By William “Skip” Deegans
This past July 4, hundreds of masked members of the Patriot Front, a Neo-fascist, white supremacist organization, gathered at Union Station in Washington, DC, and marched carrying American and Confederate flags toward Capitol Hill. This march was reminiscent of a 1925 march by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Washington (shown in the photograph). Wearing white robes and conical hoods, 30,000 Klansmen marched 3½ hours from the Capitol to the Treasury Department. They carried American flags and sang hymns and marching songs. Some 150,000 spectators turned out to watch.
The 1920s was the pinnacle of Klan membership. In 1921, The Wheeling Intelligencer estimated there were 9,000 members of the KKK in West Virginia. In Greenbrier County, the Klan was particularly visible in Ronceverte, and in 1922 it organized in White Sulphur Springs where it burned a cross on Bold Hill during a night-time ceremony.
In neighboring Fayette County during that same year, a locomotive with its name and number erased and pulling five coaches arrived at the train station in Cannelton. “Scores upon scores” of white robed men poured from the train and marched to Montgomery. A leader bearing an illuminated cross led the marchers. Behind him where marchers carrying a banner that read, “We Will Be Here Tomorrow.” At the end of the march another banner was carried with the words “We Will Be Here Forever.”
In 1925, two-hundred robed men and women belonging to the Talcott unit of the Summers County KKK assembled at the school house, marched to the railroad station, and held a nearby meeting that drew some 2,500 people who were entertained by a band.
After the 1920s, the KKK was largely silent in West Virginia until the 1974 Kanawha County textbook protest where it capitalized on the unrest, burned crosses and was accused of violence.
Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress.
Sources: The Guardian, The West Virginia News, Charleston Daily Mail, Hinton Daily News, The Independent-Herald, WETA.
