If you walk anywhere in the five boroughs, it only takes a few minutes before you find a street or a corner named for a civic leader, a fallen firefighter, or someone else selected by the community for such a tribute. According to James Barron in a recent column, in New York City there are more than 2000 co-named locations—as the Department of Transportation calls them, 78 approved through July of this year and nearly 200 in all of 2021.
The process is a good demonstration of community-initiated legislation. Anyone willing to collect the signatures of nearby residents can propose a co-naming. The local community board’s transportation committee is usually the first to review proposed co-namings, which must meet a few sensible requirements in order to be considered. After the committee and then the full community board approves, the proposed co-naming goes to the local city council member for another review and preparation of the legislation that will need to be voted on by the city council and signed by the mayor. It’s not always been trouble-free.
But what happens when we learn something about an honoree that makes us wish we could undo it, or at least remove the distinction from the public streets? In the era of #MeToo, revelations about an honoree’s past might lead to a reconsideration of any co-naming. As police misconduct records come online for all to see, scrutiny of a “heroic” officer’s previous misdeeds could complicate how we recognize sacrifice in the call of duty. But what if the honored person is discovered to have been associated with a notorious hate group or terrorist organization? That too is likely to come up. Unfortunately, it already has.
Take the case of Rev. Dr. Herbert A. Bente Way (E. 164th Street at Boston Road) in the Bronx. A native of the South Bronx, Bente was pastor of Grace Gospel Church at 589 East 164th St., just up the block from the corner bearing the marker. On Gilbert Tauber’s website OldStreets.com, which serves as a kind of unofficial index of co-named locations, it says that Bente was the pastor there from 1932 until his death in 1978, though Ancestry.com contains death records that show he died in September 1977, just a month shy of his 80th birthday. Citing language likely included in the petition and the legislation, Bente was, according to Tauber’s site, “a leader of the Bronx Council of Churches and the New York City Council of Churches, and a former president of the Greater New York Ministers Association,” all of which is true.
He was active in the Bronx community where he pastored hundreds if not thousands over the years, offering a spiritual education in part through music. In 1950, the New York Daily News included a photograph of Bente meeting with Black teenage boys in a story about a New York City Youth Board gang intervention project. In the photo, the boys gathered around him are listening and engaged. Like Bente, some are wearing ties. Bente is obviously holding forth, but in the context of care, of pastoring to his flock. Bente witnessed the changes that came to Morrisana and the South Bronx in those years, he lead an integrated congregation that transformed with the community. All indications are that he was a beloved pastor in the neighborhood.
But if you undertake the most casual search, you will also find that beginning in the 1930s Bente was a national and state leader of a fraternal organization known as Patriotic Order, Sons of America (POSA)—and here is your first clue about Herbert A. Bente. Although POSA has since distanced itself from its nativist origins, during Bente’s time it was a stridently patriotic organization for the native-born only. Nativist fraternal organizations were more common in the early twentieth century than they were in the 1990s, and likely POSA by then would not have set-off any alarms at the time the corner of 164th Street and Boston Road was co-named.
Although Herbert A. Bente Way was approved by the New York City Council in 1994, a review of Google Street View images dating back to 2011 suggests that the sign with his name did not appear on the location until late 2017 or early 2018. Since 1994, much information has become available with just a few clicks of the mouse. Because Bente was a popular local pastor, there was no reason to question those who had sought to honor him twenty-five years earlier. But what if someone had taken a closer look?
In 1932, when Bente accepted the position at Grace Gospel Church in the Bronx, it was a homecoming of sorts. Born on October 14, 1897, Herbert Augustus Bente was raised in Mott Haven and was living with his mother and sisters on St Ann’s Avenue when at age 20 he registered for the draft, though there is no indication he served. Bente seems to have been working as a purchasing clerk when he was first involved in evangelism. Soon after Bente was installed at First Baptist Church in Bethlehem in 1931, the Morning Call newspaper described his origins: “Rev. Bente received his start in song evangelism in Northfield, Massachusetts, through the encouragement of Charles M. Alexander, well-known gospel leader and writer of hymns,” who was evangelizing in New York City in the years before the war. According to that article, Bente assisted Billy Sunday in a New York campaign.
