Thus read the front page of the Worcester Telegram, October 19, 1924.
There was a KKK in Worcester, and a weird one. It’s worth explaining how the Worcester Klan ended up being a half-Swedish organization that directed its hatred towards Irish and Italians, not blacks.
The first version of the KKK or “First Klan,” was a racist terrorist group formed in the wake of the Civil War. It died out in the 1880s. Then, in 1915, the smash pro-Klan film “Birth of a Nation” inspired a rebirth of the movement, the “Second Klan.” It really took off in 1920 when it adopted aspects of multilevel marketing, with some Klan recruiters getting rich and Klansmen buying lots of crap from the national organization like helmets and even robes—DIY Klan gear was frowned upon.
The KKK had a whole menu of hatred to choose from, whether anti-Mormon, anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-immigrant, or anti-Catholic. Worcester Klansmen were especially interested in these last two. A boom in immigration from Catholic areas like Ireland and Italy was putting pressure on the labor market. (Immigrants were a huge part of Worcester in the 20s, when only 70% of the population was native-born.) Klan membership was a way to push back. (The Worcester Klan was a little more upscale than you might think, consisting of many fewer “unskilled and menial workers” and many more “semi-skilled and skilled” workers than Worcester overall. And it was vastly more white collar than Worcester’s immigrant population.) While most Klan groups were hostile to immigrants in general, the Worcester Klan had great success recruiting among first- and second-generation Swedish immigrants. The Swedes were among the more established immigrant groups in the city, and the Klan saw Nordic peoples as being a lot better than those dirty mongrels from Southern or Eastern Europe, and on that basis an alliance was built. Worcester was comparatively very Swedish, percentage-wise the second-most Swedish city in the US (behind Minneapolis). In Kevin Hickey’s 1981 paper “The Immigrant Klan,” he estimates there were 4000 Klan members in greater Worcester in 1924, and that half were Swedish (whereas 10% of Worcesterites were Swedes). George N. Jeppson, a high-ranking executive (he would eventually be president) at the Norton Company, one of the city’s largest employers, was a big Swedish booster and had been recruiting Swedish employees for decades. So it came to be that 30% of Worcester-area Klansmen were Norton-employed Swedes, and 60% of Worcester-area Klansmen worked at Norton. The Worcester Klan even went rogue and changed one of the questions on the official KKK membership form from “Were your parents born in the United States of America?” to “Are you a Nordic American?” (Questions like “Are you a Gentile or Jew?”, “Are you of the white race or a colored race?”, and “Do you believe in White Supremacy?” remained unchanged.)
Continue reading “The Worcester Klan Meeting & Riot of 1924”
