The Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921-- Part 3: Part of a Surge of White Attacks on Blacks in the Country

 The Tulsa rampage was part of a surge of white attacks on black communities-- from Washington, D.C., to Chicago to the Pacific Northwest--  at the time, said Scott Ellsworth, a historian who has worked for decades to bring the Tulsa massacre to light.

The Ku Klux Klan was surging as well, putting many of its members in public office and other influential positions.

In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson gave a White House screening and praise to "The Birth of a Nation," a tremendously influential and viciously racist film on the South.

You sure don't read much about these sad happenings from history, but they should be better known so they don't happen again.  It is horrible that Whites could do something like that to Blacks.  And, for no reason apparently.

I need to temper my anger at black rioting and looting with remembrances of things like this.

Spies, Traitors, Saboteurs-- Part 3: 9/11 and KKK

The exhibit doesn't have much more to add on  9/11, but the twisted piece of an airplane said to be from the World Trade Centers packs a punch.  The show is stronger when it goes back farther in time.  It tells about the Ku Klux Klan marching in Washington, D.C. and even KKK business cards.

They also have a bulletin board to address current day events with articles about "Trump's border wall" and the racist Charleston killer, whose name I won't mention..

Some more photos accompanying the article:

**  The robes worn by the KKK, including a red one and, even sadder, a kid's robe.

**  A pike

**  Equipment worn by an emergency services worker at the Oklahoma City bombing site.

The exhibit goes through October 1 and is included with the $16 general admission price  The Chicago History Museum is at 1601 N. Clark Street

--Cooter

Charles Weeghman-- Part 2: Weeghman Park Became Wrigley Field

He also had a great interest in baseball.  In 1911, he tried to purchase controlling interest in the St. louis Cardinals, but failed.  He then founded the Chicago Whales in the new Federal League and built a new steel and concrete stadium he named Weeghman Park.  He chose the site specifically because it was by the "L" tracks.

After the federal league folded, he merged the Whales with the Chicago Cubs and became the majority owner and moved the Cubs into his new park which is now known better as Wrigley Field.

On August 16, 1921, he sponsored the first statewide rally of the KKK on his property in Lake Zurich, Illinois.  It was estimated that some 12,000 attended and another 2,000 were initiated into the organization.

His lunch counter business lost favor with the public and he had to sell more and more of the Cubs to chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr.  He was completely out of the Cubs by 1918.

--DaCoot

KKK in Chicago in the 1920s-- Part 3: Newspaper Reactions

The city's black newspaper, the Chicago defender editorialized:  "The Ku Klux Klan has reached Chicago:  Full page ads in the papers, followed by the announcement that 12,000 of them had met at Charles Weeghman's farm thirty miles out of town, and in the pouring rain initiated nearly 3,000 more, ought to jar us off our do-nothing stools."

The Chicago tribune also decried the coming of the KKK, but said it went against the goals of the original KKK saying:  "The first Ku Klux Klan grew out of intolerable conditions in the south and passed away when the danger of Negro domination and the plague of carpetbagger were lifted.

"It was born in an emergency and, while evils were committed in its name, it served an important end, while contributing one of the romantic episodes of our history."

Imagine any newspaper saying this today?

--DaCoot

KKK in Chicago in the 1920s-- Part 2: On the Farm of Charles Weeghman

"The restored KKK's membership wasn't limited to the lower middle class, the traditional breeding ground of xenophobic political movements.  The mass initiation ceremony was held on a farm near Lake Zurich owned by Charles Weeghman, whose string of cheap Loop restaurants had made him a millionaire.

Weeghman built the North Side ballpark subsequently known as Wrigley Field and owned the Cubs from 1916-1918.

"Perhaps he was one of the business leaders attracted to the KKK by its hostility to the union movement, which the Klan equated with the Bolsheviks who recently seized power in Russia, a powerful argument during a wave of bitter strikes in America."

I looked up the location of Weeghman's farm and saw that it wasa 250-acre farm at the intersection of today's US-12 and Old Rand Road between Lake Zurich and Barrington.  Old Rand Road was the name of US-12 before the byopass was built and still exists.

--Cooter

KKK in Chicago in the 1920s-- Part 1

From the Jan. 25, 2015, Chicago Tribune Flashback "Chicago and the KKK" by Ron Grossman.

In the 1920s, the Klan found fertile recruiting ground in the North.

They gathered August 16, 1921, at Central Park Avenue, just south of Foster Avenue in Chicago and then formed a car caravan to a destination in the suburbs near today's US-12 and Old Rand Road.

There they held a mass initiation ceremony called "naturalization."

The Tribune reported the next day: "A huge bonfire had been lighted.  Thousands of members of the order, each bearing aloft a torch, took position in the form of a blazing cross.  The blindfolded initiates were herded inside.  Upon the weird assemblage the searchlights of the automobiles drawn about in a great assembly shone with white intensity.

"Pickets patrolled beyond the pale, terrifying the curious citizens of the countryside by their grotesque appearances."

--Cooter

Shorpy Photos the USS Brooklyn (1898), the KKK and the Spanish Flu Pandemic

From the Shorpy Photo website.

I always enjoy looking at these old photographs, enlarging them and reading the comments.

Recent ones of particular historical interest:

10-15-14 CONTAGION: 1918. 1918. "Demonstration of the Red Cross Emergency Ambulance Station in Washington, D.C., during the influenza pandemic of 1918.  Especially of interest in these days of Ebola.

11-5-14 MEN IN WHITE: 1925:  "August 9, 1925. Klansmen sightseeing at the U.S, Capitol in full regalia.  Something that would be mighty surprising to see today.

11-1-14 SPAR DECK SWABBIES: 1898.  Circa 1898 "League Island Navy Yard, Philadelphia  USS Brooklyn spar deck.  There is an interesting detailed account of what you see on that deck,

--Cooter