4
THE GROWTH OF THE KU KLUX KLAN IN WOOD COUNTY
Frank W. Rogers found himself in an especially difficult situation on February 18, 1924. The veteran Bowling Green police officer walked out of the city safety director’s office that day with news that he was suspended for “malfeasance and misfeasance as an officer.”85 He might also have faced criminal charges for actions he took while working as a police officer.
Rogers had been enthusiastic in carrying out his duties, especially his work in upholding Prohibition laws. Local newspaper accounts from the 1920s attest to the frequent arrests made by Rogers of bootleggers, scofflaws and still operators. In the winter of 1924–25, Rogers even used his own Essex automobile on the job, since the city of Bowling Green did not have a police cruiser and he could not use the department’s motorcycle “on account of severe weather conditions.”86
As Rogers crossed the interurban tracks in downtown Bowling Green after receiving news of his suspension, he would have been weighing his options.
By his own admission, Rogers decided that the uncompensated wear and tear on his vehicle needed to be addressed. Rogers went into the impound lot and removed from a “confiscated booze car” a set of tires and a pair of “Gabriel snubbers” (precursors to the shock absorbers today found on motor vehicles). He then installed the tires and suspension system on his own vehicle.
Unfortunately for Rogers, his actions were observed by city employees, and city safety director solicited affidavits from the witnesses regarding the theft of confiscated property. As a result, Rogers faced the possibility not only of losing his job but also the outside possibility of theft charges. The sworn testimony of the witnesses seemed to be damning pieces of evidence against him.
Interurban car in Bowling Green. Center for Archival Collections.
Rogers did have one very important factor weighing in his favor that winter: he was a charter member of the Wood County Ku Klux Klan, and he had powerful fraternal friends in high places.
The day after his suspension, the pro-Klan Wood County Republican ran an incendiary front-page article entitled “Charity Suffereth Long and Is Kind,” a veiled reference to a biblical verse in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. The writer of the article claimed that “Officer Rogers has been made the scapegoat,” and the author threatened that “when all is over some startling facts may be revealed.” The article claimed that “confiscated cars have been used by city officials…for public and private use,” and the writer closed by urging “every citizen that knows of wrongs being practiced to expose them that our city may be purged of any filth that may exist.”87
Yet despite his admission of wrongdoing and the sworn depositions of several witnesses regarding the theft, Rogers was reinstated on the police force a few weeks later. No explanation for the about-face was provided by safety director Earl K. Solether, and in the reinstatement letter Solether benevolently suggested that the removal of tires and snubbers by Rogers was a “mistake” and that the officer took the items “with the best of intentions.”88
No record exists of behind-the-scenes advocacy performed on behalf of Frank Rogers, but the influence of many important city and county officials who happened to be Klan members could not have hurt the cause of the suspended officer. At the time of the incident, for example, the county prosecutor and at least two Bowling Green city council members were Kluxers, and the suspension of fellow Klan member Rogers could not have been overlooked. In the mid-1920s, the Klan wielded impressive political power in Wood County, and it would be naïve to think that a non-Klansman like Solether would not have at least paused to consider the possible repercussions of firing or prosecuting a Klansman with so many friends in high places.
ORIGINS OF THE KLAN IN OHIO
It is difficult to say with a high degree of precision the exact date in which the Ku Klux Klan began its activities in Ohio. The earliest date in which Klan organizers have been documented to be actively recruiting new members in the state of Ohio was in the fall of 1920, prior to the presidential election that year.89
In a September 30, 1921 edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a news item discussed a four-hour interview that the Cleveland police chief conducted with the Grand Goblin of the Great Lakes region, a man named Charles W. Love. While Love’s claims of fifteen thousand Klan members in Ohio in 1921 may be boastful or overstated,90 it is certain that the year of 1921 marked a noticeable uptick in Klan activity in the Buckeye State.
