Ku Klux Klan in Ohio (May 26 alt. assignment)
Being a northern state, I was personally surprised by the large community of Ku Klux Klan members in Ohio during the early 1920s. The group was comprised of many of the native-born Protestant middle class. Although race was central, the Klan was also nativist and naturalist. According to Dr. Andrew Cayton, the Klan was looking for people “whose reputations and vocations are respectable” and whose habits are ‘exemplary’ to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles, traditions, and ideals of pure Americanism” (311). Many ministers and women joined the Klan, proud of their enforcement of “morality” such as prohibition. They saw themselves as “middle-class people in search of greater law and order and working-class people looking for some way to ensure the representations of their interests in the larger public sphere” (311). At one point Ohio boasted four hundred thousand Klan members (311). The Klan flourished in rapidly changing industrial cities such as Youngstown and Akron. Foreign-born people along with African-Americans were pouring in the cities looking for work. Over the issue of alcohol, tensions ran particularly high between the Klan and the Catholic and Jewish population of areas.
Klan members and Klan-backed candidates won several elections throughout Ohio. In 1924 the mayor of Niles appointed 150 Klan members to a quasi-police force. Both Italian and Irish Ohioans refused to take it anymore, as Klansmen tried to press their values on immigrant communities. The Klan was massively deserted after several incidents tarred the organization as narrow and intolerant; people who considered themselves respectable wanted nothing to do with it anymore (311).
Cayton, Andrew. Ohio the History of a People. The Ohio State University Press: Columbus, 2002.