In 1920, Bente was named the first pastor of the newly-established Church of the Nazarene of Flushing in Queens. Around then, he met Regina “Jean” Volkmar, who was also active in youth ministry. The Brooklyn papers bear traces of their courtship: in 1920 the two were invited “special workers” at an Epworth League event in Huntington and the next year were featured at an “All-Day Holiness Meeting” in Woodmere. They were married in 1923.
In what amounts to another clue, Bente resigned the pastorate at Nazarene of Flushing in early 1924, claiming that the demands of supporting his family forced him to find better terms of employment. As the Daily Eagle told it at the time, he resigned “in order that he may enter a business enterprise where he can earn sufficient income for himself and family to live on.” After his farewell sermon on January 27, the Eagle said he would “take up his duties as field manager of the Foundation Press, Inc., of Massachusetts.” Neither Herbert nor Regina Bente appears in a 1925 New York State census record, so it is possible he did relocate, at least briefly, to Massachusetts to work for Foundation Press. But if so, no trace of it was left. There is also no visible evidence that Foundation Press had an office in Massachusetts.
For the next few years, Bente was a “supply pastor,” subbing at the pulpit of churches while the regular pastor was away. A member of various evangelistic committees and associations, he was a prolific Sunday School and Bible Study teacher in Flushing and in Brooklyn. His name and picture appeared in many advertisements for services at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Park Slope and at the Bedford YMCA, where he also taught public speaking to young men. During that time, Bente was a popular song evangelist who traveled as far as Rochester or Suffolk County for big tent revival meetings, some lasting days or weeks. In 1928 The Chat newspaper in Brooklyn said this of him: “Bente is a former national secretary of the Federation of Men’s Bible Classes, and is well known in the field of lay Christian workers and a forceful Bible teacher.”
Another clue comes from Bente’s time in Bethlehem as the pastor of First Baptist. In November 1932, after less than two years in the pulpit, he submitted his resignation to his congregation effective at the end of the year. The Morning Call, which had covered Bente since he arrived from New York, described his reasons: “He stated that due to the general economic conditions he considered it advisable to free the church in order that it might make other pulpit arrangements that will at the same time enable them to better meet their outstanding obligations. He would likewise, then, be free to make other connections to enable him to better care for his obligations.”
Little did anyone realize, however, that in returning to the Bronx he resigned his position in Bethlehem and disappeared, abandoning Regina and their two adopted sons. He was described as the “missing pastor” in the Morning Call and other papers as far as Wilkes Barre in the months that followed. Eventually, Regina was granted a divorce from her husband, for cruelty, his “whereabouts unknown.”
Later, he would remarry, but even that is curious. In the later 1930s, in addition to serving at Grace Gospel Church, Bente was pastor at Eldred Congregational Church in Sullivan County. According to a Goshen paper in 1939, Bente “preaches in New York City in the morning and drives to Eldred to preach there in the evening.” It isn’t clear when he began commuting up there or why, but that he married his second wife Katherine there in June 1939 offers some explanation. Katherine had been living in the area, was divorced and with young boys. They were at their lakeside home in Eldred in 1940 when a Census worker recorded that they owned it.
What is most notable about Bente, however, is not his private failures in relationships, nor his listless passion for Protestant messaging, but that he was associated with the Ku Klux Klan. This fact was likely known by those who hired him, especially given that the outgoing pastor of Grace Gospel, Rev. Thomas E. Little, was a well-known “adherent” of the Klan and a rather aggressive distributor of extreme anti-Catholic literature.
In retrospect, the warning signs were there. Herbert Bente arrived at Grace Gospel in the wake of a scandal at Grace Gospel Church. In the Spring of 1932 Rev. Little organized a revival at the church and the main feature was a woman named Katherine Carroll, who went by the name Sister Ligouri. She claimed she had escaped from Precious Blood monastery in Brooklyn. She was a dramatic presenter, telling the crowd she kept her hands inside her robe to conceal her revolver, then throwing open her garment to reveal a Bible in her hand: “This is my gun! This is what I am fighting with!” she shouted. Her stories about her captivity drew such huge crowds to the church that the revival went on for more than a month. Carroll eventually apologized for her false words—her transgression was unique in the “escaped nun’s confessions” genre in that she had named actual places and people, which of course has real world consequences. So when confronted with her lies, she blamed Rev. Little for putting her up to it. According to Patrick Scanlan, the editor of the Brooklyn Tablet newspaper, under the direction of Thomas Little, Grace Gospel Church had been the location of another performance of anti-Catholic lies in 1929 by a man who posed as a former monk and then left the area after being exposed by the Bronx Home News.
