The Baldwin Church Visit

Part 2 of the Richmond Hill Klan Origin Story

If you have not, you might read “Late on a Saturday Night: Part 1 of the Richmond Hill Klan Origin Story”

When men of the Richmond Hill Klan No. 30, the Friendly Sons of America, met on December 15, 1923, for their regular Saturday night meeting, things were starting to heat up. The provisional unit was growing quickly, showing itself to be a force, drawing the attention both of the local media and Klan leaders. Charters from the national organization were hard to come by, and their activity was putting them on the map. On December 2, a group of men from No. 30 visited Hillside Presbyterian Church, pastored by their own Rev. Joe MacInnes. One of them addressed the congregation in full regalia. The visit was a success, attracting an overflow crowd and stirring up worry and intrigue in the newspapers. Emboldened, at their next regularly scheduled Saturday night meeting on December 8 they discussed attending church services in Baldwin, Glendale and Woodhaven the following night. A similar visit to Springfield Presbyterian Church planned for that night was rescheduled for December 16. The Exalted Cyclops appealed for volunteers to participate and appointed #147 to coordinate them. That same night they also voted to create a committee to arrange church visits, “open air ceremonies, etc.” 

There is no known report of Klan attendance at churches in Woodhaven or Glendale on Sunday, December 9, but there was a report in the Freeport paper of the Klan visit to the Methodist Protestant Church in Baldwin that night. According to the Daily Review, the Klan entered with a burning cross and silently walked to the front where seating had been reserved for them. “The curious,” the paper said, filled the auditorium and a classroom. Churchgoers were “awe stricken” and “many gasped at the startling scene.” 

That night, the pastor, the avowedly pro-Klan Rev. Thomas Henry Slater (1881-1968), spoke in a rousing spiritual defense of the Klan. Slater’s talk, “An Investigation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” was not much of an investigation but it was quoted extensively in the Daily Review account of the evening. To Slater, the Klan was a “great spiritual movement”; not an organization so much as an “awakening.” Countering their reputation for violence and lawlessness, Slater described them as benevolent defenders of law and order. Ignoring all that was commonly known of the Klan, Slater said “to serve is the glory of the Klansman.” The Klan was, he said, “an institution of chivalry, humanity, justice, and patriotism, embodying all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood and patriotic in purpose. To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal, to relieve the injured and the oppressed, and to succor the suffering and unfortunate, especially worthy widows and orphans.” 

Appealing to white Protestant anxieties about changes in society, he said “It is coming to be recognized more and more that the place where we must begin to overcome the crime wave which seems to be sweeping over our country, is in the home.” According to Slater, “the ideal home which will be a real factor for good in our national life. So the Klan seeks to protect and defend the American home from all enemies. Every member is obliged to do this, knowing what the Klan is and stands for.” Slater, whose rhetorical style was not seen as artful, said of the Klan: “It is the right arm of the Protestant Church, and is confronted with the task of arousing American born men and women to the need of dedicating themselves to the service of the Church of the Living God. There is a need for an active Christian manhood in the church today. Too long have the men allowed the women to carry the burden of the church. They reap the benefits, while sharing none of its burdens.” The services ended with singing by the choir as the “twenty odd unknown Klansmen departed as silent and mysteriously as they entered.” 

Just a few months later, Brooklyn papers associated Rev. Slater with Freeport No. 10, when “as a representative and in the name of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Freeport” he presented a flag to a new school in Merrick. His membership status can also be inferred from statements he made in the weeks and months leading up to December 1923. Installed at Baldwin MPC in 1920 after pastoring at South Amboy in his native New Jersey, the first recorded instance of Rev. Slater’s advocacy of the Klan was on July 1, 1923, when in his sermon “American Ideals and the Ku Klux Klan,” he claimed he “did not believe” reports of Klan violence. “I am wholly in favor of the principles of the Ku Klux Klan,” he said, “because it stands for American ideals, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, separation of church from the state, and the upholding of the Constitution.” There were no Klansmen in attendance at the July 1st sermon. 

According to a story in the Tablet, the newspaper of the Brooklyn Diocese, three unnamed Jamaica ministers were in attendance when Rev. Slater spoke at the annual dinner of the Men’s Association of the First M. E. Church of Jamaica. His topic there was essentially the same as it had been in July: Klan ideals and how they had been maligned and misrepresented in the national media. His speech was mentioned in two other newspapers but one left out the fact that his speech on ideals concerned the Ku Klux Klan. Nonetheless, by December 1923, Slater was one of a growing number Protestant pastors in the Long Island/NYC region who were vocal proponents of the order. How many? Part of an ongoing investigation, the question is complicated by the arrival of ministers from the South who flooded Long Island, giving speeches and recruiting new members, just as they did in most northern states, playing off local issues and regional bigotries to ingratiate themselves.

