The Ku Klux Klan was a political powerhouse in Cañon City from 1924-28. In 1924, the Klan captured control of the Republican and Democratic parties, and Klan members were elected to run the city and the county, and even much of the state.
Sue Cochran, archivist assistant for the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center, hosted a presentation Thursday at the museum and history center on the KKK’s influence in Cañon City.
The first organizational meeting of the Cañon City Klan No. 21 was Jan. 26, 1924, at the Natatorium, a public swimming pool at the corner of Dozier and Central. Cochran said the Klan may have formed here in 1924 because of the 1923 announcement of the Holy Cross Abbey’s intent to build in Cañon City.
Cochran said the KKK has had three basic periods of activity in America:
•Klan No. 1 was organized in 1865 in Tennessee, primarily a vigilante group that was unhappy with the outcome of the Civil War. They hoped to restore white supremacy. This Klan terrorized and murdered blacks and members of the Radical Republican Party who opposed slavery and favored black rights. This group fizzled out by the 1870s.
•Klan No. 2 rose in the 19-teens and was powerful in the 1920s. This Klan was anti-black, anti-Sematic, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic and strongly Prohibitionist. Membership peaked at 4 to 5 million, but dropped to 30,000 by 1930, and eventually lost power and died.
•Klan No. 3 was active and visible in the 1950s and 1960s. Various groups opposed the civil rights movement and desegregation of schools, businesses and other public services.
“On a local level, when we discuss the history of our Klan, we are dealing with Klan No. 2, the Klan of the 20s,” Cochran said.
She said Colorado had the largest, most influential Knights of the Ku Klux Klan organization west of the Mississippi River.
“In the elections of 1924, the Klan seized complete control of the state, county and local governments statewide, including both Cañon City and Fremont County,” she said.
The Jan. 17, 1924, edition of the Cañon City Record reported on a flaming torch, likely meant to be a fiery cross, on Skyline Drive, similar to those which had been burned from time to time in Florence, Pueblo and other parts of the state. The paper two weeks later reported five burning crosses across town, including Prospect Heights, which was a neighborhood populated mostly by Austrians, Italians and other immigrant coal miners, most of whom were Catholic, Cochran said.
“Another reason the Klan did not like ‘the heights’ was booze,” she said. “The Klan said their members did not partake of alcoholic drinks.”
The Klan helped pass a bond issue to build the high school on Main Street, which houses the middle school, and a bond issue to build the new city hall, which now houses the local museum and history center. The Florence Klan purchased and donated lockers at the new high school built there in the 1920s, each locker sporting a Klan emblem.
Rev. Fred G. Arnold, the minister of the First Baptist Church at Seventh Street and Macon Avenue, was elected Exalted Cyclops of the Cañon City Klavern of KKK in 1924. He also was president of Colorado’s Baptist Ministerial Association, vice-moderator of the Colorado Baptist Association and chaplain of the Colorado State Penitentiary. In addition, he taught bible classes at the high school.
“Rev. Arnold was said to be grooming his teenage son, Kuper, to be the next Klan leader, when suddenly they both died,” Cochran said.
Kuper died at age 14 in February 1928, and Arnold died four months later, reportedly of “breakdown” of the summer flu from the previous year.
Cochran said at the time of his death, Arnold held the office of Grand Dragon of the Colorado Realm of the Klan for all of Colorado, and he ran the Colorado Klan from Cañon City offices located at the old St. Cloud Hotel, just across the alley from the Baptist church. The offices moved back to Denver in 1929, after Arnold’s death.
“By then the Klan was losing steam anyway,” Cochran said. “In 1926, a few non-Klan candidates had actually squeaked back into office, and then non-Klan candidates were elected in 1928.”
She said in Cañon City, the Klan “bent over backward” to appear friendly to the small black population, even by donating money toward their churches. She said there is no evidence that the Klan gave them any “grief.”
Cochran said what remains of the Klan groups has morphed through the years into what has now been ruled by the courts to be a “Subversive or Terrorist Organization.”
“Today, it is estimated that there are about 150 Klan chapters still active in America, with perhaps 5,000 members total,” she said. “If those were evenly distributed, that would be about three chapters per sate, with 35 members per chapter.”
For more information, or to look at books and other materials on the KKK, visit the museum and history center at 612 Royal Gorge Blvd. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.