Although a major clue, association with Thomas Little proves only that Bente’s later leadership of POSA was not isolated. Nor was Bente himself unique. Evidence collected from a variety of sources indicates that Bente was one of many Protestant ministers in the New York region who openly supported, greeted, championed, endorsed or otherwise approved of the Klan when they weren’t members.
Like many Protestant ministers in New York, Bente was active in the evangelist movement in the years after the war, a tent revival scene that trended towards the commercial spectacle as it accommodated the performative environment of radio and vaudeville, especially when compared to the staid, old-fashioned style of ministry. Unlike today when religious affiliation is on the decline, it was quite popular for young people to organize their social, intellectual and, of course, spiritual lives around their church, around the zealous evangelical missionary work and social life it afforded. It was a time when you were likely to see a 1000 person tent erected at a location like Locust and Main Street in Flushing for a two week revival, or a weekly outdoor service on a Saturday night in the Summer, such as occurred at in the lot just off Broadway on Covert in Bushwick. While even conservative fundamentalist pastors like John Roach Straton of Calvary Baptist in Manhattan would be seen as rightwing by today’s standards, Bente was associated with clergy on the fringes, a radical Protestant network of young, often fiery ministers who hyped the Klan when not speaking for it. This network, on full display at revivals as well as Klan “klonklaves” included a broad spectrum of racist and nativist bigotry, antisemitic and anti-Catholic scapegoating, child preachers, fake nuns’ captivity narratives, patriotic “Indian Chiefs,” and political opportunists. The Klan cleverly offered dues-free memberships to ministers and cash gifts to congregations that allowed them to enter the church during services, or speak, often in quite dramatic performances.
In the early 20s, the Atlanta-based Ku Klux Klan Inc. sent an army of kleagles (or recruiter-salesmen) and klokards (or lecturers) north to build the organization’s membership, a multi-level marketing scheme that paid the kleagles, statewide officers and their overlords in Atlanta quite handsomely. Often the kleagles and klokards were ministers, and the first of these men arrived in New York in 1921, which is when the first New York City chapter was granted a charter from Atlanta. A minister from North Carolina, Oscar Haywood, was probably not the first but he was certainly one of the most visible from that earliest period, sparring with Mayor Hylan in the newspapers and then barnstorming Long Island villages in 1923 after Hylan had “banned” the Klan in New York City. As elsewhere in the north, negative publicity seemed only to drive more young men to join and 1923 saw a surge of membership in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties. Units in Flushing, Jamaica, Richmond Hill, Maspeth, Springfield, Glendale-Ridgewood, and more had as many as a thousand members each in some cases. There are two easily identifiable waves of growth of the Klan in Queens, and the second one is largely invisible to researching eyes.
After a period of dissension and factionalism that split units and strained relations with Atlanta, membership fell off in 1925 and 1926. In the Summer of 1927, controversy over the Jamaica Klan-police Memorial Day riot that led to several arrests and injuries drove the Klan numbers up significantly in Queens. Almost immediately, Queens would become central to the Klan’s efforts to stop Al Smith from becoming the first Catholic president. The local units took a more aggressive stance, staging public events, burning crosses and aggressively engaging Mayor Walker through the papers and with threats of litigation. As the wave of Protestant outrage at the Catholic police was cresting, Senator Thomas Heflin of Alabama, a Democrat and a notorious loudmouth bigot, appeared in Richmond Hill at the Triangle Ballroom to a large crowd. The next summer, in the run-up to the fall presidential election, Heflin went on tour to stir up anti-Catholic resentiment towards Al Smith and in July returned to the New York area.
Initially, Heflin was scheduled to appear at a Klan rally in Jamaica on July 4, 1928. Preparations had been made, notices went out, and hundreds of Klansmen and curious spectators turned out only to learn that Heflin was in Michigan that day. Apparently, the organizers in Queens had never secured his $250 fee, but the event went on as planned anyway.
On July 31, Heflin appeared appeared at a meeting in front of 3000 people in a tent on property owned by the Freeport Klan, an event that was understood to be a Klan event, much like Heflin was understood to be a Klan member. Rev. Herbert A. Bente gave the opening prayer at that meeting. Described as “a tall man with reddish hair, who said he is a Baptist minister of Syracuse, temporarily without a pastorate,” Bente prayed that “a group of Americans may grow up following Christ and may win victory for the Protestant Church, school and country.”
