The Ku Klux Klan in Wood County, Ohio

The lead cartoon in the October 2, 1923 edition of the Daily Sentinel-Tribune would be universally condemned as racist if a twenty-first-century newspaper were to run it. The four-panel sketch featured a white father and daughter going out to dinner, where they encounter an African American waiter with exaggerated features and an almost ape-like demeanor. The cartoonist, Charles McManus, depicted the waiter as a bumbling fool with an exaggerated dialect who seemed incapable of realizing that he was the target of the insults by the white patrons.

While by twenty-first-century standards such a cartoon would be considered offensive, such “entertainment” was common for the time period. Ohio’s Wood County was typical of the United States during the 1920s in its embracing of racist, nativist, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic ideologies. Views that today would generally be considered by most Americans as abhorrent were widely held by white Protestants during the decade of the 1920s. An examination of local newspapers from the 1920s provides revealing vignettes of the existing ethnic, racial and religious prejudices and stereotypes held my many white (especially white Protestant) Wood County residents of the 1920s.

A 1924 cartoon depicting an African American waiter in a demeaning fashion. From the Daily Sentinel-Tribune.

Minstrel shows were a relatively frequent occurrence in Wood County in the years leading up to the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan as a political and cultural force in Wood County. Civic, religious and fraternal organizations were the groups most likely to produce a minstrel show, and these were often used as fundraisers for community causes.

These entertainment productions typically featured white performers donning blackface and acting out comedy and musical numbers with characters that portrayed African Americans as dimwitted buffoons or as morally bankrupt individuals deserving of mockery. Some of the minstrel shows also included stereotyped characters portraying Jews, foreigners or disabled persons.

Minstrel shows in the early decades of the twentieth century also served as historical barometers of mainstream white attitudes toward African Americans. Not only were the negative stereotypes and generalizations tolerated, but they were also often well-attended civic events sponsored by social and political elites.

Of particular interest in examining the minstrel shows in Wood County in the 1920s is the presence of a number of prominent civic, business and educational leaders in these productions. Far from being isolated or extremist events, the minstrel shows in Wood County were mainstream extravaganzas that were well attended and that carried a semi-official stamp of approval by local elites.

In advance publicity for the January 20, 1920 minstrel show produced by the Perrysburg Civic Association, the promoters enthused that it “will probably be one of the best home talent entertainments ever given in the Perrysburg Town Hall.”³⁵ Perhaps in a sign that not all Wood County residents supported the inherent racism in minstrel shows, the promoters assured readers that “the entertainment will be excellent in every way and that there will be no cause for regret on the part of anyone attending.”³⁶

The musical direction of this particular minstrel show was provided by Dr. Dwight Canfield, a local physician who served in a wide variety of civic roles, including his work as a member of the Ohio State Board of Health. The promoters described Dr. Canfield as a director “whose ability in this line is recognized as being of the highest order.”³⁷ It is perhaps not surprising that Dr. Canfield would later be recorded as a charter member of the Wood County Ku Klux Klan.

The director of the blackface extravaganza was John A. Nietz, whose experience in minstrel shows the promoters described as “very favorably known.”³⁸ Mr. Nietz was better known to Perrysburg residents of the time as the superintendent of the Perrysburg public school system, and the family name is still attached to a small airfield north of Bowling Green.

Ticket sales for the 1920 minstrel show were handled by the Perrysburg Women’s Community League. Prospective minstrel attendees could also purchase tickets at Champney’s Drug Store or at the town hall. Adult tickets for the minstrel show were priced at fifty cents, while children could see the blackface performers for just thirty-five cents. Proceeds from the event went to the Civic Association, and the promoters surmised that this made the event “worthy of the support of every man, woman, and child in the town and county.”³⁹

The promoters of the minstrel show claimed that it would appeal to people who “love the old plantation songs of long ago” and those who enjoyed “an old-fashioned negro hoe-down.”⁴⁰ The show also featured a “colored parson” who would be delivering a “most forceful sermon.”⁴¹

The minstrel show, which took place on January 20 and 21, was the “hit of the season,”⁴² according to the Perrysburg Journal. The newspaper reported that the “Old Time Minstrel Show” played to packed houses each night, and the reviewer of the minstrel show raved about the performances of “many of our prominent businessmen disguised as negroes.”⁴³ The participants in the show were “well lamp-blacked” in their efforts to lampoon African Americans, and one of the highlights of the event was a “Nigger Crap Game”⁴⁴ featuring oversized dice and dimwitted characters.

