessmen. Seymour Lipset argued, "As a simplistic moralistic bigoted movement, the Klan increasingly became a move­ment of the less educated and less privileged strata. . . 11 Frederick Lewis Allen dismissed the Klan as a product of "the less educated and less disciplined elements of the white Protestant community."12 Norman Weaver's investigation of the Detroit Klan revealed that southern whites, threatened by black competition for jobs and homes, were especially receptive to the secret society's appeals. The Middletown Klan, remarked Helen and Robert Lynd, was "largely a working class movement."13 Jackson's study of urban Klans strongly bolsters the marginal man-low status argument. His analysis of Klan membership lists and chapter records from six cities and towns demonstrated that "white collar workers in general provided a sub­stantial minority of Klan membership and included primarily strug­gling independent businessmen, advertising dentists, lawyers, and chiropractors, ambitious and unprincipled politicians and salesmen, and poorly paid clerks. The greatest source of Klan support came from rank and file nonunion, blue-collar employees of large busi­nesses and factories. Miserably paid, they rarely boasted of as much as a high school education and more commonly possessed only a grammar or ‘free school' background"14 Proponents of the low- status view augment their position by quoting the Klan's second Im­perial Wizard, Hiram Wesley Evans: "We are a movement of the plain people, very weak in the matter of culture, intellectual support and trained leadership. . . . This is undoubtedly a weakness. It lays us open to the charge of being ‘hicks' and ‘rubes' and ‘drivers of sec­ond- hand Fords.' We admit it."15 Contemporary opponents of the Klan agreed, although their motives may be more suspect. Also of- x Preface fered in evidence is the frequently quoted observer of an Indiana Klan demonstration: "You think the influential men belong here? Then look at their shoes when they march in parade. The sheet doesn't cover the shoes."16 A third hypothesis, rarely made explicit, has also been sug­gested. A few students of the Klan have interpreted the organi­zation's heterogeneous program as a mirror of the membership. Charles Alexander, while accepting the middle-class explanation, concluded from his study of the Klans in the Southwest that "ex­cluding non-whites and non-Protestants, the membership of the order was remarkably cross-sectional. Bankers, businessmen, sales­men, physicians, lawyers, ministers, and even university professors donned their white robes and hoods alongside mechanics, farmers, and day laborers. The Klan had something for them all."17 Colorado provides an unparalleled opportunity to probe these conflicting conceptions of the hooded society. The Klan arrived in Colorado in 1921 and in less than three years converted the state into one of the Invisible Empire's strongest realms. Centered in Denver, it enlisted more than 35,000 men and played a powerful role in the election of Colorado's local and state leaders. No other state in the Rocky Mountain West compared in membership or polit­ical clout. Only in Indiana did Klan political influence rival that at­tained in the Centennial state. Because the Klan keyed its message to the local environment, five cities and towns differing in population, economic base, sizes and types of minority groups, and regional location were selected for analysis. The communities are: Denver, the state's largest city and political, financial, and cultural capital; Pueblo, Colorado's sec­ond largest city and chief industrial center; Colorado Springs, rank­ing third in population and a tourist and health resort; Canon City, a remote, small town of 4,500 people; and Grand Junction, with a population of 8,700 persons, the largest town on the Western Slope. Case studies of this disparate group of communities allow an exam­ination of the effects of variations in geographic, social, economic, and demographic features upon the Klan experience. Such in­depth investigations are also necessary to isolate the variables which influenced Klan mobilization success or failure. The patterns which emerge from the local Colorado environments may provide added insights not only into the Ku Klux Klan but into other American so­cial movements as well. Also important in the selection process was the availability in XI HOODED EMPIRE each community of complete files of newspapers, the chief source of qualitative data about the Klan. Reliance upon newspapers does not preclude critical evaluation of their contents. News reports were used carefully and always measured against other materials to assess their accuracy. Moreover, the style, extent of event coverage, and in­terpretation of newspaper reports and editorials molded readers' perceptions and attitudes. The newspaper, as a daily opinion-shaper and chronicle, is thus an indispensable historical tool for discerning a past actor's reality. Interviews gave life to the material gleaned from the news­papers. The Klan's meaning was largely distilled from the experi­ences of the actors. Their perceptions of events, reasons for joining the Klan or opposing it, and characterizations of the leading person­alities of the period crucially shaped every part of this study. Of the twenty-seven interviews or telephone conversations conducted, ten were held with Klansmen, thirteen with anti-Klansmen, and four with neutral observers. Names were collected from Klan and anti- Klan membership lists, newspaper accounts, and personal referrals. It was necessary to use an alias when contacting Klansmen because the initial effort under my real name produced no interviews. An additional nine interviews conducted by James Davis were also em­ployed extensively. Qualitative materials have been the basis but also the limitation of almost every investigation of the Ku Klux Klan. In Colorado, however, statistical analysis is possible because membership lists are among the artifacts which have survived the Klan days. The names of Denver, Pueblo, and Colorado Springs Klan leaders are known. Rosters of the Klan's rank and file in Denver and Canon City are available. Information about each Klansman was extracted from city directories, vital statistics records, obituaries, military records, and membership lists of various fraternal, civic, and social groups. These sources furnished data about age, place of birth, military service, membership in other organizations, place and length of residence, occupation, pattern of mobility, and marital status. Determining which men joined not only will produce a sharper social and eco­nomic picture of the Klan but will enhance our understanding of why they joined. A conscious effort was made to avoid the methodological weak­nesses which have hindered studies of the Klan. Unlike other re­search concerning membership, data were collected upon a variety of socioeconomic variables. Occupational status, while critical, was only one fragment of information that composed a variegated por­xii Preface trait. Moreover, gross classification of occupational information into monolithic white- and blue-collar categories was rejected for more precise and intellectually defensible divisions. Random sampling furnished groups of Klansmen representative of the larger klavern membership. Comparisons to the general population were also un­dertaken to more fully explore the nature of the Klan movement. Since the rosters were dated, the character of Klan membership could be determined over time. This book also addresses two largely unexplored areas in Klan research. The Klan was in Colorado, as in many other states, a polit­ical machine. Colorado Klan organization, tactics, and strategy are extensively probed on the local and state levels to explain the secret society's success in outmaneuvering the established political parties. Also, as elsewhere in the United States, Colorado Klansmen could not translate their electoral victories into legislative accomplish­ments and governmental policy. The reasons for their failure are pertinent not only to the Klan but to other liberal and conservative movements which throughout American history have wrestled with the power structure for their version of reform. Finally, this study attempts to treat the Ku Klux Klan as a social movement rather than a pathological assembly of deviant men and women. The Klan, like all social movements, was a formally orga­nized .group which consciously sought to promote or resist change through collective action. Social movements are rooted not in indi­vidual psychosis or breakdowns in society's integrating mechanisms but instead in confrontations with real community problems. Like members of conventional groups, social movement participants are rational individuals who seek to mobilize resources (people, money, and votes) to influence the decisions which affect their lives>The Ku Klux Klan thus differs in appeals but not in tasks from the American Association of University Professors, the Sierra Club, and more "ac­ceptable" movements such as the National Organization for Women. An assumption of continuity and similarity furnishes more explana­tory power than a division between normal and abnormal. Obvi­ously an assumption of rationality and normality does not imply ap­proval of aims. Only when the conceptual blinders are shed can such an organization as the Ku Klux Klan be understood.18 The combination of the techniques of oral history and collective biography in a case-study framework will furnish some answers to the questions that have perplexed students of the Klan: Why did men join the Ku Klux Klan? Did the Klan's voice seem especially reasonable to "marginal men" or those threatened by neighborhood xm HOODED EMPIRE change? What community variables affected joining motivation? Did urban klaverns recruit more men and exercise greater influence than the small-town organizations? Were Klansmen drawn from a particular socioeconomic segment or did they represent a cross-sec­tion of their society? Has the unifying symbol of the burning cross disguised an organization composed of heterogeneous factions? Many have extended their time and energy, both academic and personal. Eleanor M. Gehres, Opal Harber, Frederick J. Yonce, Hazel Lundberg, Young Chin Mueller, Lynn Taylor, Bonnie Hard­wick, Carolyn Koplin, Augie Mastrogiuseppe, and especially Kay Kane, Douglas Tabor, Sandra Turner, and Kay Wilcox of the West­ern History Department, Denver Public Library, gave to the limit professionally and emotionally. The Denver Klan's official member­ship lists were opened only because of the ceaseless efforts of Dr. Maxine Benson of the State Historical Society of Colorado. The company of Ellen Wagner and Christopher Compton, also of the Historical Society, made the wading through piles of microfilm almost pleasurable. Stan Suski's patience with my demands was greatly appreciated. Donald Davids, director of the Colorado Bu­reau of Vital Statistics, cut endless red tape to allow access to crucial records. David Hardy and Eleanor Drake generously permitted me to search their family collections for Klan material. In the field counseling from Professor Steven Leonard of Metropolitan State College suggested new areas of research and kept me from numer­ous historical embarrassments. Academically I am most heavily indebted to Professor Charles P. Cell of the University of Wisconsin's Department of Sociology. With give and take on the farm and in the classroom, he sharpened my perception of the Klan as a social movement. Professor John M. Cooper, Jr., of Wisconsin's Department of History supervised this study, giving me what I most needed: independence, reassurance, and perceptive criticism. Professors Daniel Rogers and Diane Lind- strom, also of the Department of History, cogently convinced me of weaknesses in the early drafts, many of which I hope have been remedied. I have also benefited from the incisive yet gently ten­dered suggestions of Professors Crandall Shifflett of Virginia Poly­technic Institute and David R. Johnson of the University of Texas at San Antonio. Lois Corcoran and Rose Pantoja expeditiously, accu­rately, and patiently typed the manuscript over and over again. My deepest appreciation goes to the Goldberg clan. My mother, father, brothers, and sister could not have been more supportive. xiv Helen and Robert Roberts's encouragement and enthusiasm made the task so much easier. Katharine Goldberg made life exciting in the pre-dissertation years. I thank my son Davy for allowing me to occasionally work on the chapters. My wife, Susan, bore the burden of typing, editing, listening, and soul searching. The author s vanity alone kept her name from appearing with his on the title page. Preface xv GLOSSARY OF KLAN TITLES AND TERMS Exalted Cyclops Grand Dragon Great Titan Imperial Commander Imperial Wizard Invisible Empire Klabee Klaliff Klarogo Klavern Kleagle Klectoken Klexter Klokan Kloran chief officer of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one-year term. the Klan leader of the state, appointed by the Imperial Wizard. chief administrator of a province. highest officer of the Colorado Women's Klan. national leader of the Ku Klux Klan. lofty name for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Inc., its bureaucracy and territory. treasurer of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one-year term. vice-president of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one-year term. inner guard of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one-year term. Klan's indoor meeting hall; also used to signify local Klan chapter. recruiter or organizer. ten-dollar initiation fee. outer guard of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one-year term. investigator of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one-year term. Klan ritual book used to conduct meetings and initiations.Klorero Kludd Klwcing Nighthawk Province Realm annual state convention of delegates from chartered Klans. chaplain of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one-year term. kleagle recruiting or organizing activities. keeper of the fiery cross of the local Klan chapter, elected by the membership for a one- year term. ■­administrative unit encompassing a group of counties. The Colorado realm was divided into two provinces until 1925 and three thereafter. a subdivision of the Invisible Empire equivalent to a state.THE KLUXING OF COLORADO CHAPTER ONE Our organization