The big Freeport meeting also included speakers such as Paul M. Winter, the Field Representative for the Klan for Queens County, but who was really an Imperial figure from Pennsylvania, one of several Klan figures who appeared in Queens in the mobilization against Al Smith. Winter exhorted the crowd to resist the Catholic governor and to “fight” in the upcoming election: “I want to see a certain man’s hide tacked to the barn door November 11!”
Heflin was escorted to the platform by Edward C. Smith, whom the Brooklyn Daily Times described as from the South Side Civic Association in Freeport. Smith was also the leader—and public spokesman—of the Freeport Klan, and, as the outspoken advocate of their right to parade through Freeport, he would have been well-known as such. When Senator Heflin reached the platform, he was greeted by Neva Miller Moss, a fraudster who claimed to be a former nun while touring the tent revival scene telling stories about life “Behind Convent Walls,” as went the title of her book. “Oh, Senator! Oh, you great man!” she exclaimed, taking his hand.
According to the Daily Times, Heflin—the Democrat who famously abandoned his party for Hoover over the Smith nomination—spoke for two and a half hours, his anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and dry politics performed in his usual bombastic style. Interrupted by an older woman shouting that he was lying, the local police chief took the stage and threatened any who would cause trouble. At the same time, nearly a dozen Empire State Rangers entered the tent, dressed in costumes reminiscent of state troopers. The Rangers and the Klavaliers were Klan-associated paramilitary units that provided security at large Klan gatherings or for events like Heflin’s speeches, as they had at the Triangle Ballroom in Richmond Hill the previous year. Reports said that those recruited for the Klavaliers security squad were all from Queens. The Klan deployed them by the hundreds, often with firearms visible. The woman shriveled.
But giving the invocation prayer at a Klan-sponsored Heflin rally doesn’t make Bente a member of the Klan. And being a member, in itself, doesn’t say much about anyone in a group that just a few years before likely had four million or so members and tens of millions of sympathizers. By the middle years of the decade the first dupes who paid their dues in 1923 or 1924, and who maybe attended a meeting or two before wandering off, went off the books, passive quitters whose departure sent the Klan’s numbers back down to earth. The lost generation that fought in the war and who came home to trenches of uncertainty in the 20s were easy marks—for revivalists, for those on the fringes, like the Klan. The precipitous drop in membership in 1925 is often suggested as the beginning of the end, if not the end, of the Klan. However, in Queens as in the rest of New York, and perhaps like the rest of the northern U.S., by 1928 the Klan that remained was mostly composed of true believers.
If Bente had been just a member, it would be hard to say much about who he was or what he was about. There were many ghosts whose names appear in membership lists but for whom there is no evidence of real participation, such service on a committee, speaking in the papers, or something else to indicate he was more than just a dupe who paid his ten dollars but didn’t know what he was getting into. Granted, there were many of those kinds of members, something made even more complicated because information about even the most active members is scarce.
But Bente was not just a member. By the end of the twenties, Bente was part of the leadership group of Flushing No. 36 of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a unit chartered in 1926 that persisted for a decade. Bente’s name and Flushing PO box appears on an index card in a local Klan’s business records. The card is part of a series of cards containing information about the executive leadership of each unit in Province 2, which included Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Unlike with other units where it is possible to determine the Exalted Cyclops (chairman) and then the Kligrapp (secretary), in the case of Flushing that information cannot be determined. Nonetheless, he kept a PO box in Flushing while the 1930 Census shows that Bente and family were living at 516 Third Street in Brooklyn, less than two blocks from Prospect Park.
Regardless of his exact role, Bente was one of a few members who constituted an informal core of Flushing No. 36, if not a formal one. He was almost certainly involved as a “charter member.” His abrupt resignation from his position at Church of the Nazarene of Flushing in early 1924, the explanation he gave in doing so, has the hallmark of someone working off the books as a kleagle. Working as a kleagle would have required a similar skill set to the supply pastor who traveled to evangelize at meetings large and small. It is not known when Bente joined, or if he joined before the March 1926 charter date of the unit. Typically, a new unit would be “provisional” at first, until certain benchmarks were met, such as certain number of enrolled members. Then the charter is granted by Atlanta so the initial organizing would have been done in 1924 or at the very latest in 1925 for a charter approved in March 1926.