Among the crowd favorites of the musical numbers, described by the Perrysburg Journal’s reviewer as “old time darky songs,”⁴⁵ were such songs as “Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground,” “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” and “Old Black Joe.” The reviewer proclaimed that the performance “had anything beat this side of New York.”⁴⁶

Readers will perhaps not be surprised to learn that John A. Nietz would become a member of the Wood County Ku Klux Klan a few years after his successes in directing the Perrysburg minstrel show.

Later in the year, the members of the Perrysburg Fire Department put on their annual Fireman’s Carnival. Despite the fact that several carnival rides did not appear as promised, the Perrysburg Journal noted that the carnival “brought a great deal of joy to the kiddies.” Among the entertainment highlights of the carnival was a game called the “African Dodger,” where a person with a curly wig and blackface attempted to avoid objects thrown at him by carnival-goers, and the refreshments included “nigger babies,” which were chocolate confections molded in the shape of small infant humans.⁴⁷

The North Baltimore chapter of the Elks staged a minstrel show in March 1923. This became a production described by the North Baltimore Times as “one of the biggest musical hits ever to reach the town.”⁴⁸ It is not surprising that a number of individuals who would later show up in the Wood County Klan membership lists participated in the minstrel show.

The North Baltimore minstrel show appears to have been somewhat more varied in its racial and ethnic caricatures than the Perrysburg minstrels. This production included an anti-Semitic number entitled the “Yiddish National Anthem,” while also containing a “little Irish sketch” that lampooned Irish Catholics. The highlight of the show, however, was a sketch featuring a “reproduction of a colored church” in which a blackface preacher’s use of the nursery rhyme “Old Mother Hubbard” for a sermon “convulsed the audience.”⁴⁹

The American Legion in the village of Prairie Depot staged a 1924 minstrel show that the Prairie Depot Observer reported as being titled the “Darktown Strutters Ball.” The event featured “citizens of the community dressed in old clothes and black faces.” Attendees, after donning blackface and seedy clothing, could expect “dancing, games, a pie sale, and a general good time” as they traveled back in time to “Darktown.”⁵⁰

A headline advertising the “Darktown Strutters Ball.” From the Prairie Depot Observer.

Some minstrel shows were performed by students of local public schools. Students from Bloomdale Public Schools participated in a minstrel production titled “Hoop-La” in November 1924. The Bloomfield Derrick assured readers that “Hoop-La” was the “funniest of minstrels” and reminded readers that “not every community of this size gets the opportunity for such a High Class show.” The minstrel show was produced by John B. Rodgers Producing Company of Fostoria, a director “known throughout the United States” for his work.⁵¹

Racist jokes and caricatures were a common occurrence in Wood County newspapers during the 1920s. While disturbing and offensive to most twenty-first-century readers, racist commentary serves to illustrate the widely held underlying ideologies of many residents of the county.

The Perrysburg Journal printed the following racist joke in the November 11, 1920 issue of the newspaper; consider here the exaggerated dialect and use of negative stereotypes about African Americans:

The other day a negro went into the drug store and said: “Ah wants one of dem plastahs yo’ all stick on yo’ back.”

“I understand,” said the clerk. “You mean porous plaster.”

“No, sah! Ah don’ want none of yo’ poorest plastahs. Ah want de bes’ yo’ all got.”⁵²

The North Baltimore Times occasionally ran multiple racist jokes in the same issue on a given week, presumably to fill up space on a slow news cycle. The Times ran the following demeaning joke in its February 2, 1923 edition; note the use of stereotyped names reminiscent of the slavery era:

WHY HE WOULDN’T COME UP

Sambo and Pompey went house robbing, and Pompey wrapped around his body beneath his waistcoat and jacket half a dozen yards of lead piping. In trying to board a Mississippi steamer which was just leaving the dock, he jumped, missed, and fell into the river.