is more than a secret order; it is a movement; in a sense, it is a Crusade. Paul S. Etheridge Imperial Klonsel, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan I In the spring of 1921 William Joseph Simmons stepped from a train at Denver's Union Station. Dressed in a well-fitted suit embla­zoned with lodge buttons, this tall, heavy-set man attracted little notice from the crowd. Simmons, the son of a country physician, had been born on a farm near Harpersville, Alabama, in 1880. Groping for success, he had been in turn a medical student, Meth­odist circuit rider, history instructor, and fraternal organizer. Sim­mons had only recently found his true calling; on the train platform stood the self-proclaimed Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.1 Peering through his pince-nez glasses, Simmons immediately spotted his old friend Leo Kennedy. Kennedy, a Mason and former member of the anti-Catholic American Protective Association, hur­riedly greeted Simmons and quickly led him from the station. Within minutes they were driving up Seventeenth Street to the Brown Pal­ace Hotel. Speed was essential, for the Imperial Wizard was travel­ing incognito and word of his mission was not to appear in the Den­ver newspapers.2 Once in traffic the two men relaxed. Perhaps, after a few pleas­antries, Simmons recounted the events that had propelled him to national power. Six years earlier on Thanksgiving night, 1915, Sim- 3 HOODED EMPIRE mons had persuaded fifteen men to follow him to the summit of Stone Mountain in Georgia. There they had knelt before an Ameri­can flag and burning cross and dedicated themselves to the resur­rection of the Invisible Empire. Simmons traced his inspiration to a vision he had experienced upon his return from the Spanish-Ameri­can War. One summer evening he had stood transfixed as the clouds in the sky were molded into charging white-robed horsemen. When the images had faded, Simmons had fallen to his knees and prom­ised to convert this divine sign into reality.3 The resurrected Ku Klux Klan had not been an immediate suc­cess; by 1920 the Invisible Empire consisted of only 4,000 or 5,000 knights in scattered Klans throughout Georgia and Alabama. To re­vitalize his dream, Simmons had enlisted the aid of two shrewd pro­moters, Edward Young Clarke and Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler of the At­lanta- based Southern Publicity Association. On June 7, 1920, they had signed a contract which stipulated that the association, hence­forth the Propagation Department of the Invisible Empire, would promote and enlarge the Klan in exchange for eight of the ten-dol­lar membership fee or klectoken. Clarke and Tyler had hired an ini­tial sales force of more than 200 kleagles or recruiters and directed them to exploit any issue or prejudice that would lure men to the movement. The kleagles worked on a commission basis and thus sought to secure as many new members as they possibly could. The sharp rise in the secret order's membership reflected their success, for between June, 1920, and October, 1921, 85,000 men joined the Klan. Simmons later said of Clarke: "He put an army of 1,100 paid organizers in the field; hundreds of smart men working for him. They made things hum all over America."4 The Imperial Wizard was correct; America hummed. In Texas, the Invisible Empire's first self-governing realm, 200,000 men joined, and a Klansman was elected to the U.S. Senate. Oregon fur­nished the cause with 50,000 of its citizens, and Klan-endorsed can­didates won the governor's chair and a Senate seat. The Klan en­rolled 50,000 Protestants in California and helped capture the statehouse for its approved candidate. The Midwest proved quite fertile to Klanism. Twenty local chapters were organized for Chi­cago's 50,000 Klansmen, while 35,000 wore the hood and robe in Detroit. The Klan citadel of Indiana sheltered 240,000 knights who succeeded in electing two governors and two U.S. senators. In neighboring Ohio 400,000 men paid their klectokens for the priv­ilege of entering the Invisible Empire. New York added 200,000 more Klansmen, and Pennsylvania 225,000. The Klan found recep­4 The Klvxing of Colorado tive Protestants even in New England: Connecticut provided 20,000 men, and Maine 15,000. At its height in 1924 the national move­ment drew an estimated three to six million men from throughout the United States.5 Simmons's visit to Denver was part of the initial kluxing surge. At the request of Leo Kennedy, the Imperial Wizard had scheduled a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel to explain the Klan message. The select group of prominent Denverites had already formed when Simmons and Kennedy arrived. With the fervor of a revivalist Simmons extolled the virtues and principles of his new se­cret society. The men were convinced and he promptly initiated them. The Ku Klux Klan had arrived in Colorado and would soon spread to every county in the state.6 II By train and automobile the kleagles scoured Colorado for pro­spective Klansmen. Topographical variations in the new sales terri­tory influenced their efforts. Extending east from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the Nebraska and Kansas borders lies a dry, treeless prairie dotted by farms and small, isolated towns. Devoted to agriculture, its people grew wheat, hay, and corn and raised beef and dairy cattle. The Klan fastened itself to the region, meeting only scattered resistance. In 1920 four of every ten Coloradans lived within a thirty-mile-wide strip running along the base of the foot­hills and extending the length of the state. Crowded into this band were the state's steel mills, stockyards, meat and canning plants, wholesale and retail houses, and major financial institutions.) The foothill belt contained all of Colorado's cities with a population of 8,000 or more except Grand Junction. The urban centers were also physically close: Denver, the state capital, was only thirty miles from Boulder, fifty-four miles from Greeley, seventy miles from Colorado Springs, and 112 miles from Pueblo. Because they were so easily accessible, the people of this section experienced the most inten­sive Klan recruiting campaigns. The Rocky Mountains to the west slowed Klan expansion; klaverns or local chapters were not orga­nized in western Colorado until 1924, several years after similar efforts on the Eastern Slope. Although the Klan eventually gained a foothold among its high mesas and narrow, fertile valleys, the sparsely populated Western Slope proved most resistant to the Klan onslaught.7 The kleagles lectured Coloradans about all aspects of the Klan 5 creed. They portrayed the Klan as a patriotic organization dedi­cated to the preservation of America's institutions and ideals. The white-robed "guardians of liberty" stood for fair elections, honest leaders, efficient government, and against unresponsive and cor­rupt politicians. Disclaiming partisanship, the Klan infiltrated both major parties and elected scores of candidates pledged to its version of "100 Per Cent Americanism." For those demanding political re­form, the Klan provided a convenient vehicle for mobilization. Clothed in the symbols of Protestantism, the Klan posed as the savior of the "old time religion." The Klan promised to unite Protes­tants in a crusade that would combat the teaching of evolution and restore faith in God, the Bible, and the Christian fundamentals. Vig­orous recruitment of ministers and generous donations to Protes­tant churches enhanced the organization's aura of religiosity. Ac­cording to Denver Klan leader the Reverend William Oeschger, "The Klan includes more Protestants who are without the church than it does those that are within it. It is gathering together the great arm of Protestantism into a single unit and counteracting the great tragedy of Protestantism, namely its division."8 Law and order was another Klan rallying cry. In the postwar years a sharp upsurge in crime jolted Coloradans. Although crimes of all types increased, most attention was focused upon the break­down of the prohibition laws. Moonshiners and bootleggers infested the state, pursuing their trade with impunity as local authorities seemed unwilling or unable to stamp them out. Citizens of such towns as Aguilar, DeBeque, Meeker, and Oak Creek were frustrated by inadequate law enforcement and beseeched Governor William Sweet for state assistance. In 1924 the Denver Post echoed the senti­ments of many of its readers: "When the law is not enforced, when it is disregarded spurned and trampled upon . . . when its lack of en­forcement and its delay fail to protect the citizen and taxpayer, he has but one immediate recourse, and that is to enforce the laws him­self. . . . The zero point is just about reached in this community."9 The traditional code of morality was also under attack. Chal­lenges to the moral status quo had appeared before World War I and rapidly multiplied in the twenties. Evidence of moral laxity was everywhere; new styles of clothing, "suggestive" dances, and "tit­illating" motion pictures were symbols of the decay sapping Amer­ica's strength. Klansmen vowed not only to banish loose women, roadhouses, and "joyriding neckers and petters" but also to restore decency and decorum to their communities. The Klan's main thrust was directed at the bootlegger, for it was his product that fueled the The Kluxing of Colorado 7 HOODED EMPIRE revolution in manners and morals. The Boulder klavern's Rocky Mountain American proclaimed: "The Klan is the answer, not the question. The question is the immorality that permeated the gov­ernment, the churches, the social and domestic life in the post-war saturnalia."10 The Klan's message of Americanism and law enforcement was not aimed at all of Colorado's 939,629 people; only white, native- born, Protestant males, eighteen years or older, were accepted for mobilization. Later the eligible population was expanded, and klea­gles organized women and foreign-born Protestants. Completely ex­cluded from "100 Per Cent Americanism" and depicted as threats to the nation's ideals and values were the Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and blacks. The Catholics bore the brunt of Klan hatred. Unlike Jews and blacks, who were concentrated in Denver, Colorado's 125,757 Ro­man Catholics resided in all sections of the state. Preying upon long­time suspicions and prejudices, the Klan excoriated Catholics for their devotion to a false church that preached a "paganistic creed with its worship of the Virgin Mary, dead saints, images, bones, and other relics."11 More important, kleagles accused Catholics of plac­ing their allegiance to the pope above their loyalty to the United States. Catholics, said Klan sympathizer Bishop Alma White of the Pillar of Fire Church, were completely subservient and unable to re­sist the Vatican's commands. "Moral obligations," she argued, "have little to do with holding a Romanist in subjection to his superiors; it is the fear that the secrets of the confessional might be used against him so as to effect his undoing in this world and that which is to come."12 Ever ready to expand his power, the pope had long coveted Protestant America. With Catholic votes he would elect men to do his bidding. Once the Catholic hierarchy had gained control of the government, it would end the separation of church and state, ban the Bible, and destroy the freedoms of press, speech, and religion. In the 1920s, the Klan contended, the papists were within reach of their goals. A Klansman speaking at a naturalization ceremony near Trinidad, Colorado, warned that 85 percent of federal government employees, 60 percent of elected and appointed office holders, and the entire Secret Service were Catholic.13 Rumors of papal intrigue spread all over the state. In the Fort Collins area Klansmen circulated faked copies of the oath of the Knights of Columbus, "the oily knights of the Pope's militia." In Las Animas County suspicious citizens tore the corners off dollar bills to destroy the fabled papal mark. Klan newspapers were filled with ar- 8 The Kluxing of Colorado tides detailing priestly corruption and convent horrors. Colorado kleagles demanded that the high walls surrounding monasteries, convents, and parish schools be demolished and probes launched into the activities of these institutions. In the Denver klavern leaders reported that Colorado Catholics had kidnapped and mutilated sev­eral Protestant men. Boulder's Klan newspaper admonished Protes­tants to awaken to the danger. Fifteen million American Catholics are "organizing and working as a unit through many societies that are military and are drilled and equipped with arms and ammuni­tion. . . ." Their aim was obvious: "to make America Catholic."14 Klansmen also believed that Rome was anxious to subvert the public school system. Regarded as essential to the creation of a loyal and intelligent citizenry, the schools were conspicuous targets. The papists sought to ruin the quality of education and romanize the stu­dents by placing Catholics on the school boards and employing them as teachers. "In the event of their success, there would be a string of beads around every Protestant child's neck and a Roman Catholic catechism in its hand. ‘Hail Mary, Mother of God,' would be on every child's lips, and the idolatrous worship of dead saints a part of the daily program."15 The menace, cautioned the Klan, was neither imaginary nor distant. A Klan recruiter claimed that Roman Cath­olic catechisms had been seized in a public school in southern Colo­rado* In 1924 eight public schools were burned; authorities placed the blame on an insane arsonist. For those taught to mistrust Catho­lics, the Klan's explanation was more convincing.16 Klan-inspired anti-Semitism was largely unknown outside of Denver, the center of Colorado's Jewish population. In the Klan litany the Jews were "Jonah[s] on the Ship of State," incapable of as­similation because of their conceited religious and social exclusive­ness. Scornful of American traditions, the Jews planned to under­mine Protestant hegemony. Well-organized "Hebrew syndicates" forced Protestants from positions of economic power. The motion picture industry, an early victim of the Jews, produced debauching films, commercialized the Sabbath, and lured Protestants from their churches. The Klan also accused Jews of leading the movement branding the Bible a sectarian book and excluding it from the public schools. Protestant women were warned of the lascivious Jews, "men in whose characters animal passions and greed are the predominant forces."17 Some even believed that Jewish financiers were aiding the pope in his scheme to disinherit Protestant Americans.18 Immigrants presented another challenge to pure Americanism, a Trojan horse filled with inferior and disloyal men and women. 