The date of September 30 is also significant in that Cuyahoga County prosecutor Edward Stanton refused to send a case against the Ohio Ku Klux Klan to a grand jury. Stanton noted that “no evidence has been offered by anyone unsympathetic to the Klan which would warrant taking the matter to the grand jury.” While hardly a ringing endorsement of the Klan, Stanton’s actions nonetheless undoubtedly brought a sigh of relief to Ohio’s Klansmen: if the legal system in one of the state’s largest cities—one with significant African American, immigrant and Catholic populations—refused to act, surely the Klan would find an easier time operating in rural and small town settings in Ohio.
Klan ideology and recruiting strategies proved extremely successful in Ohio, and Klan chapters rapidly formed throughout the state. By the end of 1923, there were likely more than 300,000 Klan members in the Buckeye State, which proved to be a numerical and financial windfall for the national Klan organization. The Columbus Dispatch in 1925 reported that there were at least 108 active Klaverns in the state of Ohio at that time, with 14 Klaverns in Hamilton County alone.91
A significant number of membership records of the Wood County Ku Klux Klan have survived and are now stored at the Center for Archival Collections at Bowling Green State University. The earliest records date back to the beginning of the year 1924, but it is clear that the group was quite active in 1923 and likely as early as the last few months of 1922.
A partial accounting journal dating from January 1, 1924, begins at the number 501, suggesting that there may have been as many as 500 additional entries of the payment of dues prior to January 1924.92 In the years 1924 and 1925, nearly 1,400 individuals paid dues to the Wood County Ku Klux Klan, and in 1924, Kluxers formed a separate chapter of the Klan in Perrysburg. Approximately 150 of the Wood County Klan members migrated to the new Perrysburg Klavern that year.
The Wood County Republican newspaper noted in its March 15, 1923 edition that a branch of the Ku Klux Klan was started “about a month ago,” making southern Wood County a site of significant Klan activity as early as February 1923.93 In the August 14, 1923 edition of the Wood County Republican, the paper’s reporter indicated that a Klan source informed him that the “Wood County Klan will charter in later September [1923] when the remaining counties of the state receive their charters.”94
The granting of a charter to the Wood County Klan represented an important milestone for the group. Not only was this a moment of pride for the group to become a stand-alone Klan chapter, but also portions of the initiation and dues charged to members could stay in the local unit for expenditures as opposed to remitting all of these funds to the Realm offices.
The Klan operated quite openly in Wood County during its years as a political and cultural force in the region. Unlike chapters in the other parts of the country—and certainly different from later incarnations of the Klan—the organization found little need to keep its activities especially secretive. As late as 1930, the group continued to operate out of a storefront on South Main Street in downtown Bowling Green.
WHO WERE THE MEMBERS OF THE WOOD COUNTY KLAN?
The 1920 census recorded 44,892 residents in Wood County, and at least 1,390 of those residents at one point belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. The total number of Wood County residents who at one point were members of the Klan was thus a little over 3 percent of the total population. Women and children were not permitted to join the Klan, and in the 1920 census, children under eighteen represented about 37 percent of the total population.95 Factoring out women, children, Catholics, persons of color and immigrants reduces the pool of native-born white male adult Protestants to about 9,600 persons. Thus, the percentage of eligible Wood County residents who joined the Klan was approximately 15 percent of the population.
Several communities appear to have had much higher rates of Klan membership than the norm. Part of the discrepancy is the reliance on Klan membership records to identify a particular community, as these do not necessarily line up with specific census designations. Klan membership records likely represent how a Kluxer self-identified in terms of residence at the time of applying to join the Klan, though it is possible that the Klan official recording residence information may have categorized individuals into particular municipal categories.
In addition, some villages appear to have over-representation due to Klan members from surrounding townships identifying themselves with a particular village. This seems to be the case with the high rates of Klan membership in the villages of Portage (18.48 percent) and Rudolph (13.04 percent).
Several of the towns with the highest rates of Klan membership—such as Portage, Cygnet, Rudolph and North Baltimore—were located on the historical Dixie Highway. This road was a major conduit of north–south traffic and was one of the principal routes by which African Americans traveled north during the First Great Migration. It is possible that the greater visibility of African Americans on this road may have heightened fears or perceived danger by white residents in communities such as Portage.