“Get a boat hook, some of you!” yelled the captain of the steamer. “A man’s overboard. He’s bound to come up three times.”

Up dashed Sambo. “Capen, I bet yer a tenner he doan come up once!”⁵³

The racism in the next attempt at humor, also printed in the North Baltimore Times, is a bit less overt. Yet some of the same stereotypes about African Americans are present; the piece depicts the black child as uneducated, unsophisticated and prone to being a coward:

AT LEAST HE COULD DO THAT

Little Colored Boy Not Altogether Helpless in the Position of Employer’s Protector

An Atlanta woman who had met with financial reverses moved to the country in order to economize. To assist her in odd jobs about the house she engaged a little colored boy named Joe. Now Joe was so pleased with his job that he was anxious to, become a permanent member of the little household.

“Mis’ Helen,” he began one day, “don’t yo’ all ever git skeered in dis big house jus’ by yo’se’f?”

“Why, yes, Joe,” the lady admitted. “It is lonely at times. I have thought, of having someone about when my husband has to be away.”

“Well,” Joe ventured again, “I jus’ thought maybe you’d like to know dat I’s a candidate fo’ de position of protector in case you decide to employ somebody.”

“Why, Joe,” said the woman laughing, “what would you do to help me if robbers happened to break in some dark night?”

Joe studied over this for a moment and had an idea.

“Well, Mis’ Helen,” he said proudly, “dere’s one thing I could do in case yo’ was visited by unwelcome intruders. I could light the lantern an’ show yo’-all which way to run.”

Related to the phenomenon of the frequent inclusion of racist jokes in Wood County newspapers was a genre of travel writing that emphasized the backwardness of foreigners, especially Africans. Often these travel narratives were unsigned, as was the case with an October 12, 1923 article in the North Baltimore Times.

Entitled “Return to Savage Habits,” the information in the article was attributed by the Times to “a traveler who has just completed five months’ exploration of hitherto unvisited regions of the Tabilia river.” The correspondent claimed that French colonial troops in the First World War “returned to their rude huts after having won French war crosses or allied medals for heroism.” The unnamed correspondent then launched into a tirade about the backwardness of the former French colonial African troops he allegedly encountered:

Instead of adhering to their liking for European clothing and manners, they now parade through the underbrush, girt only in loin clothes [sic], hunting with spears and arrows instead of rifles. Their war decorations are worn on grass chains round their necks, or sometimes pinned in their bushy hair.⁵⁴

Setting aside the issue that the unnamed narrator referenced a river not found on any contemporary maps, the dubious information contained in the travelogue nonetheless would have resonated with readers, especially newspaper readers in small midwestern towns. Even if the travel narrative was invented in its entirety by the Times editor—a distinct possibility, given its lack of verifiable details—readers of the North Baltimore Times would not have read anything that conflicted with their views of Africans as backward, uncivilized brutes who needed supervision by whites if they were ever to rise above their lowly rung on the ladder of human civilization.

Racial conflict became significantly more pronounced in Ohio during the decade of the 1920s. In part this was due to the larger number of African Americans in the state as a result of the so-called Great Migration from the South that ramped up during the First World War. Several million African Americans left southern states for cities in the North, Midwest and West in search of better employment opportunities.

Newspapers in Wood County from the 1920s frequently exploited race when it made for sensational headlines. Inevitably any news story involving an African American would identify the individual in terms of race, using words such as “colored,” “Negro” or “darkey” to describe the person. This was typically the case even if the news item did not involve a readily apparent reason for the use of specific racial identification (such as the search for a criminal suspect).

