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STERLING – Think the Ku Klux Klan was just in the South?
If you do, you'd be wrong.
[ Online Extra: The Telegraph covered the KKK often ]
Online Extra: A reporter spreads racist views in early 1900s
In the mid-1920s, the KKK held major rallies in the Sauk Valley, drawing thousands of people. During that time, the white supremacist group enjoyed a major comeback across the country, especially the Midwest.
In fact, Indiana had the most powerful KKK organization, with a reported 30 percent of its white male citizens joining, historians say.
The KKK put on big rallies in Sterling, Dixon, Erie and Oregon.
On Aug. 9, 1924, Sterling's Daily Gazette ran an advertisement that took up about a third of a page. It promoted a rally 7 miles west of the city planned for Aug. 16, 1924.
It featured a naturalization ceremony – the process of giving people KKK citizenship. The group planned a "monster parade" for the streets of Sterling and Rock Falls.
The ad included a dress code: "Bring your robes."
The rally featured speakers, bands and fireworks. Admission: 25 cents.
According to the Aug. 18, 1924, Daily Gazette:
Sterling Klan No. 44 held the rally on the Albert Weast farm. It started in the afternoon and lasted until midnight. It was a Saturday.
More than 20,000 people showed up, most during the night activities. Gate receipts amounted to $5,831.50.
Many attendees came from out of town, with license plates from Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.
"Several hundred were admitted without charge, having business connected with the celebration, and numerous little children added still more to the sum total," the newspaper reported.
East of the grounds, lines of cars parked, "so people could look at burning crosses."
Near the front of the parade in the afternoon was the Ashton band. "Then came klansmen and klanswomen in cars, many of them robed, but none were masked."
Later in the procession was the Walnut band.
For entertainment, "klan music" was played at the rally. It wasn't clear what kind of music it was.
"As soon as it grew dark, two large crosses ... were set on fire, throwing a glow over the west part of the field," with the "white figures" of klansmen going through their naturalization ceremony.
The Klan initiated 84 men, 38 women and 18 boys that day.
"About 9 o'clock, an airplane, bearing an illuminated cross on the bottom of the plane, flew repeatedly over the grounds and made a trip over the Twin Cities. It was equipped with electric lights and changed from white light to red with the turn of the switch," the story read.
The rally was marked by "orderliness." The only problem was caused by a man trying to scatter tacks near the main entrance late at night. It was quickly ended, "and few knew that it had happened."
The Daily Gazette's handling of the KKK
The Daily Gazette's coverage of the KKK rally was positive, almost as if the newspaper were covering a Chamber of Commerce banquet. It praised the handling of traffic, noting that the "klansmen themselves" helped police officers and sheriff's deputies with traffic control.
"The speaker's stand was admirably equipped with microphone." The entertainment was "well done." And the fireworks made for a "very brilliant display, which was admired by an immense crowd."
Neither the advertisement nor the Daily Gazette's coverage revealed that the KKK believed in white, Protestant supremacy over blacks, immigrants and Catholics.
During that time, the newspaper ran editorials every day, but it didn't have any comment on the rally in the days afterward.
On Aug. 26, 1924, the newspaper criticized the national KKK in a roundabout way. It published an editorial from a newspaper it identified as the "Tribune," probably the Chicago Tribune.
"It is our belief that in so far as the klan has purposes against the spirit of American tolerance it is bound to die of its own error and because of the prevailing spirit of the American people," the editorial stated.
The Daily Gazette, then run by D.W. Grandon, added a comment below the Tribune editorial. The newspaper "heavily commended" the Tribune piece. It added that the Republicans should get about their own business and let the KKK and anti-KKK forces in the Democratic Party "fight their own battles."
At the time, the KKK was making national headlines. The Daily Gazette ran wire service stories about Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis repudiating the KKK. He challenged President Calvin Coolidge to do the same.
'They don't like certain kinds of people'
In a 1995 interview, Dr. Kenje Ogata, a longtime local dentist, told the Daily Gazette that he remembered seeing a Klan parade going down Locust Street in Sterling. Ogata, who died in January at age 92, said he was fascinated by the men in white hoods and robes, wielding torches before burning a cross.
Ogata's father, Clay Kamezo, who was a Japanese immigrant, told his son what he thought of the KKK.
"I can remember my father saying, 'They're cowards. They don't like certain kinds of people,'" Ogata said.
He said he asked his father why they were cowards.
"If you have to hide behind a mask, you can't be very brave," his father replied.
Ogata told the Daily Gazette that his family didn't experience any overt discrimination.
Whites should run nation, preacher says
A few days after the rally, the KKK held a 3-day "klantauqua." Each day, the newspaper ran short stories. The event amounted to a running seminar on the KKK.