9 HOODED EMPIRE The Klan maintained that the newcomers from southern and east­ern Europe cared little for justice and liberty, wanting only to siphon America's wealth and return to lives of ease in their homelands. Clustered in urban foreign quarters, immune to the forces of Amer­icanization, the immigrants perpetuated their alien lifestyles and re­tained their allegiance to the Old World. Underlying much of the Klan's animosity were the religious affiliations of the immigrants. Because they were predominantly Catholics and Jews, immigrants were merely pawns in the anti-Protestant conspiracy.19 White supremacy had always been a major tenet in the Klan's creed, and Denver kleagles in particular called men to its defense. The Klan, despite Colorado's small black population, exploited white fears of a "new Negro" emerging from World War I demand­ing political, economic, and social equality. Kleagles even spread rumors that black leaders advocated intermarriage with whites. Cit­ing the Bible and "scientific evidence" of black mental inferiority in­herited from "savage ancestors, of jungle environment," Klansmen stood ready to battle for the purity of the white race. "We must keep this a white man's country," decreed a Klan recruiting ad. "Every effort to wrest from the White Man the control of this country must be resisted. No person of the White Race can submit . . . without shame."20 Klansmen, lamented Dr. John Galen Locke, the Grand Dragon of the Colorado Ku Klux Klan, were "now outlaws in the land of their forefathers, forced to conceal their activities and identity with a mask of secrecy." Their birthright was imperiled by the Jew, "his eye ... on the prosperity, w'ealth and resources of America"; the Ro­man Catholic, who would "have us bow down our heads in worship to his foreign pope"; and the Negro, "the untaught would fain be teacher." "Should they gain sway," he continued, "no more would America be a land of liberty, justice and equality, a land of resources and opportunity, the land of virgin hope, the land of the ideals and aspirations of our forefathers. All this would these people sacrifice on the altar of self."21 . ■: ' ■. : ■ m I-;.-'. ■ . ■■ ■ ■ - > In each Colorado town and city Klan mobilization success was a function of the interplay of four variables: local tensions, govern­mental responsiveness, the quality of the klavern's leadership, and community perceptions. The Klan offered a program of Ameri­canism, militant Protestantism, fraternity, order, religious intol­1 0 The Kluxing of Colorado erance, and racial purity-a plethora of causes from which to choose. But such abstract causes could not generate membership unless they drew meaning from the immediate environment. Real community tensions and neighborhood conflicts rather than distant dangers produced Klan growth. "You cannot put into effect any set pro­gram," insisted Hiram Wesley Evans, the Klan's second Imperial Wizard, "for there are different needs in the various localities. Your program must embrace the needs of the people it must serve." 22 The Klan's rationale was dependent upon the actions of the local au­thorities. Their level of responsiveness to Protestant demands to curb law violators, resist minorities, or initiate civic reforms critically affected the Klan's ability to justify its existence. The men responsi­ble for molding the Klan's message to the needs of the targeted com­munities were the klavern leaders. Attuned to local conditions, these ambitious, dynamic men made Klan explanations and solutions con­vincing for the discontented. Often well-known community figures, they exploited their reputations and positions of trust to attract re­cruits. The community's perception of the Ku Klux Klan also influ­enced a potential Klansman's membership decision. The reaction of the local opinion-making public-clergymen, newspaper editors, and other respected individuals-helped shape the Klan's defini­tion. A negative, positive, or neutral response colored residents' at­titudes and hence a Klan leader's organizing effectiveness. The actions of government officials or the arguments of an anti-Klan movement could likewise sway the public mind. Joining the Pueblo Klan could thus mean something far different from membership in either the Canon City or Denver organizations. Loose coordination and a lack of strong central direction from the state hierarchy mili­tated against outside interference in variable interplay. Community isolation makes a case-study approach necessary to discern the dif­fering experiences of Colorado Klansmen. The Colorado realm, moreover, was for several years immune from national Klan meddling. Distance, the personality of the Grand Dragon, and the distraction of the Imperial Wizard enabled Colo­rado Klansmen to develop their organizations with a minimum of interference. As a Grand Junction Klansman recalls: "We knew that the Klan came out of Georgia, but we never thought of them being at the head of it. We knew that they probably got a dollar out of our ten dollars to join . . . and we knew our bed sheets came from there. As far as we were concerned Denver was the head of it "2:* i i QUEEN CITY OF THE COLORADO REALM CHAPTER TWO Well, this might not be as funny as it looks. There is something big starting in this country, and we've just joined it. Anonymous Denver Klansman ; The Denver klavern was the largest and most influential mem­ber of the Colorado Klan federation. Its energetic and skillful Klan leaders were able to build the state's strongest organization because they responded to the grievances of Denver Protestants confronted with an actual breakdown in law and order and challenges from mi- , nority groups. With city officials seemingly unresponsive, the Klan j solution became, for many, the only solution. Using lodge, social, and professional connections, Klansmen first contacted Denver's public officials, Protestant ministers, and leading businessmen. Later, in preparation for political action, the Klan broadened its base and welcomed all who sought to enlist. Klan recruiting and re­source gathering, after an initial confrontation with government au­thorities, encountered only scattered resistance. Following a few skirmishes, the path was cleared toward the goal of controlling com­munity decision-making. The organization, wrote national Klan leader Edgar I. Fuller, "was not taken seriously at first; many who saw the danger thought that by ignoring it the chances of its spread­ing would be lessened. But, this proved to be a mistaken idea, for, like a spark in a sawdust pile, the smoldering fire burst and grew into flame. ..."1 12 Queen City of the Colorado Realm I During the 1920s Denver was the financial and commercial cen­ter of the Rocky Mountain West, unchallenged in a wide trade area extending for 500 miles in all directions. Denver had been founded in 1858 and first served as an outfitting station for miners seeking their fortunes in the mountains. With the building of the railroads and the settlement of the plains, the city had expanded to supply the needs of farmers and cattle ranchers. Denver was primarily a dis­tribution and collection point and never developed substantial heavy industry. Manufacturing was diversified, small scale, and ori­ented toward local and regional markets. Only 28 percent of the labor force was employed in manufacturing, slightly less than the number engaged in trade and transportation. Denver was also Colo­rado's capital and largest city, containing slightly more than one- fourth of the state's total population. Between 1910 and 1920, the population of Denver had increased by 20 percent, to over 256,000 persons. The growth rate slowed in the 1920s, reaching 287,000 persons by 1930. Denver citizens were predominantly white and Protestant. In 1920 there were only 6,075 blacks in the city, an in­crease of 649 since 1910. There was no heavy migration from the South during the twenties and Denver's blacks barely maintained their percentage of the population. The number of Roman Catho­lics had risen from 28,772 in 1916 to 37,748 in 1926, thus con­stituting nearly 15 percent of the city's inhabitants. Aside from a few immigrant neighborhoods, the city was ethnically and culturally homogeneous.2 Soon after their initiation at the Brown Palace Hotel, the Ku Klux Klan's new recruits founded a klavern under the title "Denver Doers Club." The inspired initiates wasted no time in spreading the Klan message to friends and relatives. To coordinate recruiting efforts and direct the enlistment campaign, the Klan's Propagation Department in Atlanta quickly dispatched several kleagles to the city. Headquarters for the membership drive were established in rented offices in the Continental Trust Building at Seventeenth and Larimer streets. On June 17, 1921, after a few months of secret organizing, the Denver Klan was ready to announce its existence. The Klan boasted, in a letter to the Denver Times, of its ability and eagerness to suppress crime: "We are a law and order organization assisting at all times the authorities in every community in uphold­ing law and order. Therefore we proclaim to the lawless element of *3 HOODED EMPIRE the city and county of Denver and the state of Colorado that we are not only active now, but we were here yesterday, we are here today and we shall be here forever."3 Two weeks later, at midnight on June 29, a column of cars load­ed with Klansmen sped through downtown Denver and stopped in front of the Rivoli Theater on Curtis Street. Klansmen holding red torchlights affixed notices to the theater demanding the re-engage­ment of the film The Face at Your Window. According to a Klan re­cruiting newsletter, the motion picture "shows the hooded figures of the knights of the Ku Klux Klan riding to the rescue and portrays the final triumph of decent and orderly government . . . over the alien influences now at work in our midst."4 The film was reshown and the Klan given credit and free publicity in a Denver Post adver­tisement. In July A. J. Padon, Jr., the Grand Goblin of Domain No. 7, which included Colorado, claimed that 175 Denver men had been recruited and promised 2,000 more members in ninety days. The Klan, he said, was ready to place these men at the disposal of the chief of police within three minutes whether day or night. Only with these additional forces could crime be driven from Denver. Ameri­canism, relief of the poor, protection of the home, and brotherhood were also declared goals. The image-making process had only just begun.5 Anti-Klan sentiment quickly surfaced. Mayor Dewey C. Bailey condemned the Klan as a threat to lawful government and ordered an investigation. "We are going to find out the purpose of this new organization in Denver," vowed Bailey, "and if it plans to take the law into its own hands ... we are going to . . . break it up."6 F. C. Howbert, Denver's collector of internal revenue, launched a probe into the local Klan's alleged failure to pay federal taxes on initiation fees and dues. Simultaneously the Department of Justice sent agents to Denver to gather evidence for its investigation of the national Klan. In September the Denver Express, a liberal, labor-oriented newspaper, began the first of several exposes of Klan secrets.7 The Klan, partly in reaction to these moves, closed its recruiting office, and its kleagles left the city. Mention of the activities of the Denver Klan disappeared from the newspapers for the rest of the year. The apparent defeat of the Ku Klux Klan was a relief to many Denverites, for their city had been spared the strife and discord that usually accompanied the hooded order. The Klan, however, had not surrendered. Rather, a shift in tactics was needed. Responsibility fell into the hands of a nucleus of local men who chose to carry on their crusade underground. Klan leaders, now shielded from hostile J4 opinion makers and authorities, guided their movement through its formative stage. Quietly they organized and the ranks swelled.8 The leader of this determined band was an enigmatic Denver physician, John Galen Locke. Dr. Locke had been among the first in Denver to join and quickly rose to command the organization. Under his astute leadership as Exalted Cyclops and later Grand Dragon, the Klan came to dominate the city and state. Locke had been born in New York City on September 6, 1873. Like his father, he had decided upon a career in medicine and enrolled in Bellevue Hospital Medical College. Locke had left New York for Denver in 1893 where he completed his education at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. After several years of further training in Europe he had returned to Denver to practice. Locke was never admitted to ei­ther the Denver or Colorado Medical Societies despite his seemingly extensive training. Speculation concerning his rejection ranged from the accusation that he performed abortions to his supposed failure to keep abreast of developments in his profession. More likely, it was Locke's belief in homeopathy as opposed to allopathic medicine that kept him from membership. The Spanish-American War in 1898 had briefly interrupted his practice. He had enlisted and was commissioned a first lieutenant in Chafee's Light Artillery, but his unit never left the United States and he did not see action.9 In appearance, Locke was hardly awesome or inspiring. He was a short fat man, weighing 250 pounds, who wore a Van Dyke beard and carefully trimmed moustache. A former patient likened him to a "buddha with a goatee."10 His voice was high and squeaky, the re­sult of a knife wound he received while attempting to quell a riot in London, England. Locke practiced an ascetic lifestyle which barred drink and sex and permitted only an occasional cigar. Yet under­neath this deceptive exterior was a charismatic personality possess­ing the necessary traits of leadership. Locke's genius for organiza­tion, eloquence, and ability to inspire fanatical loyalty made him one of the most important factors in the growth of the Colorado Klan. The Grand Dragon's office and private hospital, located at 1345 Glenarm Place, further enhanced his aura of leadership. In