Historically minded readers might take a look at Secrets of Owatonna, an article in today's Owatonna Peoples Press. Apparently the town fire hall used to be the Town Hall, and the third floor gym/auditorium was used for dances and meetings, including those of the Ku Klux Klan.
The article notes that Klansmen from throughout Southern Minnesota would gather in the room at Owatonna's City Hall, and " discuss their hatred for immigrants and Catholics around the country."
Intrigued, we did a little research about the KKK in the area. In 2001, the Winona Post reported in KKK march jogs local memories:
. . .The Winona County Historical Society keeps files on the KKK, which drew more than 1,000 people to some rallies in Winona, St. Charles and Stockton. . . .
Within two years, the Klan had become common enough that regular meetings and rallies were held in the Winona County area and many members made no effort to disavow their affiliation with the group. A new state law also required that Klansmen go unmasked.
A chapter of the KKK was formally organized in Winona in September 1923, according to the Republican Herald.
The announcement of the new chapter was made in Austin, where,according to the Sept. 17 Minneapolis Journal, 400 candidates were initiated into the Klan at a public ceremony.
"Columns of Klansmen from scores of southern Minnesota cities and villages poured into Austin for the initiation," the Journal stated, adding that 2,000 spectators and 1,000 members of the order were present.
The Klansmen, wearing robes and hoods, but without masks, "clogged every road into Austin with automobiles," according to the Journal, while "ghostly figures in white from peaked cap to the dragging hem of flowing gowns patrolled the roads about Austin in the role of traffic police."
Cities and villages that sent Klansmen to the Austin ceremony, according to the Journal, included Rochester, Red Wing,Rushford, Preston, Cannon Falls, Zumbrota, Faribault, Fairmont, Pipestone, Owatonna, Mankato, Canby, Spring Lake, Montevideo, St. James, St. Paul and Minneapolis. Winona was not mentioned.
The Austin meeting followed an intensive six-month campaign to organize the Klan in every Minnesota county.
There's this item from September 1925 in the catalogue of the Minnesota Historical Society:
Views of a Ku Klux Klan parade and gathering in Owatonna, Minn. Includes parade floats and marchers and gathering at the Steele County fairgrounds. The parade units represent various Minnesota towns.
Owatonna had no exclusive franchise on the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic Klan. There's even a newspaper: the Minnesota Fiery Cross, its earlier manifestation as The Call of the North, and a Klan sword. Readers can view Klan pictures online at the MHS here; we're guesing that the electric cross is from one of the rallies described in the Winona Post article.
Not exactly breaking news, but a sad page from state history. The space will be remodelled in 2008.
Thanks for this post. Few people today know how the Klan had made itself mainstream in the teens and twenties, not just in the south, but all over the country. It's a history we forget at our own risk.
Though many would deny any connection, the extreme anti-immigrant passions of today are an echo of what was happening 80 years ago.
Posted by: Jeff Hanneman | November 05, 2007 at 01:32 PM