An analysis of Wood County Ku Klux Klan membership records reveals interesting general information about the typical Kluxer. The average Klan member in Wood County spent 3.35 years in the group, and the average Klan member was 38.58 years of age at the time of joining the Klan. Klan members ranged in age from 18 to 76 at the time they joined the Wood County Klan.
A total of 102 members of the Wood County Klan attained the prestigious status of K-Trio, the third level of membership in Klan hierarchy. Most K-Trio members hit this milestone in their fourth year with the Klan, with 1928 being the year in which the most K-Trio designations were bestowed on members.
TABLE 3
Wood County Klan Membership by Municipality
In numerical terms, the occupations that composed the largest segment of Klan membership in Wood County were farmers and agricultural laborers. These individuals represented at least 284 Klansmen in the mid-1920s, or approximately 20.4 percent of all Wood County Klan members. These individuals likely found the economic and nativist arguments of the Klan most appealing, given the declines in farm values and commodity prices plus fears of low-wage immigrants further eroding the incomes of Americans engaged in agricultural occupations. This would have been especially true of farm owners and agricultural landlords.96
Ragamuffin Parade in Portage, Ohio. Center for Archival Collections.
Unidentified oil workers near Cygnet, Ohio, 1920. Center for Archival Collections.
TABLE 4
Occupations of Wood County Ku Klux Klan Members
| OCCUPATION | TOTAL KLANSMEN | PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL KLANSMEN |
| Farmer | 242 | 17.41 |
| Oil worker | 146 | 10.50 |
| Salesman | 55 | 3.96 |
| Railroad worker | 54 | 3.88 |
| Owner (retail business) | 46 | 3.31 |
| Mechanic | 44 | 3.17 |
| Truck driver | 43 | 3.09 |
| Agricultural laborer | 42 | 3.02 |
| Factory worker | 41 | 2.95 |
| Carpenter | 40 | 2.88 |
| Clerk | 36 | 2.59 |
| Machinist | 28 | 2.01 |
| Glass worker | 27 | 1.94 |
| Minister | 23 | 1.65 |
| Teacher/school official | 19 | 1.37 |
| Sheriff deputy/police officer | 19 | 1.37 |
| Manager | 18 | 1.29 |
| Postal worker | 15 | 1.08 |
| Physician/chiropractor | 14 | 1.01 |
| Foreman | 13 | 0.94 |
| Butcher | 13 | 0.94 |
| Painter | 12 | 0.86 |
| Mason/bricklayer | 12 | 0.86 |
| Barber | 12 | 0.86 |
| Electrician | 11 | 0.79 |
| Insurance salesman | 9 | 0.65 |
| Restaurant worker | 8 | 0.58 |
| Quarry worker | 8 | 0.58 |
| Grain elevator worker | 8 | 0.58 |
| Contractor (buildings) | 8 | 0.58 |
| Bank employee | 8 | 0.58 |
| Blacksmith | 7 | 0.50 |
| Welder | 6 | 0.43 |
| Lawyer | 6 | 0.43 |
| Engineer | 5 | 0.36 |
| Autoworker | 5 | 0.36 |
One group that Wood County Klan recruiters seem to have targeted and achieved significant success in their efforts to grow membership was oil industry workers. Though petroleum output was on the decline by the 1920s in the county, there were still many hundreds of workers involved in the extraction, shipment, and refinement of crude oil in Wood County.
Approximately 146 members of the Wood County Klan worked in various capacities of the county’s diminishing oil industry. Census records indicate many workers with jobs such as “roustabout,” “driller,” “pumper” and “switcher.” The presence of oil company foremen and owners in the Klan membership lists suggests that these workers may have been influenced, or even prodded, by company officials to join the Ku Klux Klan.
Sales-related work was another occupational field in which Klan recruiters found many willing prospects. Salesmen, regardless of the strength of their belief in Klan ideology, very likely viewed the Klan as a potentially valuable source of business contacts and clients. Klan recruiters certainly pitched the networking possibilities of joining the group in their presentations to salesmen.
The appeal of the Ku Klux Klan to workers in the railroad and interurban industries is more difficult to assess. The Klan typically exhibited a fair degree of hostility toward labor movements, though, in the national railroad strike of 1922, the Klan did support railroad workers in their efforts to improve wages and working conditions.97 The large number of railroad and interurban workers in the Wood County Klan might reflect an attempt by Klan recruiters to depict the Klan as an organization friendly to union rail workers.