the basement behind sliding steel doors was Locke's inner sanctum and the headquarters of the Colorado Ku Klux Klan. In the center of the soundproof hall was a thronelike chair at the feet of which lounged a Dalmatian and two fawn-colored Great Danes. A solid gold seal of the United States hung above an enormous fireplace, and ancestral portraits, hunting trophies, swords, and pistols cov­ered the walls. Half a dozen bodyguards were always present to en- Queen City of the Colorado Realm 15 HOODED EMPIRE sure the safety of their leader. An astonished Denver Post reporter remarked when ushered into the room, "His tastes are of another age."11 Locke, despite his position as Grand Dragon, was rarely accused of bigotry. He had been married to a Catholic; he paid the pew rents of his two Catholic secretaries. At Klan meetings Locke preached moderation and nonviolence; a Catholic priest credited him with preventing the bombing of Denver's Immaculate Conception Cathe­dral- For legal advice Locke turned to Catholics and Jews. It was nei­ther prejudice nor money that lured Locke to the Klan, it was his lust for power. A close friend of the Grand Dragon recalled: "He felt a sense of history and mission all of a sudden. Here, he, Dr. Locke who had never done anything but work on this poor human carcass was shaping the course of life of thousands of people. And he loved the power, he just loved it. No doubt about it."12 Locke's eccentricities and mystical regalia should not disguise his affinity to leaders of other more mundane movements and orga­nizations. The Klan's leader planned strategy and issued orders while he simultaneously faced the pressures of a tight budget, jug­gled the interests of differing factions, allocated scarce resources, and parried challenges to his authority. His efforts, while sometimes based upon incomplete or erroneous information, were clearly di­rected toward achieving Klan aims. The order's success in Denver and Colorado testify to this man's effectiveness. II The Denver Klan reappeared in January, 1922, with a donation to the Young Men's Christian Association. A month later Klansmen fastened a note to the door of Dr. William H. Sharpley, Denver's manager of health and charity, warning the city to take precautions against a threatened smallpox epidemic. Nine recent deaths at­tributed to the disease gave credence to Klan fears. In March a des­titute widow received $200 from the Denver klavern. Klansmen trumpeted these acts of benevolence and public service as evidence of their sincere desire to aid their fellow man. Such activities were also effective public relations devices which lessened community re­sistance and attracted new members. Visitations and contributions to Protestant churches reinforced the Klan's image of piety. More spectacular was the staged kidnapping of Aimee Semple McPherson on June 17, 1922. Klansmen presented McPherson with a bouquet of white roses and assured her "that the spirit of the Ku Klux Klan 16 Queen City of the Colorado Realm will surround you wherever you go." "There is work for you men to do," replied the evangelist, "to defend the weak and to stand as champion for those who have none to stand by them."13 A news­paper reporter was conveniently present to record the scene. Thus did Klan power grow. It was reflected not only in a larger member­ship base but in informal alliances with other, more established com­munity organizations.14 The Klan even exploited the dead to ease its reception. In Feb­ruary, 1922, "handsomely robed" Klansmen interrupted the funeral services of Charles E. Locke, placed a white floral cross at the head of the grave, and withdrew. Locke was a veteran of the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and Philippine insurrection as well as a prominent member of the Masons. The Klan praised him as "a real American" whose "record stands unsurpassed in the service of our country."15 He was also the father of John Galen Locke and, al­though it was denied, a member of the Denver Klan. The Klan's benevolent activities only briefly masked its darker side. On January 27, 1922, black janitor Ward Gash received a letter from the Denver Klan charging him with "intimate relations with white women" and "the use of abusive language to, and in the pres­ence of white women." He was warned to leave town by February 1. "Nigger," the note concluded, "do not look lightly upon this. Your hide is worth less to us than it is to you."16 Gash turned the letter over to District Attorney Philip Van Cise and promptly left Denver. Van Cise carefully investigated the Klan's charges and found them groundless, characterizing Gash as a "good boy." He then turned his anger against the Klan. A grand jury was called and began its probe of the Klan on March 10. A second Klan threat, sent this time to George Gross, the president of Denver's National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, made the grand jury's work more imperative. After a month the grand jury issued a report re­turning no indictments but recommending further investigation. Van Cise decided against launching another formal inquiry and in­stead ordered five of his men to infiltrate the organization and spy on its activities. Van Cise's tactical decision helped guarantee Klan success. With Denver's publicity-minded mayor amenable merely to verbal anti-Klanism, the district attorney was the only city official in a position to exert the government's power against the secret order. When Van Cise opted for weekly spy reports and minimal infiltra­tion, he removed the government as an effective obstacle to Klan ambitions. Klansmen attempted to retaliate by initiating a recall effort against the district attorney in the summer of 1922. The move­* 7 HOODED EMPIRE ment collapsed, however, when Van Cise smashed Denvers notori­ous bunco ring.17 The Klan sought to regain a measure of respectability during the grand jury investigation and filed its articles of incorporation with the state government. State officers, however, refused official recognition and rejected the charter as too vague. Such prominent Denverites as Benjamin B. Lindsey, father of the juvenile court; Fa­ther Matthew Smith, editor of the Denver Catholic Register, Sidney Whipple of the Denver Express; and Jewish leaders Philip Hornbein and Charles Ginsberg hammered the Klan in eloquent editorials and speeches as a threat to constitutional government and the liber­ties of all Americans. Yet their voices were barely heard, for after an early demonstration of opposition Denverites acquiesced in the Klan's presence. The Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Tim,es kept silent about the Klan issue. The Denver Post at first hesitated and re­mained neutral; later it swiped at Klansmen not so much for their membership in the secret order but because they were political op­ponents. Anti-Klan forays by the Denver Jewish News and the Colorado Statesman, a black newspaper, were feeble. In at least one instance silence nearly gave way to appeasement. In 1924 members of Den­vers B'nai B'rith planned an open meeting to curry favor with Klan leaders, but the scheme was blocked only after heated debate. Those who looked for anti-Klan champions among Denvers white Protes­tant organizations despaired because only a few groups such as the men's Bible class of the Central Presbyterian Church publicly con­demned the order.18 , , Denver's inability to generate an effective counterforce during the Klan s formative years, whether in the form of attitudes or an opposition organization, facilitated the movement's expansion. City officials underestimated their adversary and failed to pursue a pol­icy of continual harassment and confrontation. In fact, their own actions voided the use of government power as an effective in­strument of social control. Opinion makers-Protestant ministers, editors, and other leading community figures-emitted ambiguous signals; most were unable or perhaps unwilling to define the Klan as deviant. Rather than intimidating and exhausting the Klan, their si­lence created the atmosphere which allowed the secret society to gather resources-men, money, and good will-with only minor in­terference. The Klan easily defended itself against a confused and sporadic opposition composed mainly of minority group members. Protestant Denver accepted or at least tolerated the Klan and only 18 Queen City of the Colorado Realm occasionally questioned it as a legitimate response to community needs. The grand jury investigation and charter rejection only tempo­rarily slowed the Klan's momentum. Two thousand hooded Klans­men gathered in June, 1922, at Estes Park, fifty miles from Denver, for the state's first publicized outdoor initiation. Three hundred Colorado men formed a circle around an altar and burning cross, knelt, and swore an oath of allegiance to the Invisible Empire. "Mor­tal men," proclaimed a Klan officer, "cannot assume a more binding oath. . . . Always remember that to keep this oath means to you honor, happiness, and life, but to violate it means disgrace, dis­honor, and death. . . ."19 Men flocked to the Klan standard and the Denver klavern quickly outgrew its meeting places, Yeager Mor­tuary, Woodmen Hall, the Mining Exchange Building, and the Knights of Pythias Hall. The Klan eventually acquired the Cotton Mills Stadium in South Denver and South Table Mountain, nine miles west of the city, to accommodate its knights.20 Ill The Klan's most effective draw was its pledge to clean up Den­ver and rid the city of its criminal element. In 1920 the newly elected District Attorney Van Cise had described Denver as "practically a wide open town" and had formulated plans to eradicate the prob­lem. 21 A sharp rise in criminal activity had frustrated his efforts. The Denver Express reported that "the wave of lawlessness sweeping Den­ver in 1921 exceeded all previous criminal reigns."22 Police arrested an average of fifty-three persons per day for a total of 19,649, an increase of 28 percent over the 1920 figure and almost double the number apprehended in 1919. The crime rate continued upward in 1922, and although more cases were filed than in 1921, convictions decreased. Police statistics revealed a slight decline in lawlessness during 1923, but a series of jarring crime waves evoked doubt about the city's ability to cope with the situation.23 Prohibition law violators accounted for much of the increase in crime. Colorado and federal statutes outlawing intoxicating bev­erages had in no way curbed Denver's thirst. Liquor was cheap and easily obtainable, and police raids failed to dam the city's supply. Anxious Denverites attended mass meetings to prod city officials to more aggressive action against the bootleggers. The police re­sponded with flurries of raids and arrests which lasted only until the i 9 HOODED EMPIRE outcry had dissipated. Denver police officials complained that le­nient judges thwarted their efforts by restricting search and seizure practices. Judges were also lambasted because congested court cal­enders had forced them to accept guilty pleas in exchange for fines rather than impose prison terms. Van Cise realistically asserted, "I admit we are getting nowhere with bootlegging. The people are not back of us and it is hard to find a jury that will convict."24 Prostitution also flourished in the city. Denver had officially closed its red-light district in 1912, but lax regulation after World War I had enabled some sixty brothels to reopen and scores of pros­titutes to work the streets. On June 22, 1921, a federal investigator charged, "Street conditions are worse here than in any place I was ever in. I was solicited by no less than two dozen prostitutes. . . . They seem to be on the streets as much in the day as in the night."25 A year later a grand jury investigation found no change in the situa­tion. Prostitution was rampant in the downtown district and sur­vived only because of official connivance. Van Cise had attempted, after taking office, to banish prostitution from Denver. In response to the grand jury's probe his office accelerated the campaign and launched a series of raids which padlocked most of the brothels and temporarily swept the streets of prostitutes. The raids, however, had an unforeseen result, since the prostitutes who had been primarily concentrated in a twelve-block downtown area slipped the confines of the district and spread to all parts of the city.26 Denver's drug problem was less publicized but equally alarm­ing. A Denver Post headline in August, 1921, declared, "City Dope Traffic Gallops on, Police Experts Unable to Cope with the Ever-Present Scourge."27 The police disclosed that drug addiction had claimed more than 1,000 victims and was not confined to any particular socioeconomic group. To stimulate business, the organiz­ers of the traffic visited high schools and distributed free samples to students. Confiscations and prison sentences failed to check the traf­fic or lessen parental concern.28 Police inefficiency and malfeasance aggravated crime conditions. The Denver police department's main weapon against lawlessness was a periodic sweep which collared "all suspicious characters and all persons . . . unable to give a good account of themselves. . . ."29 More important, the city's police force was riddled with corruption. Charges such as accepting bribes, selling bootleg whiskey, associat­ing with prostitutes, and drinking on duty were regularly lodged against Denver police officers. The infection was not confined to the poorly paid patrolman but spread to the upper echelons of the de­20 Queen City of the Colorado Realm partment. A 1923 grand jury censured eight law enforcement offi­cials, including the manager of safety and the city constable as "to­tally unfit to hold any office in this city and should be discharged forthwith."30 The district attorney was more sweeping: "The present city administration is a disgrace to American government."31 In addition to bootlegging, prostitution, and narcotics, the city reeled under frequent and intense epidemics of burglaries, hold­ups, and sometimes murders. Unsolved crimes proliferated and fur­ther compromised the police. A few months before the Klan's ar­rival Denverites initiated plans to form a vigilance committee to assist the police department. The leader of this effort, a non-Klans- man, declared, "Things have come to such a pass that such action now seems imperative."32 The Denver Post also sounded the alarm: uThe reign of outlawry that has existed during the past two or three years cannot continue and our country and government remain stable and safe. The government cannot continue to function when its laws are . . . belittled and insulted by law violators everywhere."