Earlier in 1923, invoking an issue that had great resonance for northern Protestants, Rev. Slater spoke out against bootlegging and rum running in Baldwin Harbor. The young fishermen tempted by the lure of fast-money could be restored by the power of prayer and Slater claimed “moral suasion” had converted some and was better than any federal “revenue” agent. At the time, Long Island south shore towns all the way out to the Hamptons were inundated by illegal alcohol dispatched from boats just offshore. Some Klansmen participated in vigilante efforts to cut off the flow, and the next year one of them would be killed in a shootout with smugglers on Manorville Road, drawing hundreds of men to search for his killer and thousands more to his funeral.

By December 1923, Slater’s support of the Klan would have been well-known to anyone who cared to know about it. While the Daily Review description of his congregants’ reaction suggests some members were surprised to see the Klansmen enter the church and file down to the front, others were fully aware of what was going on. Likely not the only one who knew, James B. Rozell appeared at the Richmond Hill Klan meeting the night before to encourage a delegation from Queens. Klansman Rozell served as a steward of Baldwin MPC when Rev. Slater was reappointed pastor and he was still when he visited No. 30 in Richmond Hill. Two years later amidst anti-Klan backlash, one church officer said 60% of the congregation were Klan members. There is no basis to evaluate that claim, but common sense would dictate that it was probably not that high. That said, during Rev. Thomas Slater’s tenure as pastor, Baldwin Methodist Protestant Church was known—at least by some—as “the Klan church.”

At least some people in Baldwin were not having it, and in a dramatic turn not long after midnight on Friday, December 14, the church building was engulfed in fire and burned to the ground. “Many an eye of the old worshippers,” the Daily Review wrote, “was suffused with tears at the sad spectacle. Fifty years of toil and struggle vanished in a few moments in the fury of the flames. Heavenward, myriads of sparks soared, brilliantly illuminating the inky darkness. As a result, night hawks from all sections speeded to the scene.”

The Daily Review reported that the fire was discovered by a taxi driver, who went to a nearby restaurant and called it in. At the same time, a neighbor across the street smelled the smoke and awakened Slater, his wife Deborah, and the Sopers, an elderly couple who lived adjacent to the church. The fire spread quickly from the rear to the front, breaking through the roof as it consumed the building. Since there was no hope in saving it, no requests for help went out to surrounding towns. The Soper house was damaged by the fire but not totally destroyed.

It had not been a month since the church community came together to renovate the half-century old building. In a story from November, the Daily Review described the sounds of hammers and saws and the sights of people working for a common cause. Even as news broke, the community as well as outsiders rallied to aid Rev. Slater and his church. Church trustees affirmed their support for Slater and promised to rebuild. Rev. Daniel Lewis, also of Baldwin, offered Slater and his congregation the use of the Methodist Episcopal Church building during the rebuilding effort though Slater arranged for services in School No. 3 on a nearby corner. 

The Daily Review did not mention the recent visit by the Klan or Slater’s support for the hooded order until the very last sentence. Among some there was a lingering refusal to accept what the Brooklyn papers, such as the Daily Eagle, saw as the lead: Klan opponents hit the church with accelerants and set it alight just a few days after the visit by the Klan.

The Klan pledged its support. Next to the front page Daily Review article describing the fire was another about the Klan efforts to help rebuild the church. A Klan leader from Nassau County named Charles Kessel, a representative of Emperor William Simmons, implored local units to contribute funds, to show their loyalty to the Protestant church by showing their support for Baldwin MPC. It’s not clear how seriously his initiative was taken by other Klan leaders. Kessel was a supporter of Simmons, whose title was largely symbolic after he had been “kicked upstairs” by Hiram Wesley Evans, the Imperial Wizard who replaced him. Within a few weeks, Evans would banish Simmons from the Invisible Empire altogether. Kessel appears in another drama involving the Simmons faction, but his days of influence were largely behind him at the end of 1923.

If the national Klan was going to support the rebuilding of the Baldwin church, it would not be because of Simmons or Kessel. The intensity of effort and strong organizing of the Richmond Hill Klan was central to the rebuilding of the church. At the time, no secret was made of the Klan’s involvement. 

Perhaps because of the dramatic turn of events, there were several visitors attending the standing Saturday night meeting of Richmond Hill No. 30 on December 15. They included: Rev. Theodore M. Tankersley of Glendale, a member of Jamaica No. 5; two Pratt brothers from Brooklyn No. 2; A. B. Pidgeon from No. 18 in New Jersey; Charles Hewlett from Jamaica No. 5; and J. B. Rozell visiting again from Baldwin. Also visiting that night was Irwin Hignett, a prominent national Klan lecturer known to the public as the Human Dynamo. His attendance that night in Richmond Hill as well as that of the District Kleagle Joseph W. (Pop) Jones, a southerner who was often credited with early Klan organizing on Long Island, suggests that the rising klavern in central Queens was worthy of a visit by higher-ups. 

