During the time that Beatrice Cannady was protesting the showing of The Birth of a Nation in Portland, the Ku Klux Klan gained increased membership in Oregon. Rallis such as this one in June 1924 at the Lane County Rodeo Arena drew large crowds. At this rally, the public was invited to hear a speech by C.R. Mathis, imperial lecturer for the state of Oregon, and to view the initiation ceremonies. (Oregon Encyclopedia)
The Ku Klux Klan has had three primary iterations through their history. The first version of the Klan was a collection of Southerners who wanted to continue to fight for the Confederacy and the values it had held even after the Civil War ended. They committed acts of terrorism toward minority communities, and strove to try and keep white supremacy in the culture even after slavery was abolished. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the first Klan largely disbanded after Jim Crow laws maintained dominance for Southern whites.
In the 1920s, the Klan saw a revival as white nationalists became opposed to Catholic and Jewish immigrants coming into the country. The Klan championed native born white protestant men, and the 1920s saw a boom in Klan membership as they were able to harness populist sentiments.
The second Ku Klux Klan was resurrected in 1915 in Atlanta, Georgia and it was popularized quickly. By the early 1920s, the number of Klan members was more than 2 million members nationwide and between 14,000 and 20,000 in Oregon.[1]Much of the rhetoric that drove this rise was behind their strong nativist platform. Membership was restricted to white, native-born Protestant men who were seeking to fight for “pure womanhood, constitutional freedoms, the common people, and public education.”[2]Accompanying this ideology were beliefs that the American economy was suffering at the hand of immigrants, minorities and other non-protestant religions. “Klan leaders preached that Protestant ethnocultural solidarity would help restore equal opportunity to a society supposedly dominated by ethnic syndicates.”[3]This message was widely accepted in Oregon, where much of the population may have already held these beliefs.
The Klan in Oregon and in general was careful to align itself with popular views. To garner the widest support, many of their policies seemed to cater to the middle class. Anti-Catholic views were an effective motivator in Oregon, 90 percent of the population at the time was Protestant. [4]Additionally, the nativism and exclusion of Oregon was deep rooted. As Eckard Toy discussed in Robe and Gown:
“The twentieth century inherited the historical residues of racism, nativism, and anti-Catholicism that were primary components of the social practices and cultural traditions of the early settlers in Oregon, who were overwhelmingly native-born, white and Protestant.”(Toy, P. 155)
With such beliefs already existing within Oregon, it is thought that membership may have ballooned to 35,000 at a time when the population of Oregon was about 783,000. Despite the Klan never comprising more than 4 percent of the state’s population, its members held positions of power within government and community life, giving them influence in public affairs beyond their numbers.
Photo from the Library of Congress, showing a crowd of members of the KKK between 1921 and 1922.
[1] Horowitz, David A. “The Klansman as Outsider: Ethnocultural Solidarity and Antielitism in the Oregon Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 80, no. 1 (1989): 12-20
[2]Horowitz, David A.. “Social Morality and Personal Revitalization – Oregon’s Ku Klux Klan in the 1920S.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 90, no. 4 (1989): 365-84.
[3]Horowitz “The Klansman as an Outsider, P 13
[4]Horowitz, “The Klansmen as an Outsider”, P 15