With Parade from Fairgrounds to Downtown and Back, Klan Celebrated Salem Charter 100 Years Ago

On his 90th birthday in 1978, retired Pastor V.K. Allison of Santa Cruz was celebrated as a kindly old man who loved music and the ministry.

Santa Cruz Sentinel
March 9th, 1978

A full lifetime earlier, on November 10th in 1923, pastor V.K. Allison of Lebanon preached here in Salem at the Fairgrounds as the "Grand Titan" of a local KKK. (In other reports from 1923 and 1924 he was also "Exalted Cyclops.")

November 11th, 1923

The morning paper reported him saying:

All ideas of pure Americanism, no immigration in any degree from southern Europe and Asia, the supremacy of the American race and the necessity of keeping the blood of the Anglo-Saxon race are the objects of the Ku Klux Klan...The Ku Klux Klan is anti-nothing that is not anti-American. It strives to teach the doctrine of pure Americanism. Alien influences have grown to such an extent in this country that they made necessary an organization to teach and sustain the ideals of Anglo-Saxonism. The Ku Klux Klan stands for the principles of Protestantism and believes that the present position occupied by the United States was attained because it was a Christian nation and was Protestant.

November 12th, 1923

The afternoon paper highlighted the "plea for white supremacy" and echoed phrases from the morning paper.

It estimated 

between 1500 and 1700 klansmen, about 80 of whom were from Salem, paraded through the city's streets Saturday night in what was probably the biggest klan ceremonial ever held in the state. Later, at the state fair grounds, the uniformed visitors and a large crowd of curious onlookers assembled to hear speeches by V. K. Allison of Lebanon....

Hundreds of automobiles from Portland and valley cities arrived in Salem, Saturday evening, to witness the parade and to hear the speeches and there were two special trains which brought klansmen into the city.

A large crowd lined the downtown streets as the robed marchers with band from Portland and one from the state training school made their way along.

The morning paper's preview had more detail on the route and the next day described the parade as "fully a mile in length...the longest parade ever held in Salem." It seemed to relish the spectacle.

the parade will start from the fairgrounds at 8:45 o'clock tonight....[it will] march down town, coming in on Capitol street, down State to Commercial, then to Court and east on Court to North Summer and back to the fairgrounds. The parade will be headed by the American flag, followed by the fiery cross, a band, high klan officials....

It also said "An immense illuminated red cross burned vividly inside the race track, near the grandstand."

Allison's interest was no passing thing. In 1923-24 there are references to him in multiple papers for activity in Dallas, Monmouth, Albany, Tillamook, Lebanon, Sweet Home, all around the valley, as well as references in the Klan paper itself. A note from 1924 claimed he was "devoting all of his spare time to Klan work." He was serious and committed.

Albany Democrat, January 12th, 1924

According to that feature from 1978, after ordination in 1913 and then training at the Eugene Bible University he had "served churches in...Scio, Brownsville, Halfway, Lebanon, Ashland, and Klamath Falls, Oregon." 

In 1931 Allison moved south to Santa Cruz, and was active at Santa Cruz and San Jose, more settled in one place than he had been. (His 1986 obituary says he moved in 1928, but resolving that is not important now.)

Santa Cruz Evening News, May 6th, 1933

Santa Cruz Evening News, April 27th, 1940

Allison's full story is beyond our interest here. But he's hardly an exception. Writing in In the Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930, Kelly J. Baker asserts

[The second Klan] was a religious order. The popular story, however, neglected the place of everyday religion within the ranks of Klansmen and Klanswomen and instead focused on the Klan’s vitriol toward Catholics, Jews, and African Americans. The focus on Old Glory, the flag, and patriotism resonated in various tellings, yet the emphasis upon the dedication to the “church of Jesus Christ” remained underplayed and underanalyzed. Protestantism became secondary in descriptions of the Klan because of the order’s apparent nativism, racism, and violence. The Klan gained a following because of its twin messages of nation and faith, and the fraternity progressed because of members’ commitment to its religious vision of America and her foundations.

Linda Gorden echoes this in The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, noting "of the Klan's thirty-nine Klokards, or traveling lecturers, twenty-six were ministers." (She has a full chapter on Oregon, but little on Salem specifically.)

It's also relevant to note that Allison's Klan activity was shoved down the memory hole and was not mentioned or held against him later in his life. The celebratory notes from 1940 and 1978, as well as the obituary in 1986, illustrate this.

Back here in Salem, the parade, speeches, and delivery of the Salem Klan charter on November 10th, 1923 had multiple purposes, intended for the Klan in Salem, for the statewide Klan, and for Fred L. Gifford personally.

Six parts, November 5th through 10th, 1923

An anonymous Salemite, identified only as "a Klansman," gave the afternoon paper a six part piece on the Salem Klan. It drew a hard contrast between pre- and post-Gifford Klan organizations and was an extended apologia for the pre-Gifford time, which was wholesome he argued.