An incident involving a group of drifters in a rail yard in Rossford would normally have been buried in a crime or court log section of a newspaper, if it even made the newspaper at all. However, when the incident involved three African American men and one pocketknife, it became front-page news for the Wood County Republican in 1923. The headline from the paper was surely geared to heighten the interest of readers for whom concerns about crime and race were important.

The newspaper account noted that after one of the railroad officers was injured in an initial scuffle with the suspect, the other officers “closed in on the darkey with the butts of their guns and gave him a telling reprim.” The reporter from the Wood County Republican added—with an almost palpable expression of smug satisfaction—that “when they got through with him the prisoner was badly disfigured.”

Newspapers in the county frequently hyped news stories involving African Americans that would otherwise be insignificant items if white individuals were involved. One such example was the conviction of an African American man named Evans Parker, convicted of firing a pistol at (but not injuring) another person. The Wood County Democrat noted that Parker was in a “cheerful mood” as he awaited transportation to the Ohio State Penitentiary. Parker supposedly told the Democrat reporter the following about why his mood was chipper; note the overly caricatured dialogue: “I’s a gentleman dat am always lookin’ fo a brighter day. I’s been goin’ to school fo de pass few weeks an’ am now goin’ to take a course at de state institution, de O.S.P.”⁵⁵

White prisoners in an otherwise mundane news item would be unlikely to be interviewed, and details such as vocal inflection or dialect would not be noted even if a white prisoner had been interviewed. The highly detailed focus on an interview subject’s dialect merely reinforces perceived differences between the interviewer and the interviewee. This type of reporting also tends to reinforce existing racial stereotypes.

At times, newspapers in Wood County expressed views on race that were extreme even for the time period. A particularly chilling editorial in the Perrysburg Journal from February 16, 1922, suggested that the end of slavery was not necessarily a positive outcome for African Americans. The author dutifully reported—based on learned conversations with a southern friend—that “there used to be eighteen or nineteen little pickaninnies running around,” whereas now “there are now only eight or nine or ten.” The author opined further on the subject:

Nearly all the old slavery mothers have died, however, and the new ones have been left to their natural instincts, without any control by the white race. A vast proportion of the [African American children] born into the world die before they are of five years of age. Among the negroes the death rate of children under five has increased fearfully in contrast with what it was in slavery times.⁵⁶

The author summarized that white control of African Americans was the only acceptable “solution,” since it was apparent to the author that “negro women are very poor mothers—careless and unintelligent.”⁵⁷ African Americans, the author claimed, were helpless against the dangers of “whiskey, cocaine, and disease,” and only a return to some unspecified form of white control could save them.

Local police forces possessed much greater freedom in their ability to enforce unofficial segregation standards. The January 5, 1923 edition of the Wood County Democrat described an incident in which Wood County sheriff Ervin T. Reitzel responded to complaints from Liberty Township residents about an African American man named William Carter who was acting in a “suspicious” manner.

After investigating and finding no evidence of wrongdoing by the fifty-eight-year-old man, the sheriff nonetheless detained the Toledo resident. The paper assured its readers that Parker would be “sent to Toledo by local officials.” In perhaps a backhanded attempt at journalistic balance, the paper noted that Carter insisted that he “had no evil intentions,”⁵⁸ though of course the inclusion of a loaded phrase such as “evil intentions” by the reporter could also serve as a way to sensationalize an otherwise insignificant incident.

In another example of the use of racially charged headlines, the Daily Sentinel-Tribune featured as its top “Court House News” feature the case of Clarence C. Harris. The arrested man, an African American, was accused of failing to pay a room-and-board bill in another city. In the same section in that issue other white defendants were accused of crimes such as assault and robbery. Yet the Sentinel-Tribune editors apparently believed that the headline “NEGRO ARRESTED” was of greater interest to readers than stories featuring more serious criminal activity.⁵⁹

In addition, local newspapers consistently placed emphasis on race even in stories that did not involve criminal activity. In a 1923 article about a fire in an apartment in Rossford, the Daily Sentinel-Tribune specifically identified all African Americans who were victims of the blaze as “Negro” or “Negros,” while the other victims were not identified by any racial or ethnic terms.⁶⁰

Local newspapers also used sensational headlines to highlight racial aspects of articles. In reporting the discovery of a deceased infant near a Perrysburg farm in 1923, the Daily Sentinel-Tribune blared the following front-page headline to entice readers: “DEAD NEGRO BABY FOUND IN DITCH.”

