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One pleasure, if you can call it that, of being a history buff is this discovery: No matter how bad things seem now, you can always find a time when things were worse, and our ancestors somehow muddled through that war, plague, famine, drought, Republican legislature or similar disaster.
Thus it was brought some needed cheer to me a few weeks ago when, in the process of researching an article, I started reading about Colorado in 1924.
Like 2002, it was a dry year. Forest fires were reported throughout the mountains and public officials worried that the state might lose all its forests. Salida was so arid that it was feared that all the town's trees would die, but some generous nearby irrigators decided to let the town use their senior ditch rights for several days, and catastrophe was averted.
1924 also resembled 2002 in that it was an election year. Back then, the governor, attorney general and the like served two-year terms, rather than four-year, so just about every Colorado office was on the ballot, except for half the state senate -- and that may have saved our state from falling into the pit.
During the first part of 1924, the Ku Klux Klan packed precinct caucuses and voted as a bloc in the primary elections to get its candidates on the ballot, where they generally succeeded in the November general election -- when the new officials were inaugurated in January of 1925, Colorado appeared to be under Klan control.
The Klan of the 1920s bore an outward resemblance to the Klan that sprang up during Reconstruction in the South, and it similarly resembled the KKK that has operated since the 1950s in opposition to school integration and voter registration.
But the Klan of 80 years ago was something of a fad,
too, inspired by the first Hollywood blockbuster, D.W.
Griffith's Birth of Nation,
which showed white-robed
cross-burners as heroic defenders. It was also a lodge or
fraternal order as much as it was a terrorist group.
In 1924, it turned into a political machine, capturing control of the Republican party in Colorado. There were two U.S. Senate seats open that year. Rice Means, who campaigned with open Klan support, got the short term. Laurence Phipps, widely accused of helping bankroll the KKK, got the long term.
The new governor, Clarence Morley, took orders from Dr. John Galen Locke, Grand Dragon of Colorado. Klan-supported Republicans held a clear majority in the state House of Representatives. Republicans also held a majority in the state Senate, though some of them were hold-overs who had been elected in 1922 without KKK support.
The legislature then devoted most of its attention to abolishing most state boards and commissions. Not because they wanted to shrink the size of government; the idea was to create new bodies to do the same jobs, but with Klan members enjoying the patronage.
Most other Klan measures -- like removing all Jews and Catholics from the faculty of the University of Colorado, repealing the state's civil rights laws, or outlawing the use of sacramental wine (this was during Prohibition) -- were defeated in the state Senate, where Democrat Billy Adams of Alamosa led the opposition, courageously assisted by the hold-over anti-Klan Republicans.
Some of the other concerns of the Klan Republicans of the 1925 session do seem oddly familiar, though.
For instance, Klan candidates campaigned on a law-and-order platform, and of course they were opposed to the use of illegal substances -- the primary one then being alcohol, Immigrants -- primarily Roman Catholics from Italy -- were blamed for subverting the American way of life. In little towns like Salida and Cañon City, crosses were burned on their lawns.
However, that legislature managed to pass only one anti-alcohol law: the operation of a still became a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
Klan candidates also claimed to be patriotic supporters
of 100% Americanism.
Today's 100-percent Americans
in the Colorado General Assembly promote requiring the
Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms, along with requiring
that In God We Trust
be posted in all public
buildings.
Back then, the 100-percent Americans in the legislature passed a law that required all public schools in Colorado to have flagpoles and to fly the U.S. flag.
So, it's nothing new for certain of our legislators to wrap themselves in God and the U.S. flag, claiming that they're patriots who support law and order, meanwhile denouncing everyone who doesn't agree with them as a threat to the American way of life.
They were soundly thrashed by sensible Colorado voters in 1926, and one can always hope that history can repeat itself.
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