Reassessing Asahel Bush and the 1922 Election: Our Problematic Legacies

The front page column today in the Sunday paper could not be more timely, unfortunately.

Front page today

Given his role in Salem history, only a little less mythic than Jason Lee but so much more definite in the prelude to Statehood and then in the second half of the 19th century, Asahel Bush has to be better understood as a real person with real power and wealth and with real bias. His personal sentiments were not merely privately held, but could be made public and structural. They had real effects on the lives of Salemites.

It's a great piece and should be widely read and discussed. (It's paywalled now, and hopefully they will find ways to circulate it more widely.)

Another legacy that the paper should give more attention to is our 1922 election and its immediate aftermath.

A century ago, facing reelection Governor Olcott ratcheted up his criticism of the second Klan, attempting to place institutional force behind the rhetoric.

May 13th, 1922

In the news piece accompanying the proclamation, the afternoon paper said

Declaring that "dangerous forces are insidiously gaining a foothold in Oregon," and that these forces "in the guise of a secret society, parading under the name of the Ku Klux Klan, are endeavoring to usurp the reigns of government are stirring up fanaticism, race hatred, religious prejudice and all of these evil influences which tend toward factional strife and civil terror," Governor Olcott this morning issued a proclamation calling upon all law enforcement officers of the state, including judges of the courts, sheriffs of the counties and all other law enforcing officers, to see that all "unlawfully disguised men be kept from the streets, and to prevent further outrages, and marudings such as have occurred in some of our own communities and in the state of California."

Section 2046, Oregon Laws, dealing with the subject of unlawful disguises and consequent penalties, is especially stressed In the proclamation.

Just a few days later, the afternoon paper printed what they believed was the "Marion County Klan Ticket." The headline was sensationalized a little, but the statement was both true in spirit and not-true on a technicality.

May 17th, 1922

(detail)

The next day, the morning paper disagreed a little, focusing on the not-true side and also laundering the announcement.

The Oregon Federation of Patriotic societies, incorporated under Oregon laws in 1917, yesterday announced a Marion county ticket....

In a card giving the lists of candidates appears this dedication:

"The ticket on the other side of this card has been most carefully selected by the Oregon Federation of Patriotic Societies, Inc., of the state of Oregon. They recommend the candidates names as 100 per cent American..."

The literature does not suggest what patriotic societies are represented in its membership, nor the nature of their patriotic endeavors. It is asserted that 12 societies are interested in the movement; though whom they are, apparently no one knows....

The actual extent of the the Federation of Patriotic Societies is not accurately known... [but] it does not appear to be a Ku Klux plot.

A year later, a letter to Oregon Voter magazine suggested overlap, but not identity, between the Klan and the Federation:

When the Klan came into Oregon in 1921, at first in a very mild and timid sort of way, it contented itself with declaring its desire to support the "tickets" of the Oregon Federation of Patriotic Societies. This was the course adopted by the Klan in the spring primary of 1922, in which there was but one "ticket,” that of the Federation, which the Klan endorsed, though it is said, somewhat reluctantly. The Klan, as such, never was represented in the Federation, although men sitting there as delegates from other organizations doubtless were also members of the Klan. They were, however, in a minority.

The winners of the primary caused schism.

The vote in the 1922 spring primary on the Federation “ticket” (with Klan endorsement) was much less than it has been in Multnomah County several years before (before the Klan existed). Federation supporters attributed this loss to the loud advertisement by the Klan of its endorsement of the Federation ticket, which, instead of adding strength to the old and well-known “ticket,” actually cost it thousands of votes by alienating large groups, such as Jews and foreign-born voters, many of whom had theretofore voted for candidates recommended by the Federation....After the 1922 spring primary, the Klan attempted to “pack” the Federation and capture it, but failed dismally in the attempt; and in the election last fall the Klan for the first time got out a separate straight Klan "ticket" under the guise of a "Good Government League," which had been incorporated October 23, 1922, at the same time warning all against "duplicity, deception, imitation!”

Later scholars confirm the relation and ways that the afternoon paper's headline was also true. If the ticket wasn't a direct Klan production, it was coordinated and approved. In a 1974 Masters thesis, Robin Huffman writes

Once organized in Oregon, the Klan worked most effectively with the Federation of Patriotic Societies...Although the Klan never became a formal member of the Federation, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon, Fred Gifford, was elected director of the Federation. [link added]

The Society was anti-Catholic and nativist, all too aligned with the Klan, and this was the basis for the alliance.

Race, Radicalism, Religion and Restriction (2003)

Just as we lack a good history of Asahel Bush, we lack a history of Klan activity in Salem in the early 1920s. Both have been kept vague and misty, rumored, but not well documented in any public history. And while Bush has got attention in niche academic publications, the Klan in Salem specifically does not seem to have got much academic attention at all. There are discussions about activity in Oregon more generally, but not in detail on Salem and Salemites.

See previous notes on Asahel Bush here, on Jason Lee here, and on the myth of the Pioneer in our public art. Also on shifting attitudes in Salem on the Klan from 1921 to 1923.

And to end on a positive note, a little buried in the piece on Bush in the paper is a note about the Rev. Obed Dickinson. He resisted, at a real personal cost, and is someone who deserves a whole lot more commemoration in our official public history. The piece rightly notes, "Dickinson doesn’t have a park, school or street in Salem named after him." He deserves more recognition. Here's a promo for a lecture from 2016.