A 1923 headline illustrating selective use of racial identifiers. From the Daily Sentinel-Tribune.

The infant was wrapped in a “cloth and a bed comforter,” according to the news report. The coroner ruled that the “recently born negro baby” was stillborn. The carefully wrapped corpse suggested that a grieving mother cared for the dead infant after delivery, but a reader would have to dig past the sensationalism to understand the entire sad tale.

Lurid, race-baiting headlines such as these served not only as hooks for newspapers to draw in readers. This journalistic technique also reinforced existing stereotypes and biases, and when the Ku Klux Klan arrived in Wood County, its white supremacist ideology found a ready-made audience.

The state of Ohio, like much of the United States in the 1920s, was an area in which strong nativist and anti-foreigner sentiments had taken hold during and after the First World War. In particular, anti-German hysteria was prominent during this time period due to the role of German-speaking nations as American enemies during the war. These tensions were also heightened due to fears of a hidden fifth column of German Americans in the United States who would undermine the war effort.

In response to continued fears of foreign subversion, the Ohio legislature passed the so-called Ake law in 1919. This act, named after its author, H. Ross Ake, banned the teaching of the German language in all classrooms (both public as well as private) below the eighth-grade level, and this was a law that helped fan the proverbial flames of anti-immigrant attitudes that raged in the country. While the law only applied to classrooms under the eighth-grade level, the pressure to ban the teaching of the German language caused some colleges and high schools to eliminate German courses, including all of the public high schools in Cincinnati.⁶¹ The law was later declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ending of the First World War, interestingly, did not cause much of a change in these strong nativist beliefs. The emergence of anti-Communist hysteria in the United States immediately after the war simply meant that the fear of enemy agents could conveniently be replaced with the fear of the arrival on American shores of waves of radicalized immigrants hellbent on spreading revolution.

The first years of the 1920s in Ohio saw widespread continuation of anti-immigrant sentiments, and Italian, Slavic and Asian immigrants seemed to be the principal sources of concern for Americans with nativist beliefs. Local newspapers from the early 1920s contained frequent denunciations of “undesirable” immigrants.

An editorial printed in 1924 in the Wood County Republican argued that “Americans should regard with alarm the fact that nearly one half of the population of the United States is composed of Poles, Russians, Greeks, Italians, Negroes, and European Asiatics.” Should these “undesirable” immigrants one day combine their votes, intoned the writer, “they could gain control of the American government.”⁶²

Fear of immigrant “contamination” was a vital part of the mix of ideologies and biases that the reborn Ku Klux Klan tapped into during the 1920s in Wood County. The surge of anti-immigrant and nativist ideologies was in part tied to fears of communist conspiracies in the years after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Many native-born Americans associated communism with recent immigrants, especially immigrants from Eastern and southern Europe. The November 25, 1920 Perrysburg Journal, for example, reported that Vladimir Lenin planned to send “25,000 spies, ‘missionaries,’ and agents to the United States to pervert this country to Bolshevism.”⁶³

Some of the concerns many Americans held regarding immigrants were economic in nature. The Perrysburg Journal claimed on January 8, 1920, that “over 100,000 immigrants are on the high seas bound for the United States.”⁶⁴ The paper reported that 8,500 immigrants passed through Ellis Island in the previous two days and that 50,000 immigrants had entered the United States in the month of December 1919. The news account added the following ominous editorial comment: “If this influx continues there can be no doubt but that wages will tumble before too long.”⁶⁵