™ The Klan early seized upon the city's crime problem and prom­ised to make Denver again a fit place to live and raise children. Pub­licity- wise Klan leaders lost no opportunity to bolster the orga­nization's law and order image. They thus issued warnings to lawbreakers, offered rewards, and pledged thousands of men to aid the police department in fighting crime. Unscrupulously, yet tac­tically quite sound, Klansmen appeared at the funeral of non-Klans- man Richie Rose, a police officer gunned down by Italian boot­leggers, and demanded that his murderers be apprehended and brought to trial without delay. They also vowed that "the family of Patrolman Rose will not suffer for want of food and clothing. Their needs will be known to the members of this organization for many years to come."34 Distrustful of their police force and impatient with the court system, many Denverites turned to the Ku Klux Klan as the only agency capable of driving crime and vice from the city. One such in­dividual was Warren R. Given, president of a brokerage and invest­ment company and a highly respected member of the community. Given had been born on November 10, 1874, in Centralia, Illinois, of native-born American parents. He was reared in Denver and was active in several fraternal orders, the First Church of Christ (Scien­tist), and Republican politics, having served as the vice-president of Colorado's Harding for President Club. Given, one of the founders of the Denver Ku Klux Klan, cited the reason for its formation: "A wave of crime during the past two years has swept over Denver and 21 HOODED EMPIRE other cities, the magnitude of which is the greatest in its history. . . . Because of this condition . . . [the Klan] is being maintained to the end that its members can give greater aid and support to the officials in stamping out crime, lawlessness and immorality, and to assist the authorities in ridding . . . Denver of criminals and undesir­ables. . . ."35 For Given, the actual breakdown in law and order was not an abstract issue nor the Klan a symbolic crusade. The danger to family and city was immediate. The solution to the problem seemed to lie with the Klan. A large bloc of fellow Klansmen shared Given's fears and hopes.36 The Denver Klan raised the papal specter to garner members, thus perpetrating the city's anti-Catholic tradition. In the 1890s the American Protective Association had attracted 10,000 men to its anti-Catholic campaign and captured the city government. The APA's demise had led Protestant crusaders to form, in turn, the Knights of Abraham Lincoln, the Guardians of Liberty, the Knights of Luther, and the Night Riders. These groups had boycotted Cath­olic merchants, blacklisted Catholic political candidates, and de­manded passage of a convent inspection law.37 Catholic job seekers, especially teachers, found it almost impossible to secure positions. Anti-Catholic sermons were frequent, and the Menace, a weekly published in the Ozark hills of Missouri, and "escaped nun" Maria Monk's Confessions were sold openly on Denver streets.38 Anti-Catholic agitation eased during World War I only to resur­face in the twenties when evidence of an apparent conspiracy ap­peared and helped rekindle dormant Protestant fears. In April, 1921, the Denver Catholic Register announced the formation of the Colorado chapter of the National Council of Catholic Men. An en­thusiastic spokesman claimed, "By Christmas it is expected every layman in the state will be a member of this great organization."3il Its objectives were vague: to unite Catholic men all over the United States "for general welfare work." In its first year the new society re­ported that it had established contact with similar organizations in other counties throughout the world. Also in 1921, Catholics estab­lished the Colorado Apostolate to wage a campaign for converts. The apostolate, backed by the Knights of Columbus, planned to "make one of the greatest drives ever engineered in any American diocese to bring Catholic truth to the attention of as many non­Catholics as possible. . . ."4<> It pledged, in addition, to aid Protestant ministers financially or otherwise, after their "leap toward the light."41 Klansmen even found support for their charges of priestly corruption. In 1923 Father Walter Grace of Arvada, a Denver sub- 22 Queen City of the Colorado Realm urb, was indicted for forging a nun's signature on a liquor permit and served two years in prison. For those alert to Catholic machina­tions, the news was ominous.42 Dedicated anti-Catholics as well as those Protestants susceptible to their message used the Klan to defeat the papal intrigue. The Klan fanned their fears even though the National Council of Cath­olic Men was merely a paper organization, the Colorado Apostolate consisted of only two men, and the Grace affair was an isolated oc­currence. Kleagles searched the roster of the anti-Catholic Loyal Or­ange Society for recruits and also persuaded former members of Denver's Night Riders to join. Ex-APA members were contacted and several became prominent in the new movement, including Charles Locke, the Grand Dragon's father; Leo Kennedy, who brought the Imperial Wizard to Denver; and Rice Means, the Klan's candidate for the U.S. Senate. The Klan's most conspicuous anti-Catholic was Gano Senter, the Great Titan of Colorado's northern provinces. In 1914 Senter and a group of like-minded Denverites sent an open letter to the Rocky Mountain News echoing the charges of an anti­Catholic lecturer: "The Catholic priesthood is a great octopus and an unscrupulous political machine . . . extending its tentacles into every country it can for plunder, fighting . . . free schools and prog­ress, and keeping the people in ignorance and superstition that it can ply its trade of corruption and extortion. . . ."43 Senter joined the Klan in his early thirties and his "Koo\ Kozy Xafe" on Fifteenth and Curtis streets became an important hooded haunt. A large sign hung in the window: "We Serve Fish Every Day-Except Friday."44 Jews received a similar welcome. Denver needed the Klan, said Sen­ter, because "the Catholics and the Jews were taking over and we had to do something. So we went down to the Masonic Lodge and organized."45 The Klan attracted many men from Bishop Alma White's Pillar of Fire Church. Their Klan fervor, like that of their leader, was par­tially rooted in the belief that the Catholic church was a major obsta­cle in the struggle for women's suffrage and equality. The Klan's anti-Catholicism plus its support of prohibition made it the foe of the twin evils enslaving women. "To whom," asked Bishop White, "shall we look to champion the cause and to protect the rights of women? Is there not evidence that the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are the prophets of a new and better age?"46 Irrationality or status anxiety are not sufficient explanations for Klan anti-Catholicism. Protestant fears proved groundless yet were based on actual events of the early 1920s. Reports of alleged papal 23 HOODED EMPIRE plotting and organizing interacted with and seemed to confirm the anti-Catholic stories and lessons learned as children. The long- dreaded Catholic revolution, given credence by local, tangible evi­dence and Klan speakers, had begun. Protestant rule was being challenged. Colorado and Denver had to be defended. The kleagles did not create Denver's anti-Semitism; they merely exploited it. Denver's Jewish population had increased almost nine­fold between 1916 and 1926, to 17,000 persons. The Jews were pri­marily concentrated around West Colfax Avenue, an area derisively referred to as "Little Jerusalem" or "Jew Town." Tracts of vacant land and the South Platte River separated the district from Protes­tant Denver. The compact settlement housed many immigrants and Orthodox Jews who maintained their traditional values and cus­toms. Numerous religious schools, multiple dialects, and more than a dozen synagogues reflected the diversity of nationalities and be­liefs. Culturally, ethnically, and religiously distinct, the West Colfax Jewish community generated distrust and disgust among many Protestants. The inhabitants of the section, contended a former Klansman, were "cagey and aggressive, with Jew-stuff oozing out of every pore."47 Denverites were suspicious for reasons other than the commu­nity's alien nature. Many, including the district attorney, linked the Jews to bootlegging and illicit gambling operations. The Denver Jew­ish News acknowledged the problem: "Unfortunately many Jewish sounding names are mentioned among those guilty of conducting gambling houses or disorderly places, as well as those who frequent them."48 It also excoriated Jewish bootleggers who posed as rabbis to obtain large consignments of wine for religious purposes. The son of Denver Klan leader Harry Saunders concluded, "We had a lot of pretty scabby Jews."49 Jewish migration from West Colfax to the rest of Denver accelerated in the 1920s and did little to ease tensions. Again, stress-provoking incidents in the immediate environment in­termingled with latent prejudices to produce Klan recruits.50 The Italians of North Denver also incited Klan hostility. Little Italy was an enclave of Old World culture where Italian was spoken as often as English. The Klan's indictment went beyond ethnicity and religion, for the colony was tagged with an undeserved reputa­tion for lawlessness. "These are the criminals," charged Van Cise, "these are the disturbers, these are the unfit."51 The Italians con­trolled Denver's supply of bootleg whiskey and wine throughout the prohibition era despite numerous raids and arrests. Little Italy, in addition, was considered the center of the city's drug traffic. Denver 24 Queen City of the Colorado Realm narcotics agent Henry Williamson blamed the drug plague on "olive complexioned youths of the loud clothes and the impressive motors [who] are scouring the highways . . . every evening in search of sus­ceptible girls. They are finding all too many."52 The Italians, like the Jews, concentrated in a small but highly visible ethnic pocket, were an obvious fulcrum upon which to build the Klan.53 Black Denver was numerically small and barely expanding in the 1920s. Blacks were confined mainly to the Five Points area, an old and deteriorating section east of downtown and north of Capitol Hill. Denver's racial tensions, unlike other cities after World War I, resulted not from a southern influx but from the actions of black Denverites aggressively assaulting the racial status quo. Despite the existence of a state public accommodations law and the absence of legal residential segregation, to blacks, "Dallas, Dixie and Denver were very much alike."54 Even before World War I blacks rebelled against their second- class status. In 1915 they organized the Colored Protective League and a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to advance civil and political rights. They attempted with the assistance of the city's two black newspapers, the Colorado Statesman and the activist Denver Star> to prohibit the showing of the film Birth of a Nation, but failed. Blacks were more successful a year later when they helped block a plan to legalize residential segre­gation in Denver. Those protests in 1916 sparked an anonymous threat to reactivate the Ku Klux Klan.55 The struggle to achieve equality was vigorously renewed after the war. In 1920 a black man filed suit against the city because he was prevented from playing on tennis courts restricted to whites. A black woman sued the city the following year when she was ejected from the municipal auditorium after refusing to sit in the seats re­served for blacks. Dr. Clarence Holmes, president of the Denver NAACP, launched a drive to integrate the downtown movie the­aters. The now-organized Klan sent a threatening note to Holmes and burned a cross in front of his office in retaliation. Black students at East Denver High School interrupted a whites-only dance to force integration of the school's social events.56 The students acted with the approval of several black organizations and promised that their action signaled the beginning of a campaign to attain full equality in the city's schools. The Parent-Teacher Association and the Parkhill Improvement Association responded with resolutions advocating separate schools for blacks and whites. Denver Klan No. 1 proposed a more moderate solution: integrated schools, segregated social 25 HOODED EMPIRE events. The suggestion also contained a warning: "Any intrusion by members of either race into the social affairs of the other will not be tolerated."57 Meanwhile, blacks were escaping their ghetto and buying homes in white neighborhoods. They received a hostile reception. In 1920 a white mob and the threat of violence forced Mrs. Emma Davis to leave her home at 2540 Gaylord Street.58 On July 7, 1921, a bomb ripped the newly acquired home of a black family at 2112 Gilpin Street, and four months later the house was bombed again. Iri De­cember, 1926, bombs were hurled at E. E. Carrington's home at Twenty-second Avenue and Vine Street; a second attempt a month later drove the family from the neighborhood. None of the bombers was ever apprehended.59 Bombing was only one of several white reactions. The Capitol Hill Improvement Association appointed a committee to organize Denver in support of Jim Crow laws that would guarantee school and residential segregation. The Allied Council of Improvement Associations sanctioned such action. When these efforts failed, many of Denver's improvement associations successfully called upon property owners to sign covenants restricting the sale of their homes to whites. The black community refused to cower. "Let no one suppose for a moment," fired back the Colorado Statesman, "that the Negro citizens of Colorado will sit supinely by and witness their rights . . . ruthlessly taken from them."60 Thus black efforts to achieve equality posed an immediate threat to white control. White Denverites believed racial mixing at school social functions imper­iled the chastity of their daughters. Property values, they feared, would surely plummet once blacks moved into all-white neighbor­hoods. Even more disconcerting, the black revolt did