Ku Klux Klan

The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan swept the United States in the 1920s, and the Pacific Northwest was no exception. Thousands of local men and women joined the Klan during this period, drawn by the moral platform ostensibly supported by the Klan. The announced enemies were vice and corruption, but their targets were Blacks, Catholics, Jews, and the foreign-born. Qualifications for membership included being “native born, white, Protestant, Gentile, and an American citizen."

The national organization of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was organized in 1915 at Stone Mountain, Georgia. The founders adopted many of the trappings of the nineteenth-century Klan, including exotic titles, white robes and hoods, and cross burning. Klan organizations around the country displayed a good deal of regional diversity, and Klan activity and influence also varied among states in the same region. The Klans in the Pacific Northwest were never as violent as those in the South or Midwest. Also, Montana and Washington Klans never enjoyed the membership numbers or political power that the Oregon Klan did. Estimates of Montana Klan membership, at its height in the mid-1920s, are a bit more than 5,000.

The Kontinental Klan was organized in Butte, Montana, in 1923. It was one of forty-some Klans or chapters in Montana. Butte was considered to be “the worst place in the State of Montana, so far as alienism and Catholicism are concerned,” according to Montana Grand Dragon Lewis Terwilliger.

Klan membership experienced a sharp decline in the late 1920s. The Klans in the Pacific Northwest, again, were no exception to the national trend. The entire Butte membership appears to have been transferred to another Klan in September and October, 1929, although correspondence of the last Kligrapp continues through 1930. Records from the Montana state organization continue through 1931.

From the guide to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Butte, Montana Records, 1916-1931, 1924-1928, (Eastern Washington State Historical Society/Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture Joel E. Ferris Research Library and Archives)