The North Baltimore Times published an editorial on September 21, 1923, that echoed these anti-immigrant sentiments. The editorial writer argued that “the influx of aliens into this country constitutes a lively menace to the peace and prosperity of the United States.” The ideal plan for immigration, claimed the editorial, was for “complete cessation” of all immigration into the country. Anyone who opposed immigration restrictions must have a “keen interest in pauper labor,” noted the writer, as most immigrants were “practically penniless persons who soon become public charges.”⁶⁶

Tirades about immigrants in local papers in Northwest Ohio took a variety of forms. In the June 30, 1921 edition of the Perrysburg Journal, a headline belted out that “Koreans Are Very Lazy.”⁶⁷ The author of the article noted that “it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Koreans are the laziest people on earth,” as members of this ethnic group “lie about the streets smoking their gigantic pipes”⁶⁸ the entire day.

Many white Americans in the 1920s considered foreign-born immigrants—especially immigrants from Eastern and southern Europe—to possess lower intellectual abilities than native-born Americans. One writer for the Perrysburg Journal blamed persistence of the economic downturn of 1920 and 1921 on the savings habits of immigrants:

Business conditions…will show a decided trend for the better on the introduction of this capital which has been hidden away. Foreigners in many localities, not having an intelligent understanding of the safety of recognized financial institutions in their own localities, have been hiding their savings away. These persons must be taught how to make their money work in putting it in sane and safe places. They must be taught to distinguish between the glittering stock certificate with its high interest rates and the savings institution with its fair rate of interest and 100 percent safety factor.⁶⁹

Americans who held nativist and anti-immigrant beliefs often viewed immigrants as potential sources of moral decay for the United States. In particular, immigrants were frequently depicted as intemperate and prone to drunkenness, traits that would naturally have been seen as threats to the sober morality hypothetically protected by Prohibition.

An August 1921 issue of the Perrysburg Journal perpetuated this supposed link between immigrants and alcohol use. The caption accompanying a wire-feed photograph depicted a woman drinking from a cask of wine and suggested that immigrants—in this case an “old Italian woman”—guzzle every last drop of alcohol before their ships reach shore in the United States.

The connection between immigrants and violations of Prohibition laws was frequently made by organizers of the Ku Klux Klan in many parts of the country. This immigration-alcohol theme was the focus of an editorial in the Wood County Republican entitled “Deport the Bad Foreigner”:

Our prohibition laws especially are violated by foreigners. The records of one Justice of the Peace in Lucas County [Ohio] for the year 1922 shows that 70 percent of the 600 violations of the law to be of alien stock, such as Zmiewski, Socolowski, Panoff, Evanoff, Fiatkowski, Katafiasz, Kubacki, Slocinski. This shows who is violating the law in America.⁷⁰

A 1921 image of an immigrant woman drinking wine. From the Perrysburg Journal.

The rhetoric used in the headline by the Republican editors suggests an overt attempt to persuade readers of the paper’s anti-immigrant stance. Consider the power of the following word choices in the headline “DEPORT THE BAD FOREIGNER” and how a reader in the 1920s would respond to this appeal to political sentiment.

Anti-immigrant sentiments often blended with anti-Catholic biases, and during Prohibition, these views became entangled with beliefs that immigrant Catholics were among the worst violators of Prohibition laws. A news article that devolved into an editorial in the Wood County Republican argued that the town of Rossford was “building around its sacred precincts a reputation for crime and disregard for the law that will very soon place the city among the most notorious regions of Northwestern Ohio.”

A 1923 front-page editorial illustrating nativist sentiments. From the Wood County Republican.

Rossford’s troubles, according to the writer for the Republican, stemmed from its “large percentage of foreign-born residents.” These immigrants, according to the article, “have been reared in countries that have but slight regard for moderation in the use of intoxicating beverages.”⁷¹

Fear of larger cities as centers of lawless immigrants was a theme that resonated in Wood County newspapers in the 1920s. An example of this anti-immigrant hysteria can be seen in a 1923 editorial published by the North Baltimore Times. Commenting on a recent bombing, the Times editor claimed that “Toledo is fast becoming afflicted with foreign nihilists and anarchists who regard every person who has reached a competency an enemy.” The editorial demanded that it was “time to put up the bars against the reckless foreign emigration,” and the editorial writer claimed that “practically all the labor trouble in this country” could be traced to immigrants.⁷² The headline of the article, “ANARCHISTS IN TOLEDO,” underscored the fear of immigrant-based criminal activity.