KLAN RECRUITING TECHNIQUES IN WOOD COUNTY
The Klan utilized a wide variety of tactics in its efforts to recruit Wood County citizens to its ranks. The organization’s kleagles proved adept at modifying their messages to appeal to the views held by different segments of the white population.
Klan members passed out introduction cards to prospective members as one of the initial strategies. These cards generally lacked specific details, and instead simply used vague terms such as “patriotic” and “important” to entice targeted citizens to attend a meeting. Often the introduction cards carried deceptive or misleading names; in Wood County the names “Paul Revere Club” and “Old Glory Club” seem to have been the names most frequently used by the Klan to conceal recruitment meetings.
“Paul Revere Club” card used by the KKK to recruit new members in Wood County. Center for Archival Collections.
“Old Glory Club” card used by the KKK to recruit new members in Wood County. Center for Archival Collections.
The introduction cards served two distinct purposes. The cardholder would be able to attend the given function, making the card the equivalent of an admission ticket. The introduction card also created an implicit sense of value for the recipient, and the event became more exclusive and vital in the eyes of the cardholder.
Detailed information about the recruiting practices of the Ku Klux Klan in Wood County is somewhat limited. The Wood County Democrat reported in August 1924 that select county residents had received invitation cards to a Klan function with “the printed name of Karl Dickman, I.T.S.U.B.”98 The coded acronym was a Klan sign-off used in correspondence that meant “In the Sacred Unfailing Bond.”
As was the case with other KKK chapters, the Wood County Klan frequently tapped existing organizations to identify and target recruits. Especially useful for recruiting purposes were existing fraternal organizations. Groups such as the Free and Accepted Masons, the Woodsmen, the International Order of Odd Fellows, the American Legion and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks provided the Klan with access to people who were already inclined to join a fraternal organization.
In some cases these organizations already contained as members Klan organizers who joined the KKK after they became members of other fraternal groups. In other cases, kleagles and other recruiters joined organizations for the sole purpose of making inroads with potential recruits, occasionally even going so far as to obtain by surreptitious means membership lists of other fraternal groups.
Klan robe order form. Center for Archival Collections.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have occasionally been described by scholars as a sort of “golden age” for fraternal organizations in the United States. Not only was membership by Americans in fraternal groups widespread, but also a person who joined one fraternal group was significantly more likely to join additional fraternal organizations. Klan organizers in the 1920s were acutely aware of the role that fraternal groups could play in the growth of the KKK.
Civic and business organizations were additional avenues for the Klan to exploit for potential recruits. Individuals who joined Wood County organizations such as the Commercial Club, the Dry Federation, the Anti-Saloon League and the Wood County Auto Club were already inclined to be concerned about local political and economic issues, and the Klan infiltrated or exploited connections in these organizations to bolster its recruiting efforts.
The Klan’s recruitment staff was careful to tailor the group’s message to fit the existing beliefs of the region in which it sought to build membership. Certainly one of the messages that resonated quite strongly among potential Klansmen in Wood County was the group’s anti-immigrant views.
At a 1923 Klonklave in Bowling Green, an unidentified Klan officer spoke before a massive crowd at the Wood County Fairgrounds. The Klan favored a ban on immigration, he said, because “it will not be long before this ‘melting pot’ will boil over if all immigration is not stopped.” Americans, the Klan speaker claimed, “have not been able to assimilate the immigrants in their body politic.”99
Once accepted into the group, new Klansmen would be fitted for robes and hoods (the Klan uses the term “helmet” for the headgear). Measurements would be taken at the local Klavern, and the tailoring information would be submitted to the national Klan headquarters.
THE KLAN’S USE OF PROTESTANT MINISTERS IN RECRUITMENT
Perhaps the most important ingredient in the growth of Klan in Wood County was the group’s use of Protestant ministers to help with member recruiting, to provide organizational leadership, and to add moral legitimacy to the group. The Wood County Klan records contain the names of at least twenty-three Protestant ministers who became naturalized Klan members, a figure that represents nearly 40 percent of the Protestant clergy in the county at the time.
