Introduction to the C-U Klan

This webpage highlights a mostly forgotten part of our local history in Champaign-Urbana and Champaign County generally. The information within was acquired from local newspaper archives, local historical archives, local research and local historians. The content may be disturbing and use archaic and offensive language of the time.

The history of the second Klan nationally and locally is often far more complicated and messy than most people realize. Simple narratives, especially politically motivated ones, can be hard to mesh with the depictions in primary sources. Below is a brief overview of the local Klan during this time. We will be expounding on these and other topics in future posts and pages on this website.

This project is to make this information freely available to the public in a non-partisan and objective way. It is being done with the help of volunteers, library and archive staff, and other assistance for free. There is no funding or advertising (other than some from the 1920s newspaper clippings).

The Local Klavern:

The second Ku Klux Klan movement generally arose in 1915 around the same time that the film "Birth of a Nation" glamorizing the original Klan began to spread across theaters in the United States. That film came to Champaign-Urbana in February of 1916 to the approval and applause of local audiences (including local political leaders).

The first significant Klan gathering in Champaign County was 8/5/1922 and reported by local papers as involving 4,000 to 6,000 attendees, "high officials from a number of states," and a number of religious leaders. The Urbana Daily Courier noted that event was held on the Richmond farm  between Mahomet and Fisher, included an automobile procession, a band, and hundreds of initiations.

By at least early 1923, this would evolve into the Zenith Klan No. 56 of the Realm of Illinois Ku Klux Klan. Soon they would be visiting local churches in full regalia, getting support from local religious leaders and sometimes have open gatherings with and without masks at local parks:

There was also a campus Ku Klux Klan inter-fraternity organization variously described as having been established in 1906 or 1908. This society changed its name to distinguish itself from the national Klan organization in April of 1923. More information on this organization is available here.

The headquarters of the local Klan in Champaign County was the Illinois Theater in Urbana, IL. Picture with description in the 2/13/1925 issue of "The Fiery Cross" Klan newspaper of the giant electric "fiery cross" on the roof:

A great modern overview of the history of the second Ku Klux Klan movement itself is available in Linda Gordon's "The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition." For a great book on the original Klan with a lot of primary sources and direct accounts of both perpetrators, victims and bystanders, I strongly recommend "White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction" by Allen W. Trelease.