To those of us who have stood with the klan since its inception here with sincere faith in its fundamental principles and who have fought to prevent corruption of those principles by persons intent on making the klan a personal instrument for financial gain and political prestige, the ceremonial has a multiple significance....it will indicate the extent to which we of the opposition have been successful in our attempts to purge the local organization of graft and fanatical prejudice.

And:

The old Salem klan's main function was purely fraternal, meeting being devoted to a discussion of plans to prove to the community that the klan was law-abiding and that as an organization would countenance no night riding or mob outbreaks. Religious hatred, racial lines and political maneuvering had not at that time been introduced, and it is not surprising that the charges of graft, bigotry and political plotting laid to the Ku Klux Klan in The Capital Journal's persistent attacks were resented and hotly denied.

He recounted some of the history. Originally distinct from "the Gifford faction," and "organized without the inspiration of artificially inflamed religious and racial prejudice" the writer said

the Salem klan was not founded by an imported professional organizer...[it was] informed through the idealistic literature broadcasted over the country at that time....Alarmed by a lack of law enforcement then prevalent in Oregon, a group of Salem men led by a city official whose character and integrity were such that he had no difficulty in security the co-operation of prominent business and professional men, applied to the Atlanta, Georgia, headquarters and succeeded in establishing a provisional (unchartered) klan here....The first real meeting...was held in June, 1921.

July 21st, 1921

The afternoon paper's story from July 1921 had been substantially correct. It would be interesting to know who was the "city official."

November 10th, 1923

The afternoon paper of November 10th, 1923, had a piece on a Klan endorsement for US Senate. And it mentions what seem now to be two possibilities for that "city official" of 1921. It said "Mayor J. B. Giesy of Salem and former Councilman Carl Pope" gave speeches promoting Kaspar K. Kubli for Senator at a meeting of "the Salem faction Ku Klux Klan loyal to Gifford." We know Mayor Giesy attended the Klan banquet previously. Maybe we'll find more later on Pope.

In the series by the anonymous Klansman, for August of 1921 he claimed membership of about 90, and by February of 1922, about 300.

After the initial period of purity, the Klansman wrote, the Gifford influence brought "political adventurers," "hate lecturers," and "religious propagandists." He said "Gifford and his methods were the rocks upon which the local klan was wrecked." Organizationally, Gifford hindered the legitimacy of the Salem group by delaying its charter.

The Klansman also discussed the culture of scamming. There were grifts and skimming on expensive robes from Atlanta rather than less expensive locally sewn examples, on fundraising for a never-built Klan temple in Portland, on overvalued oil stocks, on the WCTU children's home, on a paper mill stock purchase, and the seizure of Salem Klan dues, robes, and records.

It is not possible to believe that the early Klan here was some innocent fraternal order. The pieces are self-serving, of course. The earlier and smaller group may have been more polite and publicly civil, but its policy was still an anti-Catholic white supremacy. The Klansman kept mentioning "law enforcement" and law abiding, but this was a classic instance of "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

It is fascinating that the afternoon paper, previously so critical of the Klan, devoted so much space to the apologia, more so than was strictly necessary for any kind of neutral even-handedness. With so much space it seems to endorse the special pleading. There might be more to say later about this.

And also there might be more to say on the gradual fade of the Klan here. But in November of 1923, there was a lot of sympathy and interest. Even with criticism of the scamming, the "pure Americanism" of white supremacy was attractive.

Previously here:

• "100 Years ago The Birth of a Nation "took Salem by Storm" (2016)
• For more on the trope of the Anglo-Saxon race and its link with our celebration of Jason Lee: "As Jason Lee House Site has Layers, so History Telling has Layers" (2020)
  
• With evidence of Klan harassment, "Policing Racial Boundaries in 1920s: Herman Hayes, D. H. Brown, and Charlie Maxwell" (2021)
• On increasing acceptance, "Between 1921 and 1923 Salemites Seemed to Shift Radically on the Triple K" (2021) and "George Putnam and the Afternoon Paper's Seeming Shift on the 1923 Legislature" (2023)
• With more on the Federation of Patriotic Societies, "Reassessing Asahel Bush and the 1922 Election: Our Problematic Legacies" (2022)
• Actual funny business in, "Recount and Fraud in the 1922 Primary Election for Governor" (2022)
• On our own Mayor, "Mayor Giesy attends Klan Dinner in 1923" (2023)
• And a complication. Even in the face of proto-fascist anti-Catholic politics and sentiment here, straight-up fascism in Europe appealed to some Catholics: "The Appeal of a Strong Man: Mussolini and the Fascists Praised in 1923" (2023)
• "Sunday History Column on Anti-Catholic Legislation points to Much More" (2023)
  
• "Oregon Electric Klan Special to Corvallis Stops in Salem in 1923" (2023)
• "With Events at Armory and Fairgrounds in 1923, Klan had Pervasive Salem Support" (2023)