A national Klan speaker who visited North Baltimore in 1924 acknowledged the importance of Protestant ministers in building the organization. Protestant churches, he observed, could best be described as the “back of this movement.” The speaker added that Protestant churches “are so closely related to the Klan that one cannot tell where one leaves off and the other begins.”100 This close association between Klan and Protestant clergy was most certainly the case in the history of the Wood County Ku Klux Klan.
By far the denomination in Wood County with the largest number of ministers as Klan members was the United Brethren Church. The denomination known as Church of the United Brethren in Christ was founded in 1800 by Martin Boehm and Philip William Otterbein, pastors in Pennsylvania with connections to the Mennonite and Wesleyan traditions. The United Brethren Church went through a series of mergers later in the twentieth century and today is part of the United Methodist Church.
A significant reason for the importance of the United Brethren Church in the rise of the Klan in Wood County is simply sheer numbers. The UBC was the largest denomination at the time in terms of numbers of churches, with a UBC congregation in almost every town in the county with a population over five hundred. The UBC’s historical connection to ethnic Germans in the region is another reason for its local prominence as a Protestant denomination.
The church also possessed a local leader with impressive organizational, motivational and oratorical ability: the Reverend Rush A. Powell. In addition to his lengthy tenure as minister of the largest UB church in the county, Trinity United Brethren in Bowling Green, Reverend Powell also served as a district superintendent for the UBC. His administrative duties meant that he frequently traveled to regional UB churches, and his network of UB minister contacts certainly benefited the Klan.
It is not certain that Reverend Powell directly used his position as an administrator in the UBC to foster Klan expansion efforts by providing congregation lists to the KKK. More likely the connections between Powell and Klan growth were more associative in nature, with the reverend making introductions between Klan organizers and local UBC ministers or with Reverend Powell simply promoting the group to his subordinate ministers. However, Powell was, by contemporary accounts, a riveting speaker who possessed a remarkable level of charisma, and the Ku Klux Klan in Wood County benefitted greatly from having someone with his abilities within the ranks of the group.
Trinity Church in Risingsun, Ohio. Center for Archival Collections.
In addition to the twenty-three known ministers in Wood County who were active Klan members, other Protestant clergy members were certainly sympathetic to the cause even if they never joined the Klan. At least two dozen additional churches without known Klan ministers received Klan “visits” in the form of interruptions to worship services, and most of these “visits” were prearranged affairs in which the minister was at least aware that the group intended to march into the service.
In some cases there was even public notice printed of the upcoming Klan activities in local churches. The January 8, 1925 edition of the Wood County Republican contained a front-page news item entitled “Klan Night.” The paper reported that it was “strongly rumored that a robed delegation will visit the church on this occasion.” The “Klan Night” activities, according to the newspaper account, also included a farewell address by the Reverend Hiram N. Van Voorhis, who was soon to take a new position at another Church of Christ congregation. Reverend Van Voorhis, not surprisingly, was one of the many Wood County ministers who were listed on the membership rolls of the Ku Klux Klan.
Among the Protestant ministers who were quite open regarding their membership in the Ku Klux Klan was the Reverend John W. Wilch, whose congregation was the Bloomdale Methodist Episcopal Church. Reverend Wilch spoke at numerous Klan events, including a “100 Percent American” speech he delivered in 1923 on behalf of the Wood County Klan at an auditorium in Prairie Depot. A “good sized audience” at the facility heard Reverend Wilch deliver a “most excellent address” in which the minister “encouraged the organizing of all who believe in the preservation of the National Constitution.” Reverend Wilch, according to the correspondent for the Prairie Depot Observer, “spoke highly of the principles of the Klansmen.”101
WOMEN, CHILDREN AND THE WOOD COUNTY KLAN
As a male-only organization, the Ku Klux Klan barred women from joining the group. However, the organization encouraged the formation of auxiliary Klan units for women and children. The Klan in Wood County supported the creation of such units, and each of these auxiliary Klan organizations was quite active in the mid-1920s.
