Hooded Knights on the Niagara: The Ku Klux Klan in Buffalo, New York

by Shawn Lay

They came in the dead of night, marking the homes and businesses of their enemies with crude symbols and dire warnings. They plotted against those of other religious faiths and circulated secret lists of alleged traitors to the community and nation. They mailed anonymous threats to those who refused to be intimidated into silence, all the while claiming that they were the true champions of American justice and freedom. The above may seem an accurate description of the sinister activities that distinguished the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century, but in Buffalo, New York, and, in fact, throughout much of the northeastern United States, such activities were as characteristic of the Klan's opponents as of the hooded order itself. While the revived Klan of the 1920s-- the largest and most influential manifestation of organized intolerance in American history--proceeded with relative impunity in many locales, it encountered a very different situation in Buffalo where powerful enemies opposed the organization at every turn.
Shawn Lay here provides a riveting portrayal of how the Klan established itself in Buffalo. Most chillingly, he explains how otherwise ordinary, well-established citizens, caught up in a complex set of circumstances, were persuaded to join a notorious secret society that pandered to the darkest impulses in American society.

Genres: American History, Nonfiction

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Paige Welch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars just for the impressive data collection, but it was so boring, I couldn’t finish it.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shawn Lay was among the more prominent of the “Klan revisionists” of the 1990s who challenged older generations of scholars who had made unverified assumptions about the history of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and produced a new narrative of that organization. Prior to their work, little intensive study had been made of the “Invisible Empire,” and most mentions of it assumed it to be violent, rural, Southern, and to have attracted mostly poor and uneducated members. The new studies discovered that it was surprisingly widespread, with strong bases in the Midwest and the West, that it was largely concerned with fraternal social activities and populist political causes, and that it appealed to middle-class, educated whites, many of them urban or suburban residents. Lay came to the scene a few years after Leonard Moore had shocked the sociological world with his book, Citizen Klansman, which studied Indiana, the locus of the largest population of klansmen, and Kenneth Jackson’s Ku Klux Klan in the city, which followed Moore and solidified his findings by looking at a variety of urban centers with strong Klan support.

Lay’s work, while important, was far less ground-breaking. This book, for example, is his regional study of Buffalo, a place where the KKK never got terribly effective, although like many cities, there was an active klavern during the early 1920s. Lay ties this study in with the broader revisionist literature of the period, and finds that the Klan in Buffalo was often making pleas for tolerance and understanding – because they were themselves the perceived victims of a population that wanted nothing to do with them. A law was passed in New York prohibiting the wearing of masks or hoods in public demonstrations, and requiring that fraternal organizations register their membership with the state, which was largely enacted by Klan opponents to combat the Klan. Although the Klan attempted to resist, they were ultimately ineffective, and members concerned about the effect of bad publicity soon drifted away to other, safer societies.

Lay’s case study, if it isn’t innovative, is interesting and thorough, including some fascinating anecdotes about colorful characters like mayor Francis Xavier Schwab, a Catholic, former brewer and Klan opponent, and reverend L.E.H. Smith, a Klan supporter and prohibitionist who was apparently poisoned by organized criminals. It is also full of demographic details on Buffalo of the 1920s and (to the extent possible) the local klansmen. I would not recommend this book as an introduction to the 1920s KKK (the larger studies mentioned above would serve better), but it is an interesting addition to the literature and a study of a very unusual example.