As Christmas was ten days away, there was some practical business concerning their benevolent operations. The Friendly Sons heard the plans for the Christmas fund: 150 gloves to be purchased for the Ottilie Home orphans. In addition, five families were to be “taken care of” by the fund. Payment was approved for a bill for flowers purchased for a sick Klansman.

The burning of the church in Baldwin two nights before was surely on the mind of those at the meeting of Richmond Hill No. 30. The Exalted Cyclops spoke on the issue, as did Baldwin MPC steward James B. Rozell, who provided early information about the rebuilding plans. The fire in Baldwin was an attack on the Klan. #173, Charles Seaman, proposed a committee to find ways to help raise money in support of the rebuilding of the church. It was quickly approved. This idea eventually became known as the Baldwin Church Committee and it was very active in supporting the rebuilding effort. 

Moving onto other topics, the Exalted Cyclops announced that Richmond Hill No. 30 now had a printer among their membership, and that notices could now be printed. A motion was made and approved basically requiring that the printer’s facilities be secure. They discussed pending immigration legislation in Washington; Hignett called for closing the “gates” to immigrants. Another topic covered in the meeting, and which making the rounds of klaverns nationwide, was the Ku Klux Klan support for a cabinet-level Secretary of Education.

Given the opportunity to address the meeting, the national lecturer Hignett spoke “energetically” about not getting caught up in petty issues and instead working for the “big and main things.” District Kleagle Joseph W. (Pop) Jones discussed how he had been transferred to the Capitol District. Next up was Rev. Theodore M. Tankersley, pastor from Glendale Baptist Church and member of Jamaica No. 5, who spoke on “American Principles.” The minutes of the meeting do not contain many details, so we don’t know what each said.

With Tankersley, however, we have some sense of what was on his mind that night. The previous weekend, the evening of the Klan visit to Baldwin, Tankersley conducted his service as if he was about to be visited. While there is no mention of any robed Klan contingent, a reporter must have been tipped off, because on Monday the Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran a story about Tankersley’s sermon and his advocacy for the Klan. He was quoted saying that the principles of the Klan were “undebatable” and that anyone who could not accept those principles was not worthy of living in the United States. 

Originally from Stillwater, Oklahoma, Tankersley was a war veteran who attended Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, Oklahoma Baptist University, and was 26 when enrolled at Columbia University in New York during the 1922-1923 academic year. Tankersley complained about his having been “rotten-egged” for his Klan association in Oklahoma, but the generous airing of the young pastor’s ugly views in the Daily Eagle shows why. In his upside-down world, where being feared was a value and public outings of Klansmen were badges of honor, we see threads of meaning still relevant today. After complaining about how “foreign” New York City was, he offered the following: “Race riots between blacks and whites generally come from spending too much money on negro schools, and the Ku-Klux Klan members are going to give their lives, if necessary, for the freedom of the United States and for White Supremacy.” Like Rev. Joe MacInnes, he followed the Klan prohibition against admitting membership. “My one regret,” Tankersley said in concluding his remarks to his congregation, “is that I am not a member of the Ku-Klux Klan.” 

Preparing for another church visit, the Exalted Cyclops spoke about the next day’s services at Springfield Presbyterian Church. A national Klan speaker would be present, he told them. It’s not in the minutes but we know that speaker was Hignett (appearing in Springfield as mysterious Klan lecturer the Human Dynamo) and they for sure all did too. The Exalted Cyclops then said it was not advisable to wear regalia for the Springfield visit. A motion was made by #189 and then seconded by #5 that a collection be taken up for the usual donation to Springfield Presbyterian Church. After the motion passed, a fifteen minute recess allowed the men to pass the hat for the church. 

The presence of Pop Jones at the meeting is significant in a number of ways. Near the end of the meeting there was further discussion of his transfer to Capitol District. Jones had been an early organizer in what would come be known as “District 2,” a Klan territory comprising Queens and part of Nassau County. By the 30s, New York State would have a dozen of these districts. It’s likely his transfer would have been an affront to the autonomy of emergent District 2 units, including No. 30, and interference from Atlanta was a theme that played on repeat for at least a decade after. From another view, Atlanta had in Pop Jones a steady, experienced hand as it moved to expand its power up the river. 

A motion was made by #20 and seconded by #11 to offer “heartiest and best wishes in his future work, in appreciation of his excellent work and sacrifice in establishing Clanism (sic) in our territory.” The motion passed. Another motion was made, seconded and passed, that District Kleagle Jones be required to come in to the klavern and stand to the left of the altar and receive the appreciation of all. He was escorted to the Exalted Cyclops and then to the altar where each man filed by, shaking his hand and offering words of thanks and good wishes. 

The meeting ended at 11:30 PM soon after a brief treasurer’s report indicated that $52.62 had been received for Springfield Presbyterian.

Next:
Part 3 of the Richmond Hill Origin Story: A Cross Burning In St. Albans