Immigrants were closely associated in the minds of many native-born Americans with criminal activity. An editorial in the August 28, 1924 edition of the Wood County Republican argued that “criminals are very largely recruited from the ranks of aliens who arrive here with little or no respect for the laws of the country.” The writer claimed that there were over one million “alien criminals,” and that the “presence of so many criminals in America is both a moral and economic danger.” The writer opined that there could be nothing worse than the degrading influence of one million moral degenerates” who are “free to spread their rotten influence among both young and old.”⁷³

A 1923 headline selectively highlighting the ethnic origin of a defendant. From the Wood County Republican.

Violations of laws related to Prohibition by immigrants often became front-page news when the infraction was committed by an immigrant, even if the person was a naturalized citizen. The March 14, 1923 edition of the Wood County Republican trumpeted the case of a man named W.W. Mountain who was caught in North Baltimore with illegal alcohol.

The defendant in question had become an American citizen many years earlier. However, the sensationalism of the “bad foreigner” motif was too tempting for Wood County Republican editors to pass up in this example. The “WHITE MULE” reference was a phrase deliberately selected to influence readers, as terms such as “corn liquor” or “illegal alcohol” would not have carried the same connotations of danger as “white mule” would.

Another example of the “bad foreigner” theme being casually applied by a newspaper involved the 1923 arrest of a laundry owner named Charles Sing. The business owner was targeted in raid of several Rossford buildings, and sheriff’s deputies discovered two cases of homebrewed beer. Despite the fact that Sing was a U.S. citizen born in California in 1875,⁷⁴ the Wood County Republican repeatedly referred to him as a “Chinaman” in a front-page article, while the cases of numerous white individuals arrested for violators of liquor laws were limited to one-sentence summaries buried in the middle of the paper.⁷⁵

A 1923 headline highlighting the ethnic origins of a defendant. From the Daily-Sentinel Tribune.

The case of Charles Sing also caught the attention of the Daily Sentinel-Tribune. Once again, the arrested man was described as a “Chinaman” in the account, and the terms “Chinese,” “China” or “Chinaman” were used throughout the article. Sing, according to the Daily Sentinel-Tribune, paid for his bond with “bills of small denomination which he had concealed in his laundry,” a curious and somewhat inflammatory detail that suggests an intent to sway public opinion on the part of either the reporter or the police department. However, the ethnicities of the other two defendants arrested in the sweep were not noted in the newspaper account.⁷⁶

Use of the plural “Chinese” implies that more than one person was involved in the raid, perhaps suggesting a criminal gang or network. The term “grabbed” implies some sort of violent struggle in an otherwise mundane arrest. Interestingly, the paper chose to use the word “liquor” in the headline despite the fact that the raid turned up a total of two cases of “homemade brew.”⁷⁷

There was nothing especially unique about anti-Semitic views held by residents of Northwest Ohio in the decades between the First and Second World Wars. Anti-Semitic stereotypes and caricatures were widely embraced by many white Americans in the period, and mainstream newspapers in Wood County regularly contained hints of the anti-Semitism that would become a key pillar of the Ku Klux Klan’s emergence in the region.

The June 30, 1921 edition of the Perrysburg Journal contained an odd (and inaccurate) news story about the inventor of the crown bottle cap, which the paper identified as a man named “Taintor.” The inventor’s real name was William Painter, and the multimillion-dollar business that he created is today part of Crown Holdings, Inc., a corporation headquartered in Philadelphia.

In the news item, though, the inventor “Taintor” was an impoverished man with an idea for the bottle cap, and it took a “traveling Jew peddler” named “Friedenwaldt” to make the dream become a reality. The Jew, according to the news item, sold “jewelry and nicknacks [sic]” in his travels, and the bottle cap became a ubiquitous accessory in the bottling industry only through the machinations of the Friedenwaldt character, a person who in some ways resembles the historical meme of the “wandering Jew.”