No official records of the auxiliary Klans of Wood County are known to have survived, and newspaper accounts provide several different names for these units. The most common phrase used to describe women’s Klan groups in Wood County was “Ladies of the Wood County Court of the Ku Klux Klan,” which appeared in numerous articles in the Wood County Republican in 1923 and 1924. “Ladies of the Klan” and “Klan ladies” are two additional terms used several times in mid-1920s newspaper accounts.
The Kreed of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan shares many similarities to the oath taken by male members of the Klan. Women making the pledge agreed that they would be “devoted to the sublime principles of a pure Americanism.” The Kreed also required women to “avow the distinction of the races of mankind as decreed by the Creator.” Moreover, women who agreed to become auxiliary Klan members had to promise to be “true to the maintenance of White Supremacy and strenuously oppose any compromise thereof.”102
The women’s auxiliary Klan unit received external assistance in its creation. The Wood County Republican noted that a “great amount of work has been done by the new lady organizer who comes into Wood County determined to make a real ladies organization in Wood County.”103
Women of Ku Klux Klan Kreed. Center for Archival Collections.
The September 21, 1923 edition of the North Baltimore Times reported that a “large number” of women attended a recruiting event for the women’s Klan auxiliary. The event took place at the Hotel Columbia in North Baltimore, and a female lecturer employed by the Klan discussed the merits of joining the organization. It appears that recruiting cards had been circulated prior to the event, as the news account added that “admission was by card.”104
The women’s Klan auxiliaries tended to be involved with charitable and social events related to the Klan’s goal. The March 6, 1924 edition of the Wood County Republican described a “chicken supper” held by Klan women at the Woodmen Hall in Bowling Green. The event featured a national speaker, and afterward, “music was furnished by an orchestra.” The reporter duly noted that a “neat sum was realized from the supper,” suggesting that the group intended the event as a fundraiser.105
Women of the Wood County Klan appear to have used fundraising events in an effort to provide revenue for charitable work. The April 3, 1924 edition of the Wood County Republican reported a donation made to an “elderly couple” in the village of Rudolph. The donation to Phillip Chamberlain and his wife consisted of “several dollars and a large basket of eatables,” and the group selected the couple because Chamberlain—a maintenance worker at a church with close Klan ties—had been “seriously ill for some weeks.”106
The women in the Wood County auxiliary Klan were also involved in planning and managing events that were focused ostensibly toward male Klan members. Newspaper accounts of most Klan events in the 1920s discuss various roles played by Klan women. The October 30, 1924 Wood County Republican covered a major Klonklave at the Wood County Fairgrounds that occurred earlier in the week, and the paper noted that “Lady Klan members contributed their share in making the Klonklave a success, both by assisting and being in the line of march.”107
The Klan targeted children as a way to more closely align families with the group. In addition, children represented the best source of future Klan members, as the “100 Percent American” values espoused by the group could be instilled in children at an early age. To help achieve its goals, the Klan developed children’s auxiliary groups such as the Junior Ku Klux Klan.
An advertisement for the Junior Ku Klux Klan appeared in 1924 in the Wood County Republican. The Junior Klan, according to the advertisement, would instruct boys and girls in such topics as “reverence toward God,” “the value of a clean, moral life,” “the purity of our Womanhood,” and the importance “to maintain forever White Supremacy.”
It is unclear the extent to which the Junior Ku Klux Klan or similar youth-oriented Klan organizations took hold in Wood County. There are passing references to such organizations in organizational records and newspaper accounts, but other than brief mentions, the topic is not well documented in existing sources on the KKK in Wood County.
The North Baltimore Times reported on February 29, 1924, that regional Klan chapters purchased athletic sweaters for local high school sports teams. The paper noted that the “Triple K” found grateful recipients for the sweaters in athletic squads in Fostoria, Bowling Green and Maumee. Ostensibly this was a recruiting-oriented effort to win Klan support among young men in the years just prior to reaching adulthood.108
The auxiliary women’s and children’s Klan units, at least early on, expanded the influence of the Wood County Ku Klux Klan. These initiatives helped the Klan shift from being a just another organization into one of the most powerful political forces in the county during the 1920s.