not appear to be the work of a few radicals but, instead, had the support of the leading members of the black community. It is not diflicult to under­stand why some Denverites looked to the Ku Klux Klan as the means to preserve neighborhood purity and restrain contentious blacks.61 The Klan appeal involved more than its issue-oriented cam­paign. The Invisible Empire offered an exotic fraternal life com­plete with ghostly costumes and eerie burning crosses. Denver Klansmen escaped their routine lives twice a week to mingle in the klavern with the exalted cyclops and his nighthawks. Regular lodge 26 Queen City of the Colorado Realm nights were supplemented with wrestling tournaments, parades, concerts by the 200-member Klan band, and an auto race (unhap­pily for the sponsors, won by a Catholic). Picnics were especially popular, the most memorable drawing over 100,000 persons. The fraternal side of the order attracted veteran lodge joiners such as Klansman No. 15,357,62 a native of Ohio who paid his ten-dollar klectoken at the age of sixty-eight. He had come to Denver in 1879 after graduating from the University of Michigan School of Law and became active in four fraternal lodges to which he devoted con­siderable time. He had served his lodges as secretary, recorder, grand captain general, grand warden, and grand sword bearer, among others. Two years after joining the Klan, he died. For others the Klan was their first foray into the mystic life of the lodge. Some­what akin to the lodge men were those seeking fun, adventure, and a share of the secret. Membership became for a time faddish; "ev­erybody wanted in the Ku Klux Klan because it was the thing to do."63 But such ties were usually fragile and dissolved after only a few meetings.64 The kleagles wielded the Klan's economic club to convince the reluctant. Employees filled out application blanks to get or keep jobs.65 Scores enlisted to increase business or prevent a boycott. Store owners quickly exploited their membership and proudly dis­played Klan window stickers. Salesmen waited at the entrance to meetings and showered Klansmen with business cards and sales pitches. Business firms flashed their names across screens erected at the gatherings as the men were ordered to "Trade only with Klansmen."66 The Klan, despite its 100 percent American image, did not prey upon the tensions arising from Denver's Red Scare. Denver was bat­tered in 1919 and 1920 with frightening newspaper headlines, anti­radical legislation, and Palmer raids. The Red Scare climaxed in Au­gust, 1920, with the tramway strike, which left seven dead and the city under martial law. The Klan never raised the Bolshevik threat because the issue was no longer relevant. "Nobody," said a former Klansman, "took them seriously."67 Phantom issues were decidedly less potent than those grounded in existing local tensions. Once a white Protestant decided to become a Klansman, joining was a simple matter. It was also a quick process, usually lasting a week to ten days from application to naturalization. Most often con­tact was made through lodge, union, church, or familial channels, for each Klansman was a part-time kleagle instructed to reach needed men. The Denver Klan's 138 paid organizers would then 27 HOODED EMPIRE follow up these leads and process the applicants. Willing recruits who escaped these efforts could clip Klan application coupons from the daily newspapers. Later Klansmen encouraged their wives, mothers, and sisters to form an auxiliary. Foreign-born Protestants enrolled in the Klan-sponsored Royal Riders of the Red Robe and the American Crusaders. Denver Klansmen even organized their children.68 The multifaceted image and platform of the Ku Klux Klan of­fered something for everyone. The result was a loose coalition of diffuse, unorganized camps distinguished by their particular needs and fears. Distinct groups are discernible although the mosaic is blurred, for few took out membership on the basis of a single fea­ture of the Klan program. Involvement in Klan affairs, as in all or­ganizations, varied in intensity depending upon the individual, with allegiance contingent upon performance. As soon as the movement proved unable to fulfill its promises, the defections began. Aside from the opportunists, the coerced, and the faddists whose influ­ence was minimal, several salient groupings can be identified. The Klan contained a small hard core of true believers eager to save the world from marauding Catholics, Jews, and blacks. An allied bloc, less steeped in the rhetoric of prejudice, reacted to immediate threats to their homes and neighborhoods. The lodge men found the mysteries of Kloranic ritual more satisfying than minority bait­ing. None of these groups alone or combined, however, was suffi­cient to propel the movement to power. Success came only when the Klan merged their grievances with demands to restore law and order to Denver. Many of those concerned about the spreading law­lessness were not particularly bigoted. They tolerated the rabid pas­sions of fellow Klansmen primarily because of the white Protestant heritage of distrust and the minority connection to crime. The Den­ver Klan's law and order emphasis reflected its drawing strength and the needs of its membership. Klan leaders representing the dif­ferent interests guaranteed, however, that no issue was neglected. A rough balance, through careful juggling, was thus effected under Dr. Locke's steadying hand which precluded any major radical thrusts. Unfortunately, small bands of Klansmen could not be easily restrained from independent action.69 The Denver environment proved congenial to Klan mobiliza­tion success. City government could not solve a stressful crime prob­lem or suppress what appeared to be a coordinated minority upris­ing against Protestantism. Denverites who believed that they had been abandoned by local authorities could only look to themselves 28 Queen City of the Colorado Realm and the Ku Klux Klan for their salvation. Unfulfilled fellowship and spiritual needs, too, sought an outlet. In John Galen Locke the Klan found a charismatic leader who generated zealous enthusiasm among his followers. Locke, assisted by capable and energetic lieu­tenants, molded the Klan into a solution for almost every concern. Their skillful planning and execution made the organization a po­tent force in local affairs. In addition, the Klan encountered no sub­stantial counterattack. A man did not fear his minister's censure or neighbor's scorn when he enlisted in the secret society. The move­ment operated in a community devoid of widespread public hostility and a meaningful opposition. The risks were few, the rewards un­limited. With all variables tilted in the Klan's favor, it is not surpris­ing that nearly 17,000 Denver men passed through the portals of the Invisible Empire. Still, the Klan had one other hurdle to clear on the road to power. It had to attract the support of men and women whose needs or frustrations lacked the intensity to cause member­ship yet were sufficient to evoke sympathy for Klan aims. For this population, too, the interplay of Klan leadership, local tensions, governmental responsiveness, and community perceptions was cru­cial in confirming allegiance. Victory with these men and women would guarantee Klan aims, for it would yield controlling influence over Denver's formal decision-making process.70 V The Denver Klan's program and growing strength dictated po­litical action, and the first opportunity came in the Denver mayoral election of 1923. The hooded order secretly supported Benjamin F. Stapleton against the Republican incumbent Dewey Bailey. Staple­ton, a Democrat, had been born in 1869 on a farm near Paintsville, Kentucky. A veteran of the Spanish-American War, he had served Denver as judge, police magistrate, and postmaster. His political stance, however, was unclear. A Democratic party leader described Stapleton as ‘just a name. There was nothing against him, there was nothing for him. He was an unknown entity."71 Stapleton announced his candidacy on March 30, pledging a war on crime and vice, lower taxes, and an efficient and frugal city government. He counted among his allies the Denver Post, the Den­ver Express, the Italian-American Social Club, and liberal Democrats Governor William Sweet and Morrison Shafroth. Organized labor, through the Denver Labor County Central Committee and the Colo­rado Labor Advocate, also aided his effort. Stapleton was the Klan's 29 HOODED EMPIRE obvious choice; he was a close friend of Dr. Locke and Klan member No. 1,128. Rumors of Stapleton's Klan affiliations surfaced through­out the campaign, and he condemned the Klan to appease his Jew­ish and Catholic supporters. "True Americanism/' he declared, "needs no mask or disguise. Any attempt to stir up racial prejudices or religious intolerance is contrary to our constitution and is there­fore un-American."72 His word was accepted, and a coalition of Klan and anti-Klan forces swept him into office over an incumbent taint­ed with corruption and linked to organized crime.73 Mayor Stapleton quickly implemented many of his campaign promises. The new administration stressed economy in all munici­pal agencies and cut excess jobs. Shake-ups in the police department weeded out the inefficient and corrupt. Police units intensified their anticrime efforts, probing Little Italy for bootlegging sites and plan­ning operations to drive prostitutes from the city's residential dis­tricts. In less than a month District Attorney Van Cise detected a dramatic drop in criminal activity, tracing it to the city's offensive against bootleggers, prostitutes, and gamblers. Although Stapleton appointed a few Catholics and Jews to office, the Klan's mark was very much in evidence. The mayor named fellow Klansman Rice Means as manager of safety and later city attorney. Klansman Reu­ben Hershey succeeded Means as manager of safety after first serv­ing as manager of revenue. Klansmen filled the offices of clerk and recorder, manager of improvements and parks, and city accountant, among others. The police department was heavily infiltrated, with seven sergeants and dozens of patrolmen all card-carrying Klans­men. Yet, despite pressure, Mayor Stapleton refused for almost a year to appoint a Klansman as chief of police.74 In 1923 and 1924 the Klan's influence upon the court system became apparent. Stapleton designated Klansmen Henry Bray and Albert Orahood as justices of the peace. They joined another Klans­man already on the bench, District Judge Clarence Morley, the Klokan of the Denver klavern. The threat of Klan justice emanated not only from the judge's bench but also from juries drawn from Klan membership lists. Klan jury tampering intensified after the 1924 elections.75 Stapleton's electoral coalition began to crumble six weeks after his victory. On June 26, 1923, Klansmen distributed notices inviting Denverites to a free lecture about Klan principles to be given the fol­lowing night at the city auditorium. Some of the placards were nailed to the doors of Temple Emmanuel and the Immaculate Con­ception Cathedral. The mayor authorized the Klan's use of the 3^ Queen City of the Colorado Realm building, citing the right of free speech and assurances "that there will be no attack made upon color, race or creed."76 The Denver Ex­press rejected Stapleton's position: "The cultivation and support, even unofficial, of such an organization places a premium upon law­lessness. When that support becomes official-it will inspire every fanatic, every hoodlum, every bigot, every mischief-maker to believe that he is a law unto himself. That way lies anarchy."77 The NAACP, labor leaders, liberal Democrats, Denver's Elks, prominent Jews, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians protested the mayor's action in vain.78 Four thousand persons attended the lecture, but they never heard a word about the Ku Klux Klan. G. K. Minor, Klan lecturer from Texas, began his talk with the proviso that if anyone objected, he would cancel the meeting. Fathers Francis Walsh and Thomas Kelley of the cathedral, both wearing their World War I army uni­forms, immediately stood up in protest. Shouts drowned out their words. Within minutes Rice Means ordered the hall emptied to pre­vent violence. A week after the incident the city council passed a bill prohibiting the Klan from again using the municipal auditorium.79 Later in 1923 Klansmen erected eleven wooden crosses in dif­ferent parts of Denver and simultaneously set them ablaze. None of the Klansmen were caught. When questioned about the matter, Sta­pleton replied that the police department was unable to find any evi­dence of the cross burnings. The city council demanded that the ad­ministration conduct a full investigation, but no further action was taken.80 There were other examples of Klan militancy. Klansmen threat­ened to boycott businessmen advertising in the Denver Express and Denver Catholic Register. Mimeographed lists of proscribed Catholic merchants were circulated at Klan gatherings. Members routed their kavalkades past West Colfax synagogues and mocked wor­shipers. Crosses burned before Catholic churches. Anti-Catholic Klansmen brought ex-"nun" Mary Angel to Denver where she de­livered sixty lectures which, according to the Denver Catholic Register. "for utter foulness . . . simply could not be surpassed. It was the vomit not of the red light district, but of hell's depths. . . ."85 Jewish activists and Catholic priests were also subjected to physical harass­ment and death threats; "feeling ran so high that just the sight of a white collar set them off."82 Denver Klansmen were implicated in at least two acts of vio­lence. On October 27, 1923, five Klansmen kidnapped Patrick Walk­er, a member of the Knights of Columbus, drove him to a spot near 31 HOODED EMPIRE Riverside Cemetery, and clubbed him with the butts of their re­volvers. Three months later, in January, 1924, Jewish attorney Ben Laska was forced into a car at gunpoint, taken to the outskirts of the city, and beaten with blackjacks. The Klansmen admonished Laska, "Don't get these bootleggers off. Don't defend them. This is your first warning. The next will not be so light."83 Apparently Laska heeded the warning, because he subsequently became the Grand Dragon's attorney. Monsignor Gregory Smith, reflecting on the Klan days, was surprised there was not more violence: "We had our hot heads, they had their hot heads. . . . We were screaming for justice