The November 23, 1923 edition of the North Baltimore Times contained the following example of the types of anti-Semitic jokes that frequently appeared in local Wood County newspapers in the 1920s. (A “flivver” is an outdated expression for an automobile of low quality in need of numerous repairs, akin to later terms such as “jalopy” or “beater car”):

Two gentlemen of Hebraic extraction, joint owners of a flivver, were hauled into court on the charge of driving with only one headlight. The Hebraic gentlemen pled guilty and were fined $10 and costs.

“Vell,” said one of the partners, “the easiest vay to settle the matter is for each of us to pay half. Ve both own the car, and ve vas both in it.”

“No, no!” exclaimed the other. “My side vasn’t out! My side vasn’t out!”⁷⁸

The North Baltimore Times provided another example of the use of anti-Semitic humor in local newspapers:

Probably a Klansman

“What are rabies and what would you do for them?” read a query in a recent civil service examination.

“Rabies are Jewish priests and I wouldn’t do a darn thing for them,” was the unexpected reply of one applicant.⁷⁹

Another of the principal components of Klan ideology was the organization’s embrace of strong anti-Catholic views. The typical Klansman believed that the Roman Catholic Church secretly conspired to take control of the American government with an ultimate goal of the Pope relocating to Washington, D.C. In particular, Catholic parochial schools were eyed with great suspicion, both in terms of “indoctrinating” students and undermining “100 percent Americanism.”

The idea of Catholics as persons with divided loyalties and as part of an un-American fifth column stretches far back in American history. These views were widely held by many Protestants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while to a lesser extent, Protestants of a more fundamentalist bent believed that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon described in the Book of Revelation.

Klan organizers made wide use of printed anti-Catholic propaganda to reinforce and strengthen existing anti-Catholicism. An example of this genre was a pamphlet entitled The Church of Rome in American Politics: Making America Catholic. The anonymous author contracted with a publishing house in Missouri called the Menace Publishing Company, and the pamphlet’s first printing appears to have occurred in 1912. Klan members in Wood County used the pamphlet in their recruiting efforts, and numerous copies have survived.

The pamphlet contains nearly fifty pages of half-truths, outright lies and scurrilous disinformation about the Roman Catholic Church. The author claimed that the Pope had arrived at the conclusion that the future success of the Catholic Church “depends on its conquest of America in the next decade.”⁸⁰ According to the author, “75 percent of the employees of the government are Catholic,” and the country was already under Catholic control “in a political sense.”⁸¹

According to the author of the pamphlet, a “good Catholic cannot possibly be a Good Citizen of this nation at one and the same time”⁸² due to supposed conflicting loyalties to the state and the church. The Catholic Church, in the eyes of the author, was the “most dangerous menace to this country, this government, our free institutions, and all the principles at the foundation of Popular Free Government.”⁸³

Another theme discussed in the anti-Catholic pamphlet that meshed with the policy goals of the Ku Klux Klan was federal funding for public education. The cover of the pamphlet contained a cartoon that succinctly summarized Klan views on the importance of public education. The drawing depicted a public school building with the ominous declaration “ANTIDOTE TO PAPAL POISON.”

Anti-Catholic sentiments frequently worked their way into a number of Wood County newspapers in the 1920s. A 1924 editorial in the Wood County Republican that drew heavily from Klan literature argued that “Catholicism in America is nothing short of a gigantic political machine directed by a foreign ruler, dominated by foreign ideals, and antagonistic to American principles and policies.” Catholics, according to the editorial writer, were vastly outnumbered by Protestants in the United States. In addition, most Catholics were best seen as “foreigners who have not and may never become American citizens.”⁸⁴

The initial organizers and recruiters fielded by the Ku Klux Klan in Wood County in late 1922 arrived in an area in which racist, nativist, and intolerant views were already present. This made the work of attracting Wood County residents to the Klan that much easier.