A report from Flushing No. 36 submitted in 1934 by “L. H. M.,” one of the members of the leadership group, to The Kourier, the official publication of the Klan, offers what may be another clue to Bente’s status within the klavern:
“Under the guidance of the Exalted Cyclops the Unit is contemplating studying the art of public speaking, in order to aid the members in learning how to express themselves both in the Unit and on the outside. It is the consensus of opinion that too many Klansmen lack the ability to tell the others what they think. They are unable to convince others of the righteousness of our Cause simply because they have not mastered the technic of self-expression. It is the desire of the Exalted Cyclops to develop in Flushing Klan No. 36 a battery of competent speakers—men who can face an audience of hostile or friendly people and make their listeners agree that the Klan is on the RIGHT side. Having convinced ourselves of the need for awakening in America, we would seek to convince others by stating the Klan principles in plain, straightforward but forceful manner. To command the attention of others it is first necessary that we fully inform ourselves, and then place ourselves in a position where we can state the facts without fear of becoming panicky at the sight of a group of people. Self-confidence is the first essential to public speaking, and this will come with a full knowledge of the subject at hand. Practice then makes perfect.”
It’s not likely that Bente was the EC in 1934, but that Bente had been teaching public speaking only a few years before suggests that either had been EC recently or his stature such that the current EC might make use of him in offering “professional development” opportunities for his Klan brethren. Either way, that another unit had listed him as one of a small number of contacts for No. 36 shows that he was a central character in Flushing. When the group fizzled in 1936, in part due to a squabble with the Grand Dragon of the Realm of New York, Harry W. Garing, Bente is mentioned in a letter from one member to another regarding his status, in effect asking whether Bente was staying or was he also resigning.
But Herbert A. Bente was not just a member, nor even just a leader of a Klan local. In September 1931, not a year after arriving in Bethlehem, Bente was a speaker at a Klan klonklave in Bethlehem that also featured Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans, Bishop Alma White of the Pillar of Fire Church and also Dr. Charles Fama, an Italian Profestant, anti-Fascist and anti-Catholic activist from the Bronx who would later be Mayor LaGuardia’s controversial choice for medical examiner of the city’s retirement system. Also included were girls from Bethlehem’s “Tri-K” auxiliary and the Bethlehem Gospel Chorus.
Then, back in the Bronx, and no more than two years into his pastorate at Grace Gospel Church, Bente was made one of a few statewide leaders of the invisible empire, the “Grand Kladd” of the Realm of New York. Numerous times, beginning in 1924, members of Queens locals were picked for leadership roles at the province or realm (statewide) level, and often it was a point of pride have a member of the unit raised to the title the Great Titan, Great Kligrapp, or as in Bente’s case, Grand Kladd of the Realm of New York.
At the level of the klavern, or local chapter, the Kladd conducts “alien” initiates through an elaborate ritual checkpoint located between a kind of antechamber outside of the meeting room and the inner room containing the “sacred” altar where they will become “naturalized” members. In addition, the Kladd serves as a prop coordinator or custodian of Klan property used in a meeting and then secures it afterwards. The Kladd might also serve as a kind of general personal assistant to the Exalted Cyclops. A Grand Kladd like Bente would have more a more symbolic role as a figure very close to Grand Dragon Harry W. Garing, leader of the Realm of New York.
At the end of August in 1934, Grand Kladd Herbert Bente introduced Grand Dragon Garing at a meeting in Schenectady. At the time, the New York Klan leadership was holding frequent meetings and rallies around state, mostly north of New York City, but also in places like Freeport, where they returned in the Fall of 1934 for an all-day “field day,” a sort of Klan carnival. That the Klan was active enough to draw hundreds of people to such an event in the middle 1930s may come as a surprise for some, who assume that the Klan’s membership issues a decade earlier were the beginning of a decline that led to them being “finished.” Far from it.
Part of a nationwide strategy unveiled during recent meetings in Atlanta, the New York rallies that summer focused mostly on warning about the rise of Communism and communistic tendencies, a major concern of the Klan (and what became of it) through the Cold War era. For a variety of reasons, the Klan’s membership declined over the years and although anti-Communism had been a talking point for a decade, it was in 1934 that they made a decisive pivot. The idea was to present the Klan as resurgent, despite never having gone away, but also rebrand it somewhat. Downplaying their reputation for hate, emphasizing patriotism and 100% Americanism, they even invited Jews and Catholics to join them in the fight against Communism and radicalism. Still fifteen years before the violent assaults of the Peekskill riot against peaceful Communist protestors that included Paul Robeson, the summer of 1934 the Klan was involved in threatening and intimidating (if not engaging in beatings and vandalizing, as was alleged) at the Communist youth camp at Van Etten in New York’s Southern Tier. Unsurprisingly, these warnings about Communism were accompanied by efforts to collect back dues from members who had not paid.
