By Manny Gonzales
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Imagine a Colorado in which a U.S. senator, the governor and the mayor of Denver all swear allegiance to the the Ku Klux Klan.

It happened -- barely 75 years ago.

Between 1921 and 1925, the Klan flourished politically in Colorado, part of a national resurgence amid a time of social unrest after World War I.

Five percent of the state's 1 million residents at the time -- claimed membership in the secretive, racist group.

"The Klan converted Colorado into one of the Invisible Empire's strongest realms," said University of Utah history professor Robert Goldberg, who wrote Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado.

The Klan flaunted its influence by holding rallies and burning crosses on South Table Mountain near Golden.

Then, almost as suddenly as it had appeared, the Klan faded from view, its leaders discredited by an awakening populace.

The Klan arrived in Colorado when a tall, fat man in a tailored suit stepped off a train at Denver's Union Station in the spring of 1921. William Joseph Simmons, the self-proclaimed Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, had come to meet with a hand-picked group of prominent Denver residents at the Brown Palace.

Simmons initiated the men into the Klan, and organizers soon swept across the state, soaking up Protestant ministers, Masonic lodge leaders, farmers and small-town politicians.

Six years earlier, Simmons and 15 followers had revived the Klan in Georgia. The new Klan was different from the group that fought black emancipation with lynchings during Reconstruction in the post-Civil War South.

Simmons' modern version was less about lynchings than political domination. The Klan grew popular in states far beyond the South, gaining political power from Indiana to Oregon.

But few Klan enclaves were as well organized and powerful as in Colorado, where people from all walks of life paid a $10 initiation fee and another $15 for a white hood and robe.

Colorado's 55,000 Klan members set up chapters in Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Grand Junction and Cañon City. Denver's chapter boasted 17,000 members.

Marketing itself as a group of vigilante patriots crusading for old-fashioned values, the Klan found Colorado fertile ground.

The days after World War I had seen a steep rise in bootlegging and moonshining across the state. Denver was rife with vice and labor unrest.

"They (Klan leaders) were very smart, and they knew how to come off as a very appealing social group," said Richard Delgado, a University of Colorado law professor who co-authored a study on racism in Colorado. "Denver was a somewhat rough-hewn city at the time, replete with saloons, brothels and boarding houses."

The Klan also capitalized on whites' fears of a "New Negro" emerging from World War I and joining the city's almost 8,000 blacks to fight a domestic battle against racism.

At schools, black students staged protests, demanding equality and inclusion in school events such as dances and sporting events. In February 1923, 10 black East High School students attended the school's graduation dance, sending the city into an uproar.

"We are not objecting to the Negroes attending the same schools with us, but to allow them to take part in our dances and formal school affairs on an equal social plane with us seems going a bit too far," one white student told The Denver Post.

Nicknaming itself the Denver Doers Club, the Denver Klan chapter introduced itself on June 17, 1921, in an advertisement in the Denver Times: "We are a law-and-order organization assisting, at all times, the authorities in every community in upholding law and order. ... We are not only active now, but we were here yesterday, we are here today and we shall be here forever."

Early anti-Klan sentiment was ineffective. Denver Mayor Dewey Bailey condemned the Klan, and Denver District Attorney Phillip Van Cise crusaded against it, sending agents to infiltrate the organization. He also convened a grand jury in 1921. It returned after a month with no indictments, only a recommendation for further investigation.

These measures did not deter the Klan, which was unable to mask its dark side for long.

On July 7, 1921, a bomb exploded in Walter Chapman's front yard. Chapman, a black mail carrier, had challenged the racial status quo by moving into a house at 2112 Gilpin St. in an otherwise white neighborhood. He wasn't injured.

Klansmen noisily caravaned in cars through Jewish neighborhoods on West Colfax Avenue, shouting obscenities and honking their horns, Goldberg wrote.

Because of their large numbers, Colorado's 125,000 Roman Catholics bore the brunt of Klan hatred, Goldberg said. KKK businesses sold cigars labeled "CYANA,"an acronym for Catholics, You Are Not Americans.

The Klan staged boycotts on Catholic-owned businesses and urged merchants to fire Catholic employees.

Denver Grand Dragon John Locke, a physician, nixed a bombing plot aimed at Catholics' Denver crown jewel, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, saying Catholics would only build a bigger church with the insurance money.

Locke engineered bloc-voting statewide. Klansmen banged on the front doors of supporters to tell them how -- and for whom -- to vote. They handed out "pink tickets" labeling each candidate Protestant, Catholic or Jew.

From Klan headquarters at 1345 Glenarm Place, Clarence Morley, an obscure Denver District Court judge and high-ranking Klan officer, became governor. Rice Means -- a Klan member appointed Denver's city attorney -- won a short-term U.S. Senate seat. Ben Stapleton became Denver's mayor with Klan support, then survived a recall election with Locke running his campaign.

"I will work with the Klan and for the Klan in the coming election, heart and soul," Stapleton vowed at a Klan rally. "And if I am re-elected, I will give the Klan the kind of administration it wants."

Morley appointed 200 Klansmen as prohibiton agents, giving the Klan a state-sanctioned goon squad.

But he ultimately proved a political blunderer and failed to regain the Republican Party's nomination in 1927.

Dissension within the Klan, political backstabbing and a changing social climate also sapped its power. Stapleton, who had accepted Klan backing out of political expediency, later repudiated the organization.

In 1925, Locke came under investigation by the U.S. Treasury over his management of Klan funds because he hadn't paid income taxs in more than a decade. At Stapleton's urging, the Klan national headquarters in Atlanta demanded Locke's resignation.

Locke's ouster split the Denver Klan and spelled its doom, and the Klan rapidly lost its political influence.

But the organization's brief grip on Colorado left a legacy.

"The signal the Klan government emanated to the rest of the world was that if you're Catholic, Jew or black, you're not welcome in Colorado," Delgado said.

"And people today wonder why this state has such a small black population."

Colorado Milestones, which appears Tuesdays, is part of a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society. Digital and print copies of historical images available at the Colorado Historical Society (303) 866-2305.

Online: InsideDenver.com, keyword "2000."

On TV: Sunday at 10 p.m.: Colorado History: How tuberculosis and the climate shaped Colorado.

November 23, 1999

Colorado Millennium 2000 is a yearlong project by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, NEWS4 and the Colorado Historical Society
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