but you always have some that don't wait for the wheels of justice to turn. They were terrible times."84 While such acts are reprehensible and to be condemned, it is also necessary to consider them as tactics in a struggle for power. Klansmen, now protected from government retaliation, attempted to strengthen their position in the community. These incidents dem­onstrated to members and nonmembers that the Klan intended to carry out its pledge to shackle minorities. They also served to heighten movement unity and to hamper the mobilization of re­sources by anti-Klansmen. Bigotry is thus only a partial answer. The quest for power also plays an explanatory role. Despite Mayor Stapleton's pro-Klan stance and invisible creden­tials, he was not pliable enough to suit the Grand Dragon. Stapleton had used the Klan to win office and had sought Locke's advice, but he never succumbed completely to the organization's dictates. The mayor's repeated refusal to appoint a Locke lieutenant as chief of police precipitated the break. To punish Stapleton, the Grand Dragon decided to circulate a recall petition. Just as the Klan was readying its campaign, other Denverites began a drive to gather sig­natures in favor of the mayor's recall. This second group charged the administration with raising taxes, allowing crime to flourish, and engaging in antilabor activities. These accusations masked the movement's real motivation, to rid city hall of Klan domination. The mayor judged his position untenable and capitulated to Klan de­mands. "Stapleton," cautioned Locke, "you went back on us once. We have decided to support you again. We will elect you. But if you ever go back on us again, God help you!"85 Stapleton named William Candlish as Denver's new chief of po­lice in return for Klan support. Candlish was a former newspaper editor, state senator, and radium experimenter with no previous po­lice experience. His only qualifications were his Klan membership and his subservience to Locke. Chief Candlish made the police de­32 Queen City of the Colorado Realm partment an instrument of the Klan's will. Candlish asked all Protes­tant policemen to fill out Klan membership applications; those who accepted were rewarded with choice assignments, shorter hours, and promotions. The rest joined Jewish and Catholic police officers working night shifts on undesirable beats. Candlish's men began en­forcing forgotten city ordinances to harass Jewish and Catholic shopkeepers. More frightening was a Candlish edict, based upon an old Denver law, prohibiting Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, and black businessmen from employing white women. The Klan was so sure of its control that it even requisitioned men and vehicles from the department.86 Candlish's appointment accelerated the momentum of the anti- Klan recall forces. It was final proof, observed the Denver Express, of a "gigantic conspiracy" bent upon "the seizure and control of every department of city, county, and state government."87 On March 29, 1924, two weeks after Candlish assumed his post, Philip Hornbein and John B. O'Malley filed a petition containing 26,000 names, enough to force a special election on August 12. The recall move­ment selected former mayor Dewey Bailey as its candidate. The choice was unfortunate in light of the candidate's reputed under­world connections and earlier defeat by Stapleton. Bailey's antilabor record also dogged his efforts. The Denver Labor County Central Committee condemned him "for allowing armed thugs to parade the streets of Denver and to shoot into gatherings of unarmed cit­izens, for refusing to enforce the minimum wage law for men em­ployed on city work, and for his alliance with powerful interests vio­lently antagonistic to labor."88 Bailey based his campaign on one issue, Denver's invisible gov­ernment. "If I am elected mayor of Denver," he promised, "there will be no nightgown tyranny in this town."89 Throughout the sum­mer of 1924 pro-recall speakers Charles Mahoney, Ben Lindsey, Sidney Whipple, and Hornbein assailed the Klan and Stapleton's se­cret ties. In a surprise move the Denver Democratic County Assem­bly endorsed recall, denouncing "any administration that permits it­self to become the working tool of the Ku Klux Klan."90 The Denver Post in its first major confrontation with the Klan reiterated the re­call's theme, "Shall the Ku Klux Klan, an Anonymous Secret Masked Society Rule Denver, or Shall the People Rule Den­ver? . . . All Other Issues, However Important They May Seem, Sink into Absolute Insignificance."91 Arrayed against recall were organizations as formidable as they were diverse, the Anti-Saloon League, the Denver Labor County 33 HOODED EMPIRE Central Committee, the Colored Citizens League, and the Denver Ministerial Alliance. The Stapleton campaign also drew strong sup­port from the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Times, Denver Democrat, and the Colorado Labor Advocate. The anti-recall forces contended that Stapleton was innocent of any gross abuses or malfeasance and should be allowed to remain in office. Disgruntled political job seekers and bootleggers in league with yellow journalists had engi­neered the recall to seize power for their selfish ends. The Klan is­sue was merely a ruse to distract the voters.92 Despite other sources of support, however, Stapleton's most powerful ally was the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan dominated the Sta­pleton campaign, contributing more than $15,000 and scores of election workers. The Klan supplemented these efforts with two in­cidents manufactured to draw hesitant Protestants to the polls. In June a bullet shattered a window in the Highlands Christian Church just after its Klan minister had received a donation from a delega­tion of Klansmen. Two days before the election the Reverend James Thomas, a Klansman, told his congregation that the district attorney had just uncovered a Knights of Columbus plot to arm the city's Ca­tholics. Van Cise dismissed the ministers story as absurd. On July 14, 1924, Mayor Stapleton addressed a Klan gathering on South Table Mountain and reaffirmed his commitment: "I have little to say, except that I will work with the Klan and for the Klan in the coming election, heart and soul. And if I am re-elected, I shall give the Klan the kind of administration it wants."93 Police Chief Cand- lish later clarified Stapleton's words: "Another term with the mayor, and the red necks and slimy Jews would crawl into their holes and pull the holes in after them."91 Election day was peaceful as the city cast the heaviest vote in its history. Stapleton swamped Bailey at the polls, piling up 55,130 votes to 23,808 and winning all sixteen election districts. The may­ors strongest support came from districts R, S, and T in South Den­ver, which were carried by a six-to-one margin. Stapleton was routed only in the West Colfax Jewish precincts. Noting the size of the Sta­pleton vote, the Denver Post remarked, "The victory yesterday proves beyond any doubt that the Ku Klux Klan is the largest, most cohesive and most efficiently organized political force in the State of Colorado today."95 The Klan and its leaders had managed Stapleton to victory by refus­ing to do battle on the invisible government issue. By avoiding the subject, the winning coalition of strange bedfellows was forged. Organized labor was especially proud of its contribution, claiming 34 Queen City of the Colorado Realm "a large share of the credit for the tremendous majority. . . Moreover, Klan campaigners shrewdly capitalized upon anti-Klan blunders, especially the naming of Bailey as the recall candidate. Many who opposed recall as a matter of principle or who detested Bailey chose Stapleton without regard to his position concerning the Klan. Thus enough indifferent or sympathetic non-Klansmen had voted with the minority to defeat the recall.97 Denver Klansmen awaited the election returns on South Table Mountain. When the Stapleton tide became overwhelming, they sig­naled their victory with fiery crosses visible in Denver. The auto­mobile caravan that descended the mountain after the ceremony in­dicated a redirection of Klan energy. Bumper stickers proclaiming "I'll vote again for Ben" were now covered with those heralding "Morley for Governor."98 VI The Klan owed much of its success to the men who had shaped its local identity and charted the course to power. Who were the leaders of Denver Klan No. 1? What were the backgrounds of those who represented the rank and file, eased factional wrangling, and set priorities upon resource distribution? The names of Dr. Locke's chief lieutenants and Klan leaders elected in 1924, 1925, and 1926 were obtained and biographical data compiled for each man. The resulting socioeconomic grouping was as diverse as it was homoge­neous. Age and place of birth information was gathered for twenty- five of the thirty-six leaders. Klan officers ranged in age from twenty-one to sixty-seven years with a mean age of 42.4 years. Al­though men in all age groups appeared in the hierarchy, those thirty to thirty-nine years old (ten) and fifty years and older (eight) were overrepresented and those in their twenties (two) were underrepre­sented when compared to Denver's native white male population. While every section of the United States except the Pacific Coast re­gion contributed to the leadership, the largest blocs of Klansmen were born in the Middle Atlantic states (five) and Colorado (six). The sizes of the birthplaces of twenty-one men are known and are primarily towns with a population of 2,500 or less (nine) or cities of 100,000 or more people (seven). Military service data, available for three-quarters of the men, indicate that twenty never served in the armed forces, one was a Spanish-American War veteran, and four had participated in World War I. It is surprising, considering the 35 HOODED EMPIRE youth of many of the leaders, that so few had served in 1917-18. The Klan's leaders were mostly married men, with only four re­maining single and one divorced." Information concerning length of residence and fraternal affil­iations also reflects sharp contrasts. Klan officers resided an average of 14.5 years in Denver before joining. The figure, however, is mis­leading and hides considerable variation. Eight of the leaders were recent arrivals, having lived in the community three years or less. At the other extreme, long-time residents in Denver, eighteen years or more, constituted one-third of the group. Over two-thirds of the leaders resided in the city for seven years or more. Eighteen, or half, of the leaders had no fraternal membership in a lodge other than the Ku Klux Klan. All but one of the rest belonged to two or more fraternal orders. Of those with multiple memberships, fifteen were Masons, eleven Knight Templars, and eight Odd Fellows. Klansmen were, in addition, active in the Elks, Lions, and Woodmen of the World. The city's elite clubs, such as the Denver Club, Denver Coun­try Club, Cherry Hills Country Club, Lakewood Country Club, and University Club, had no Klan leaders among their members. Four Klan officers belonged to the Denver Athletic Club, which was one level below these organizations. Only one Klan leader was listed in the Social Register. Three of the five men eligible were members of either the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars.100 Although the Klan leaders differed considerably as to age, length of residence, and number of fraternal ties, they showed strik­ing similarity in occupational status (see Table 1). Twenty-six of the men held occupations in the two highest status groups. Only three men were engaged in manual labor. The most frequently occurring occupations were small businessman (eight), clergyman (four), law­yer (four), manager of a firm (four), and physician (three). When compared to the occupational distribution for all male Denverites, Klansmen in the high and middle nonmanual categories are vastly overrepresented and all other groupings decidedly underrepre­sented. The men's occupational histories before joining the Klan in­dicate that twelve were upwardly mobile, eleven were in the same status group as when they first entered the Denver work force, and only one was downwardly mobile. There is little change in these to­tals when occupations held while Klansmen are considered. For some of the men, high occupational status may well have coun­teracted the detrimental effects of short-term residence and youth upon their chances of joining the Klan hierarchy.101 36 Queen City of the Colorado Realm Table 1. Occupational Distribution of the Leaders of the Denver Klan, 1924-26, Compared with the Occupational Distribution of Denver's Male Population in 1920. Occupational Status Klan leaders N Percent Male Population Percent High nonmanual 12 33 4-7 Middle nonmanual M 39 14-5 Low nonmanual 4 11 22.3 Skilled 2 6 18.0 Semiskilled and service 1 3 21.0 Unskilled 0 0 l3-5 Unknown 3 8 6.0 Total 36 source: Denver City Directory, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920: Occupations, IV, 1095-98. Just a rung below the city's elite, the leaders of the Denver Klan were sufficiently attractive, socially and economically, to draw re­cruits. They were primarily business and professional men whose sobriety and respectability shielded the Klan from charges of irre­sponsibility and radicalism. Skillfully they exploited lodge and busi­ness contacts to lure like-minded men of similar status. As they did, the Klan's reputation was further enhanced. Middle aged, often with families, they were the models of decorum, quite convincing when they voiced parental fears for the future of Denver's youth. The Denver Klan's advantage was obvious-their leaders not only looked the part, they acted it. VII "They came from City hall and from the suburbs," observed a Denver Express reporter stationed outside a Klan meeting. "Tall, short, young and old-some well dressed by tailors and some from Curtis Street second hand stores."102 The hood and robe concealed the identities of the Klan's rank and file. Membership lists were closely guarded, and rarely did the names of ordinary Klansmen ap­pear in the newspapers. Sometimes friends, neighbors, and even 37 HOODED EMPIRE wives were unaware of the binding invisible tie. Fortunately, the so­cial and economic characteristics of these Denver Klansmen can be ascertained because the official Roster of Members as well as the 1924 Membership Applications Book have been