Oregonians are increasingly coming to understand the state’s racist history. From its Black exclusion laws, enacted in the mid-to-late 1800s, that banned Black Americans from settling within Oregon’s borders to the practice of redlining, which segregated neighborhoods and kept minorities from growing financial stability, we do not lack for examples of prejudice eminating from positions of power.
However, it’s one thing to know something happened and another to really read a thorough account of how it happened.
A new, deeply researched book by retired reporter and editor Steve Law, Peddlers of Hate, provides historical context for one notorious period in particular—the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon. And the similarities to today’s United States are profound.
A journalist in Oregon for over 35 years, Law made his name through investigative and enterprise reporting at the Portland Tribune and before that, the Statesman Journal. After he retired in 2019, Law researched and wrote a six-part series for the Tribune on the Klan’s rise to power in Oregon.
Plenty of Americans don’t know that there have been at least two historically recognized eras of KKK terrorism. We’re taught in school that the group’s founders were Confederate veterans who linked up in the South, during the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War. However, by the outset of the 1910s, Black Americans had made gains toward equal rights, and KKK membership had fizzled or at the very least, become less visible.
In 1915, D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation openly glorified the KKK and made way for the organization to relaunch as a for-profit corporation. Salesmen working on commission began to recruit and initiate new members.
Though it was far from the Klan’s headquarters in Atlanta, white supremacist ideology found a strong foothold in Oregon. From 1915 to 1944, one in 15 Oregonians was a Klan member—the second-highest state per capita, behind Indiana. That represents 50,000 total members across at least 60 chapters in rural and urban communities.
Law’s comprehensive telling of local Klan history rings a deafening alarm bell about today’s politics. “The stunning lesson from the Klan and modern-day manifestations is that ignorance, anxieties, and fears about people of different colors, religions, races, languages, genders, and sexual orientations can be whipped up and exploited for political and financial gain,” Law writes.
This book is dense in the way a historical, academic text should be. The details are crucial to understanding the arc of the KKK and its analogs for today. For those who may never pick up the book, I want to tell you about my five takeaways. And for those who may decide to dive in, these are just a few tidbits for inspiration.
Here are five of the myriad things I learned from Peddlers of Hate.
- The Klan dominated Oregon’s politics in the early 1920s, toppling one incumbent governor for a Klan-approved candidate and controlling the Oregon House of Representatives, multiple city councils, county boards, and school boards. In 1921, Portland Mayor George Baker created a 100-person vigilante group that worked closely with police, many of whom were Klan members, under the pretense of maintaining law and order. The arrangement made the cyclops of the Portland klavern, Fredrick Gifford, an “invisible super chief of police.” [The Klan dubbed local chapters klaverns, a portmanteau of klan and cavern, and a leader of a local unit was called a cyclops. -eds] The Klan’s growing threat to civil society was frequently dismissed by politicians, press, and other influential community members, but the truth caught up to them eventually. “We woke up one morning and found the Klan had about gained political control of the state,” Governor Ben Olcott said, months after boasting that the Klan was not making headway in Oregon.
- Anti-Catholic prejudice was one of the most commonly voiced reasons for why people joined the Klan. Longstanding animosities between Protestants and Catholics carried over from earlier days of Protestant England competing with Catholic Spain and France to colonize North and South America. Further Catholic immigration continued to inculcate hostility. The Klan gained massive political power in Oregon in the early 1920s when it worked to close private schools and mandate public school attendance, due to its anti-Catholic stance. It was seen as a national test case for attacking religious schools. It worked when the state banned private schools in 1922, but in 1925 the Supreme Court ruled the public schooling initiative unconstitutional.
- The Klan was a business, and a corrupt one at that. New memberships cost $10 apiece and were sold by salesmen working on commission. The Klan’s business maintained cozy relationships with malinformed political actors and public utilities and padded its own pockets by also requiring members to purchase their masks and robes through a central manufacturer. The ruling powers of the KKK backed “Red Scare” anti-union tactics in an effort to uphold business interests and swing votes toward the Klan. When the Industrial Workers of the World, or the Wobblies, shut down Portland’s waterfront to demand higher wages, Portland Mayor George Baker—an ally of the KKK—caused a moral panic, saying 25,000 Wobblies were coming to “take control of Portland.” At Baker’s direction, police arrested over 500 picketers, despite a reported lack of threat from either crowd size or reports of violence on the part of the unions.
- Media across the state inadvertently or intentionally helped the Klan evade accountability. Some outlets fully supported the KKK’s efforts, while others allowed the Klan to continue without necessary scrutiny. Law, a longtime journalist in his own right, outlines some lessons that may translate to media coverage today—nationally and locally. As the Klan gained popularity, the media mainly focused on strife, while neglecting to mention the cause of the strife in the first place. For instance, as the Klan continued its efforts to ban private schools, some outlets framed the debate as a “squabble over a religious issue,” rather than reporting what the Klan intended to do and why. George Putnam, a Medford Mail Tribune editor and publisher, bashed Portland media for its “conspiracy of silence” in its coverage. The KKK adopted a resolution of thanks to the Morning Oregonian, for its “fairness and impartial policy,” after the state elected a Klan-adjacent governor and passed the initiative to close private schools—something the Oregonian later addressed in a 2022 feature titled “Publishing Prejudice.”
- The Ku Klux Klan are losers. That’s thanks to the efforts of civil rights leaders, journalists, and political activists who worked tirelessly to daylight the inner workings of the Klan and its corruption. Some of the Klan’s greatest foes had previously worked as insiders, but later found their way to opposing them. Law’s book carries important information for anyone hoping today’s prejudice and corruption will soon go up in flames. It doesn’t happen without strong opposition. “In such divided times, it’s worth remembering the inspiring efforts of Oregonians who challenged the Klan when it was risky to do so,” Law writes in Peddlers of Hate, listing civil rights leaders of the past. “Such bravery and heroism will be essential if Oregon is to overcome bigotry now and when it recurs in the future.”
Steve Law reads from Peddlers of Hate at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside, 7 pm, FREE, more info, all ages ready to stare history in its big ol’ face.