The Schenectady meeting was reported by the Schenectady Gazette and can also be found in the scene reports from New York locals in the October 1934 issue of The Kourier. The Gazette offers such a sympathetic account that at first it appears to have been written by Hiram Evans or Harry Garing themselves. The sub-headline says that the speakers “harangued” the crowd but also said the event was “quiet.” Garing’s speech is described as making an “impassioned plea for the defense of the American home, the American woman and the American Flag against the encroachments of communistic doctrine.” The audience of about 500 in Crescent Park was described as “attentive.” This meeting of the Klan resulted in no cross burnings and no one was was wearing the typical Klan attire, the Gazette explained, noting it was the first meeting in Schenectady “in years.” The Gazette misspelled Bente’s name “Benton,” something corrected in the Kourier reprint. He was described as the Grand Kladd of New York from “Flushing, L. I.,” and attached as he was to Flushing 36 that’s likely how he represented himself despite being nearly two years into his time in the Bronx. In addition to his introduction of Harry Garing, Bente also gave a short speech and provided the closing prayer. The rest of the article covers Garing’s speech, Klan talking points about “the Reds” with which the Gazette shared evident concern. The article closes with the following:
“The Schenectady meeting is one of a series being conducted all over the nation by the Klan in its war against the Reds, Garing explained after he finished speaking. Tomorrow night he will be in Gloversville.”
In Gloversville on August 24, Garing criticized striking workers while a nationwide textile strike had shuttered a local leather factory. In Harrison on September 15, 100 members of the Klan saw a burning cross during a similar event about Communism that once again featured two speakers; another klonklave was scheduled there for the following Saturday. Originally scheduled for September 8, the field day at Schmaling’s Farm picnic resort in Port Chester was postponed due to heavy rain. The Klan promoted the event as one where Klan families could spend the day, and they anticipated visitors from beyond New York. Also planned was a baseball game, a prize to the largest contingent in robes, and the grand finale would be the naturalization of new members under a large burning large cross. Originally, the Port Chester field day was to have included national figures, including Hiram Evans, the Imperial Wizard. Speakers were not identified in the brief reports of the first Port Chester meeting on September 8. One man with “18” pinned to his coat spoke out against President Roosevelt, for his “tendency to forget the principles of the Constitution.” The Daily News reported that there were 150 at that meeting, though another source said 20 due to the downpour. It was eventually held three weeks later.
Not much more is known about the meetings that fall or Bente’s participation. What is known is that as late as 1934, and likely at least a year or two later, he was the Grand Kladd of an active organization that was growing in some areas even while it was shrinking or dormant in others. But Bente’s status as a leader or organizer did not start in the 1930s when he joined the state leadership. He would have had to have been known as more than just a churchless preacher to have played such an important role—providing the opening prayer at the event featuring Senator Heflin—but surely his association with the Klan was cemented at that moment.
Assuming that the Flushing Klan No. 36 fell apart in 1936, a huge assumption, we don’t know what happened to Herbert A. Bente as far as that organization is concerned. A report from the middle 1940s describes a consolidation of the many New York klaverns into four—including one in the Bronx, what was originally known as Albert Pike Klan No. 1, the first chartered in the city in 1921. Bente’s longtime association with POSA, the patriotic organization with nativist roots, only confirms that he kept at least some of the Klan mentality. We’ll never know what he thought, what he really thought, about the Black youth he pastored in the decades to follow, as Morrisania and the South Bronx changed.
As far as those who loved him enough to name a street after him, one wonders what they knew, and if they did know, what did they think of it. It’s possible his faults were moderated through his contact with the community where he lived and worked for most of his life. Perhaps they were forgiving enough to let it go. Maybe they didn't know. What should the conversation be about remembering him with a street co-naming knowing what we do now? Removing it, perhaps necessary, is also too easy—hiding the facts about Bente might be worse than the casual forgetting that brought us here.
Note: This is a draft, published here so friends can see what I’m doing. There is always more to do in work like this, and I have a lot more to share.