preserved. To test the long-held observation that early-joining Klansmen differed in socioeconomic status from late joiners and to examine membership patterns over time, the 16,727 knights listed on the roster were di­vided into three groups: those recruited before January, 1923; be­tween January, 1923, and May, 1924; and after May, 1924. January, 1923, was chosen as an end date for the early joiner group because it approximated the Klan's shift from its formative stage to a more ag­gressive and open involvement in the community. Membership in the early joiner group was determined by examining newspapers, addresses, death certificates, and the resignation, suspension, and banishment dates entered in the roster. The total early joiner popu­lation was 1,000 men from which two names were excluded, one a duplicate and the other a newspaper spy. Those men entering the Klan after May, 1924, were designated late joiners. This division was based upon the Denver Klan's decision to open its rolls and launch a major membership drive at the end of May, 1924, in preparation for the mayoral recall election. The Membership Applications Book records the names of 13,353 prospective Klansmen and their dates of application from May 27, 1924, to the end of the year. Applicants' names were matched to those appearing in the roster to set the be­ginning number for the late joiners. More than 1,200 men filled out application blanks but never joined. Also included in the late joiner population were 1,550 men who enlisted in 1925. The late joiners thus numbered 13,735 from which seven duplicate or spies' names were excluded. Three hundred seventy-five men were randomly se­lected from the early joiner population of 998 and 583 men from the 13,728 late joiners. No sample was taken from the group joining between January, 1923, and May, 1924, because the data accumu­lated would not have compensated for the resources and time ex­pended. With a confidence level of 95 percent and confidence inter­val of ±4 percent, a sample of 375 is acceptable for a population of 1,000 and 583 for 20,000. Thus, if an indefinitely large number of samples of size 375 or 583 were drawn, the results from 95 percent of these samples would be within 4 percent of the "true" values of the two populations. With the data compiled upon these 958 sample members, assertions concerning the roots of the Klan response may be examined. Was the Invisible Empire primarily a movement of so­cially and economically marginal men? Was the Klan a symptom ofworking-class authoritarianism? Or did the Klan's diverse appeal at­tract a cross-section of the white, Protestant, male population?10* The Denver Klan was an organization of mature men and not the young. The mean age of early joiners upon entering the Klan was 39.9 years and did not differ significantly from the late joiners at 37.8 years (Table 2). The late joiners were evenly distributed along the age continuum, while early joiners thirty to thirty-nine years of age constituted over 40 percent of their group. Similar proportions of men in their forties and those over fifty belonged to each Klan group with the sharpest difference occurring in the group of thirty to thirty-nine year olds. The late joiners in almost every category more closely resembled the city's native white population. With 85 percent of the early joiners and 75 percent of the late joiners thirty years or older, the movement was hardly an uprising of callow, thrill-seeking young people. Stability is also reflected in marital sta­tus statistics. More than 75 percent of both groups were married, 22 percent single, and only 1 percent divorced. These figures com­pared to 58 percent married, 30 percent single, and 2 percent di­vorced of the adult male population.104 Queen City of the Colorado Realm Table 2. Age Distribution of Denver Klansmen, 1921-25, Compared with the Age Distribution of Denver's Native White Male Population in 1920 (Twenty Years and Older), by Percent. Age Early Joiners Late Joiners Native White Male Population Under 20 - 1.4 - 20-29 *5-5 23-4 30.0 30~39 4M 294 26.5 40-49 24.1 24.8 20.1 50 and older 19.0 20.9 234 Total 244 286 source: Sample data; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920: Population, II, 308. The Midwest, not the South, was the Klan's chief spawning ground. Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and the rest of the states of the east and west north-central regions furnished the bulk of Den­ver's Klan population (Table 3). Although one-third of Denver was native to the state, Colorado-born Klansmen comprised less than a 39 HOODED EMPIRE fourth of the two sample groups. This discrepancy, however, might only reflect the inclusion of children eighteen years and younger in the census figures for Denver. Curiously, one man born in England, one in Ireland, and two in Germany appeared in the sample. All four were long-time residents and were probably granted admission because of friendship or deceit. Information regarding the size of birthplaces for one-third of the late joiners (201) and one-half of the early joiners (183) reveals a rural and small-town background. Over 50 percent of the late joiners and 45 percent of the early joiners were born in or near towns with a population of 2,500 or less, 66 percent and 62 percent respectively in towns of 10,000 or less. Fewer than one-fourth of the late joiners and one-fifth of the early joiners were born in cities of 100,000 or more. Table 3. Distribution of Birthplaces of Denver Klansmen, 1921-25, Compared with the Distribution of Birthplaces of Denver's Native Population in 1920, by Percent. Area of Birth Early Joiners Late Joiners Native Population New England 3-3 1.0 2.2 Middle Atlantic 8.3 6.4 9.0 East north-central 23.0 25-3 19-3 West north-central 24.0 34-2 21.3 South Atlantic 5.0 4.0 2-5 East south-central 5.8 5.0 3.6 West south-central 4.6 0.4 3-4 Mountain (excluding Colorado) 2.1 0.4 2.4 Colorado 23.0 22.6 35-2 Pacific - 0.3 1.1 Foreign-born 0.8 0.4 - Total 241 283 source: Sample data; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920; Population, II, 666. .. An overwhelming majority of both early and late joiners never served in America's wars. When the unknown category is disre­garded, two-thirds of the early joiners (154) and three-quarters of the later arrivals (203) stayed home during wartime. Seventy-three (32 percent) of the early joiners entered the service in 1917 and one 40 Queen City of the Colorado Realm man in 1898. The figures for late joiners are even lower; sixty-five men (24 percent) served in World War I and one man during the Spanish-American War. In the 1920s few Klansmen shared their military experiences in either the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars, comprising just 2 percent and 4 percent of the memberships respectively. In the ranks, as in the leadership, re­cently discharged military veterans were noticeable by their absence. Missing past crusades to save American freedom and democracy, perhaps many saw the Klan as a means to compensate for lost op* portunities to serve. A striking contrast between early and late joiners appears in re­gard to membership in fraternities other than the Klan. Seventy-six percent (447) of the late-joining Klansmen had no known fraternal ties. Of the remaining 136 men, forty-three (7 percent) belonged to two or more lodges. Forty-eight percent of the early joiners had no known fraternal ties, but 34 percent were members of two or more orders. The Masons provided a second fraternal home for 85 per­cent of the early-joining Klansmen and 79 percent of the late joiners with at least one lodge tie. Klansmen also appeared in the ranks of the Knight Templars, Rotarians, Lions, Elks, and Odd Fellows but in much smaller numbers. Denver's elite clubs listed only a handful of Klansmen among their members. The Denver Athletic Club con­tained the most, forty Klansmen or 3 percent of its total member­ship. The notion that early joiners tended to have more fraternal affiliations than late joiners is supported by gamma ( + .56), a mea­sure of association. These differences reflect changes in the meth­ods of recruiting between the Klan's arrival and the stage of inten­sive organizing. Early in the Klan period the lodge was a prime site for contacting non-Klansmen. Later, as the saturation point was reached in the lodge room, other recruiting techniques were brought into play. A changing membership also indicated a transition in the Klan's meaning and appeal. Klansmen were both long-time residents and recent migrants to the city. Early joiners resided in Denver an average 13.5 years as compared to 9.5 years for the late joiners (Table 4). Thirty-one per­cent of the early joiners and 20 percent of the later members resided in Denver eighteen years or more. Fifty-three percent of the later joiners as opposed to 37 percent of the early joiners lived in Denver six years or less; 41 percent to 27 percent, three years or less. The visible impression that early joiners tended to reside in Denver for longer periods is supported by Pearson's coefficient of contingency (-53)- 41 HOODED EMPIRE Table 4. Length of Residence of Denver Klansmen, 1921-25 (Prior to Joining). Early Joiners Late Joiners Years ■ 1 . N Percent N Percent 1-3 99 27 242 41 4-6 39 10 73 12 7-9 17 5 40 7 10-13 46 12 28 5 14-17 . 35 9 53 9 18 and over 117 31 114 20 Unknown 22 6 33 6 Total 375 583 source: Denver City Directory. These fraternal and residential data bear directly upon the hy­pothesis of mass society theorists which ties social movement activ­ism to a weakened network of community groups. According to Seymour Lipset, the ranks of extremist movements are filled with "marginal men"-"the personal failures, the socially isolated, the economically insecure, the uneducated, unsophisticated and au­thoritarian persons at every level of society."105 Sociologist William Kornhauser contends, "Within all strata, people divorced from com­munity, occupation, and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism. The decisive social process in mass so­ciety is the atomization of social relations; even though this process is accentuated in the lower strata, it operates throughout society"'06 Early joiner information demonstrates, however, that rather than being divorced from social groups, nearly 20 percent were involved in outside organizational affairs and over one-third were thor­oughly enmeshed. It is important to bear in mind for both early and late joiners that these figures are conservative because of the un­availability of complete fraternal membership rosters. Probably many affiliations remain uncovered. The existing evidence indicates that the majority of early Klan recruits were approached through Denver's network of civic, social, and fraternal organizations. These fraternal and social connections appear to have accelerated the movement's early momentum. On the other hand, a large percent­age of early and late joiners seem to fit the mass society stereotype of uprooted and marginal men. Short-term residence and isolation 42 Queen City of the Colorado Realm from community affairs did cause many to see the secret order as a beacon of security and stability in an unpredictable environment. But too much emphasis should not be placed upon what was actually an uninfluential minority. Men usually joined the Klan at the urg- ings of lodge brothers, relatives, or close business associates. Appli­cants were required to complete a detailed, personal information questionnaire which included the names of five references, pref­erably Klansmen. Employer and peer pressure, not a lack of self­esteem, carried others into the order. The Klan could also serve as a conduit into the larger community. In the klavern a Denver new­comer could connect with established figures of outside clubs and fraternities. Finally, a brief residence in Denver and a lack of frater­nal ties did not necessarily imply a different motivational or value orientation. Joining the Klan reflected an attachment to the commu­nity, a desire to protect it. Protestants of diverse socioeconomic sta­tus and background reacted similarly to the Jewish bootlegger, the Italian drug peddler, and the Jesuit priest. Historian Kenneth Jackson's suggestion in The Ku Klux Klan in the City that residents in the "zone of emergence" were particularly susceptible to hooded appeals is not applicable to the Denver case. There was no distinct belt of contested neighborhoods in the city be­cause minority expansion was irregular and sporadic. Eastern Euro­pean Globeville and Little Jerusalem were spatially isolated and not perceived as disruptive of existing residential patterns. Further, Denver, except for the location of its black ghetto, does not fit the ethnic core-middle class rings model of many eastern cities. Thus, while the situational factor of neighborhood transition explains the motivation of some Klansmen, no visible pattern of Klan settlement emerges. Residentially there were four major pockets of Klansmen: North Denver-Berkeley, the area between the Platte River and Cherry Creek, South Denver, and Capitol Hill. Twenty percent of the late joiners and 14 percent of the early joiners lived in North Denver-Berkeley, a middle-class neighborhood with small, single­family homes and well-kept lawns. The residents of the area, on the western boundary of Little Italy, were especially sensitive to the threat of immigrant encroachment. Another 20 percent of the late joiners resided in the strip of land between the Platte River and Cherry Creek, a densely populated, run-down section of the city. Below Alameda Avenue, in South Denver, were the homes of 13 percent of the early joiners and 17 percent of the later recruits. South Denver was a relatively new area and, like North Denver, populated by the middle class. Capitol Hill, between Seventh and 43 Sheridan Blvd. Number of Klansmen a 10 early joiners • 10 late joiners HI Little Jerusalem Little Italy Five Points Globeville Figure 2. Distribution of Denver Klan Sample in 1924. YosemiteQueen City of the Colorado Realm Twentieth avenues, housed 33 percent of the early joiners and 14 percent of the late joiners. More affluent than South Denver, Cap­itol Hill was a heterogeneous area of large mansions, small homes, and exclusive apartments. Other concentrations of Klansmen ap­peared in Park Hill, downtown Denver, and around the Five Points black ghetto. As expected, the sparsely settled areas east of Colorado Boulevard and west of the Sout