Al Smith was many things during his political career: reform champion after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, four-time governor of New York State, the first Catholic presidential candidate. But he was always a New York City boy at heart. [Read more…] about Redeeming Al Smith: New York’s Four-Time Governor
Ku Klux Klan
Arlington National Cemetery Removing Confederate Memorial
Arlington National Cemetery (Arlington) is removing its Confederate Memorial, as mandated by the Congress’s authorizing the Naming Commission to rename and/or remove Department of Defense assets that commemorate the Confederate States of America (CSA) or any person who voluntarily served with the CSA against the United States. [Read more…] about Arlington National Cemetery Removing Confederate Memorial
US, NYS Continues To Honor Slavers, Racists, Traitors and Scoundrels
In 2023, the United States Military Academy will remove 13 Confederate symbols on its West Point campus. They include a portrait of Robert E. Lee dressed in a Confederate uniform, a stone bust of Lee, who was superintendent of West Point before the Civil War, and a bronze plaque with an image of a hooded figure and the words “Ku Klux Klan.”
Art displayed in the United States Capitol building in Washington, DC, still includes images of 141 enslavers and 13 Confederates who went to war against the country. A study by the Washington Post found that more than one-third of the statues and portraits in the Capitol building honor enslavers or Confederates and at least six more honor possible enslavers where evidence is disputed. [Read more…] about US, NYS Continues To Honor Slavers, Racists, Traitors and Scoundrels
Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst
In a book dedicated to Wilfred Ferguson, the son of Charles Ferguson, teacher and historian Christopher Verga resurrects the story of two Roosevelt, New York brothers killed by a Freeport police officer in 1946.
Verga opens The Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst (History Press, 2022) with an account of the long history of racism on Long Island and in the Freeport area including Ku Klux Klan activity. The background to the 1946 killings takes up the first third of the book. The book is well researched and referenced with extended quotes from official court documents and newspaper accounts. [Read more…] about Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island: A Civil Rights Catalyst
Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life
Benjamin Franklin Butler was one of the most important and controversial military and political leaders of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.
In her new biography, Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2022), Elizabeth D. Leonard chronicles Butler’s successful career in the law defending the rights of the Lowell Mill girls and other workers, his achievements as one of Abraham Lincoln’s premier civilian generals, and his role in developing wartime policy in support of fugitives from enslavement as the nation advanced toward emancipation. [Read more…] about Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life
Catskills Klan: The KKK in Sullivan County, New York
Many people – even those with more than a passing interest in Sullivan County history – are surprised to learn that the Ku Klux Klan was once fairly active in parts of the county. And yet, throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, there were several chapters in the Catskills, most set up by recruiters from the Binghamton area.
These Klan chapters, whether in Livingston Manor, Jeffersonville, Liberty, Woodbourne or some other hamlet, often started out as social organizations, and it was not unusual to see newspaper articles and even advertisements about their charitable activities or their clambakes, sometimes in conjunction with the Kamelias, the organization’s women’s auxiliary. [Read more…] about Catskills Klan: The KKK in Sullivan County, New York
The Clansman: The Novel That Helped Reignite The KKK (Virtual Program)
D.W. Griffith’s 1915 silent epic, The Birth of a Nation is said to be one of the most influential films of all time, particularly in advancing the cause of the Ku Klux Klan, heroic myths about The South and stereotypes about Black people.
The film was based on a work of fiction published in 1905, The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, Jr., which enjoyed great popularity. Part of a historical romance trilogy, the novel is more blatant than the movie in advancing White superiority and a need to oppose by state law the Reconstruction Amendments to The United States Constitution. The book is not that readily available, but the movie is. [Read more…] about The Clansman: The Novel That Helped Reignite The KKK (Virtual Program)
When The Klan Ruled In Freeport, Long Island
One of the most horrific anti-Semitic events in United States history happened in Marietta, Georgia. On August 17, 1915, Leo Frank, former director of the local National Pencil Company factory who was falsely convicted of murdering a teenage female factory worker, was dragged out of a state prison cell, taken to Marietta, and lynched.
A decade later, while Congress was sharply restricting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and a revitalized Ku Klux Klan was attracting adherents nationwide, Ernest Louis, a Jewish pharmacist living and working in Freeport, NY, on Long Island, was falsely accused of molesting a local teenage girl and forced to flee the Long Island town with his family. [Read more…] about When The Klan Ruled In Freeport, Long Island
1920s KKK Recruiting Efforts in Northern New York
While we often look back fondly on the Roaring 20s for a number of reasons, it was a very dark period in the North Country in at least one regard: bigotry. For several years, the region was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity during a high-profile recruiting effort.
The assumption today might be that the effort failed miserably among the good people of the north. But the truth is, the Klan did quite well, signing thousands of new members to their ranks. [Read more…] about 1920s KKK Recruiting Efforts in Northern New York
1920s: The North Country Rises Against the KKK
Last week in this space, I addressed the subject of cross-burnings in the North Country, which became common in the 1920s during a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Throughout the region, meetings were conducted by Klan leaders, and thousands of followers were added to their ranks. For many of us, it’s an uncomfortable part of Adirondack history, but there is another side to the story. Despite widespread intimidation spawned by secret meetings, robed figures, and fiery crosses, New York’s citizenry rose in opposition to the Klan policies of bigotry and exclusion.
Speaking out against the KKK carried inherent risks for average folks, and for politicians as well. Between 1915 and 1922, more than a dozen senators and government officials in Washington were acknowledged members of the Klan, and the organization played a role in the national elections of 1924 and 1928. But in spite of their rise to power behind claims of patriotism and “Americanism,” the KKK was judged by many as a blight on society and distinctly un-American. [Read more…] about 1920s: The North Country Rises Against the KKK