C.C. Crawford, a St. Louis pastor, called the KKK "a crusade for the betterment of social, economic conditions and political life." He said the group supported the tenets of Christianity.
"Our government should be run and kept by the white race, but we do not mean to persecute the colored race," he said. "The klan believes in preserving and perpetuating the principles of Americanism.
"As Lincoln said, 'This country cannot exist one half slave and one half free.' So America cannot exist one half American and one half un-American."
Other KKK events in Sauk Valley
Erie was the site of a major KKK rally, according to Whiteside County, a book published in 1968.
In the 1920s, a unit of the Klan was active in Erie. A public celebration was held at the James farm, about 1 mile east of Erie, on Aug. 11, 1925. As with Sterling's rally, Erie's Rock Kreek Klan 2313 charged 25 cents and held a naturalization ceremony.
The Erie group managed the event well, but bad weather marred it, according to the book.
An estimated 2,500 to 4,000 people attended. Because of rain, the naturalization ceremony was held in the Klan hall, although it's not clear where that was.
"There were apparently more than one cross burned as an account of the meeting stated that light from the flaming crosses helped the people on their ways home when the celebration was finished," the book said.
Other Sauk Valley towns had rallies, as well. According to the May 23, 1924, Dixon Telegraph, a crowd of 5,000 attended the spring ceremony of the KKK in Oregon. A class of 250 was initiated.
The Sept. 29, 1924, Telegraph reported the largest meeting of the KKK in Dixon. It took place at the old Assembly Park in Dixon, which was on the east side of the Rock River in the north part of town. About 300 marched in a parade. As with Sterling's procession, the Ashton band took a prominent position.
KKK gave money to black church
The KKK in Dixon reached out to the black community, according to the Oct. 15, 1923, Telegraph. Members showed up at a Sunday evening service of the historically black Second Baptist Church and presented the congregation with an envelope with four $10 bills.
"The congregation was told that the Klan had observed the efforts they have been putting forth in building their church and wanted to assure them as a body, the Klan is in hearty sympathy with every effort put forth for their advancement spiritually, morally and socially."
The KKK said the donation was made in the spirit of Christ.
The newspaper referred to the church as the "Colored Baptist Church," but Second Baptist Church Pastor Galon Darby said it never went by that name.
He said he had never heard about the incident with the KKK. "It surprises me," he said.
Duane Paulsen of the Lee County Historical Society has researched Klan activity in Grand Detour, northeast of Dixon.
He said the KKK picked up after World War I, when people struggled to find jobs. Many saw the Klan as a social organization, he said.
"They would get in their white robes and wander through the community," Paulsen said.
Mark Potok of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist groups, said the KKK gave "piles of money" to protestant churches all over the country.
"They were at this moment trying to present themselves as a legitimate political force," he said. "I doubt very much that the practice of giving to black churches was widespread."
What happened to area KKK?
As with the KKK in much of the country, the local groups apparently disappeared by the end of the 1920s. Terry Buckaloo, curator at the Sterling-Rock Falls Historical Society for 23 years, said the last record he had seen referring to the local KKK was from 1929.
The national KKK was at its peak in 1924, with a reported 6 million members, about 5 percent of the U.S. population. By 1930, the number plunged to 30,000, historians say.
The KKK's membership skyrocketed after World War I. It spread out of the South into the Midwest and the West. At the time, the group promoted "One Hundred Percent Americanism." It sought white Protestants as members, calling for strict morality and stronger enforcement of Prohibition.
Staying true to their so-called morality, organizers of the Sterling rally warned against gambling or "other cheap amusements" in the 1924 Daily Gazette advertisement.
The KKK had always espoused hatred of blacks, but with its revival in the 1920s, it also focused on a new anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic ideology.
"At the time, fraternal clubs were all the rage. White men in American belonged to three or five. The KKK was seen as another fraternal club," said Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In the Midwest, the Klan began to decline quickly after 1925. Some attribute that to a scandal surrounding the murder conviction of a Klan leader in Indiana. As a result, the group lost its image as an advocate of law and order, a major part of its appeal during Prohibition.
Buckaloo said he didn't know about the area's KKK until after he was on the job for a few years. He started keeping a file on the local KKK for whenever he found records related to the group.
"When I found out about this years ago, I was surprised," the Rockford native said.
Carol Fitzgerald, executive director of the YWCA of the Sauk Valley, said her family moved to Sterling in 1958. It wasn't until she became an adult that she had heard that the KKK used to be in the area.
"The YWCA is about eliminating racism," said Fitzgerald, 61. "We know there was a KKK and that it was active all over the country. It was horrifying."
What is the amount of racism in the Sauk Valley these days?
"I see this town as affected by the same things as every other area of the world. We are all affected by oppression and the way our society is structured," Fitzgerald said. "I don't see this community as any different."