The 1924 Ku Klux Klan violence in Traverse City has been the biggest surprise, so far, in researching and writing stories for the Record-Eagle's 150th Anniversary History Project.
Local history writer Richard Fiddler tipped me off to this story in late 2007. His account of that Aug. 9 "night of terror" is the first chapter in his book, "Glimpses of Grand Traverse Past: Reflections on a Local History," published last year.
The "old" KKK newspaper report apparently was news to others, as well, if response to our Feb. 1 story is any indication.
Jo-Ann Fitzmaurice, 88, of Traverse City is the only reader I've talked to who knew about that night. Her Aunt Lillian, a little girl then, was downtown with her parents when it happened.
"She was terrified," Jo-Ann said. "They all thought it was an invasion."
Record-Eagle reader Homer Thiel, a former Traverse City resident born in 1963 and now working as an archaeologist in Tucson, checked out Census figures for the 1920s and notes that Grand Traverse County had a total population of 19,540 in 1920, including 25 blacks. By 1930, population had grown to 19,915 with a total of 39 blacks.
"African-Americans were less than 1 percent of the Grand Traverse population when the KKK came to town. I wonder why they targeted the area?" he asked in an e-mail last week.
The quick answer is that the Klan enlarged its focus to Catholics, Jews, and immigrants from southeastern Europe when it was re-established in 1915. Traverse City didn't have many blacks, but it did have Catholics, Bohemians from what today is the Czech Republic, and Jews, too.
Traverse City got a close look that night of Klan activities. The rally probably opened local eyes to how dangerous bigotry can be, and city residents didn't like what they saw that evening. Officials mostly did the right things. The city commission offered a $50 reward for information. Police arrested the Indiana leader who was tried twice, though also acquitted by local juries. The paper reported in detail what happened, quoting a never-identified source who said the Klan had been organizing a year in the area.
This story has relevance today.
Unveiling and prosecuting violent discriminatory acts and hate speech are the most effective ways to deal with bigotry and racism passing itself off as the politics of patriotism -- then and now.
But neither exposure nor prosecution erases bigotry and racial violence. Each of us has to do that in our hearts, actions and speech.
What I've seen and heard during Barack Obama's campaign for president makes me believe we'll have lots of opportunities to do that individually and as a nation in coming years.
Loraine Anderson can be reached at landerson@record-eagle.com, or 933-1468.
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