A NOTE TO THE READER: “The Chaplin Affair” was originally published in 2019 as twenty-page handmade pamphlet and was included in “Art Like Air and Water: Mobile Zine & Artist Book Library,” a project of the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance. It reflects what I knew at the time and is constrained by that as much as it is my own hair-splitting obsession with the local news coverage. I have since identified the man who made the call at the end and his story is in the queue. Let me know what you think and thanks for reading — JSK
JUST BEFORE SUNRISE that Saturday, March 26, 1927, the air was cool enough for snow, but a warming breeze brought clouds and then some rain. Once darkness lifted along Jamaica Avenue in a bustling section of central Queens, shops began to stir, trucks made deliveries, and Avenue shoppers ran errands while the BMT Jamaica line, not even ten years old, rumbled overhead. By all accounts, typical rhythms of an early spring morning in Queens.
But any sense of routine ended when the manager of the Garden Theater on Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill arrived to find a note objecting to the planned Sunday screening of Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim. Ominously, the note was from the Ku Klux Klan, a known entity in New York City in the 1920s, even if their reputation has mostly been confined to southern states.
On Monday when news of the incident made it to print, Jamaica’s Long Island Daily Press opened with this lead:
“A letter signed ‘Ku Klux Klan,’ and demanding that two theatres in Richmond Hill and Woodhaven, change their programs, yesterday, resulted in another picture being substituted for a Charlie Chaplin feature.”
The feature targeted by the Klan was the popular four-reel comedy The Pilgrim, originally released in 1923. When the film screened at the very same theaters four years earlier, after having played in Manhattan, Brooklyn and at other theaters in Queens, there were no complaints. Newspapers carried advertisements featuring the Sunday billing of The Pilgrim at the Garden Theater and at the Roosevelt, a theater on Jamaica Avenue twenty-five blocks away in Woodhaven operated by the same company. So why a note threatening violence if the film was shown in 1927? Was it really from the Klan and what were they doing in Queens in 1927, more than two years after most scholars consider them to have been all but dead?
As far as whether it was actually written by the Klan, the papers suggested that management was skeptical. “We do not believe that the klan, if it exists, was actually behind the warning,” the Long Island Daily Press quoted a representative of the theater management on Monday. That doubt was expressed in other local coverage but was not included in either the Associated Press (AP) or United Press (UP) wire service reports. By Friday’s publication of the weekly Richmond Hill Record, a statement by the theater manager read this way: “Whether the Klan was actually behind the warning or not, we of course, do not know.”
Accounts of the note and its contents also varied over the next week. Some newspapers described it as a letter written on letterhead identifying the KKK. Others suggested it was written on the back of a theater program. According to the Monday, March 27 Daily Press, it consisted of a “printed warning with the insignia of the Ku Klux Klan on one side and a note on the other stating that Charles Chaplin, because of his matrimonial troubles, was not a proper person to exhibit, and that unless the program was changed the theatres would be raided and the management suffer at the hands of the Klan.”
Most of the published reports said the writers of the note had a problem with Chaplin, mostly due to his personal life, and said nothing about the The Pilgrim, other than it should not be shown. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran a nearly identical report to the Daily Press of Jamaica, but described the insignia as the “all seeing eye” of the Klan, an image similar to the one used by the Masons. Another account called it a “coat of arms.” Consistent with other reports, the Daily News said in the note “The writers pointed out that the present divorce action against the comedian makes his pictures unfit for the public.” The AP wire, in perhaps the most widely circulated brief, said “The writers objected to the films because Chaplin is being sued for divorce.” The New York Sun said the writers of the now-plural “letters” thought screening a Chaplin film was “demoralizing, in view of the suit for divorce being brought against him by his wife.” The Sun also said, “The letters expressed great horror that the theaters’ managers even would think of exhibiting in a picture the antics of a man described as his wife describes Chaplin in her complaint for divorce. The Klan said it did not believe a man in Chaplin’s predicament was a fit object to be viewed by Queens children and residents with ‘susseptibilities.’”
Only the United Press wire stated otherwise: “The notes, written on the back of programs, were handed to the doormen of the Garden and Roosevelt theaters Saturday evening. They stated that ‘the Pilgrim’ was an affront to the Presbyterian ministry and asked the management not to show the picture. These protests bore a picture of a klansman on horseback.” The backs of programs is not the same as the letterhead or formal stationary that seems to have been used, at least according to most other reports. Not only that, but Saturday night was hours after the theater manager was said by other reports to have arrived at work to discover the messages. The UP report concludes with a quote from the management that is dependent on their own explanation of why the Klan wanted that Chaplin film removed: ”We substituted another Chaplin picture for ‘The Pilgrim,’ because we could not afford to take sides against our patrons,” said the manager of the Roosevelt today.” That is, the issue is religious intolerance, not personal conduct. All other reports indicate something other than a Chaplin film was shown.
Well, which was it? Was the KKK in Queens opposed to Chaplin because of his marital problems, or was it because of the offense caused by representations of the Protestant ministry contained in The Pilgrim?
One of the silent movie era’s biggest stars, Chaplin’s exploits had been followed by the emerging Hollywood news and gossip industry for years. In January 1927, his second wife Lita Grey Chaplin filed for divorce after their very brief marriage and the disclosures were as embarrassing as they were shocking. She accused him of infidelity, of carrying on with multiple women and threatening and abusive behavior. Wire services obliged her side in the very public suit by running every scandalously tawdry detail. Complete saturation of the daily newspapers continued for the first two months of 1927, with a never-ending stream of news of Chaplin’s misdeeds, his hiding out in New York and Paris, the seizure of his estate, the court-appointed administrators, and more.
Newspapers in early 1927 also carried accounts of elected officials, from Seattle to Quebec City, taking action to have Chaplin films banned in their communities due to his marital infidelities and scandalous treatment of Lita. Where banning Chaplin wasn’t considered by town councils or local censors, some theater owners, like those in Windsor, Ontario, simply refused to screen his films until the divorce settlement was complete.
Things got so bad for Chaplin that a group of French writers and artists associated with the Surrealist movement issued an open letter, “To American Opinion,” in his defense, reports of which circulated the month before the Klan delivered a message to the Queens theaters. This group of “intellectuals,” which included Man Ray, Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, and nearly thirty other men, declared the attempts to ban Chaplin’s films a “stupid blunder.” They went beyond simply making an argument for separating private conduct from the evaluation of artistic creations (which is how their statement was characterized in reports of it). Their statement opines on a wife’s sexual responsibilities and makes a number of assertions that would be considered deeply misogynistic—at best—by today’s standards. A version of this statement was published as “Hands Off Love” in the important modernist journal transition in October 1927.
H. L. Mencken, writing in the Baltimore Sun, did nothing to counter the aggressive sexism of the Surrealists, describing Lita Chaplin as a “silly wife,” but also offered this:
“Partly, of course, Mr. Chaplin’s troubles are due to his profession and his eminence in it. The very morons who worshiped him six weeks ago now prepare to dance around the stake while he is burned: he is learning something about the psychology of the mob. But partly, also, they are due to his domicile. A public trial involving sexual accusations is made a carnival everywhere in the United States, save perhaps in a few States that are not quite 100 per cent. American, but nowhere is there more shameless a delight in obscenity than in California. The retired Iowa cow valets who swarm in the State, and especially in the Southern section thereof, are hot for bawdy shows, and like them best when they are free.”
Chaplin’s marital problems were a mainstream media story in early 1927, but this was not the first time Chaplin was the object of the wrath of the KKK. When the The Pilgrim was released four years earlier, it was the target of a series of Klan actions against theaters and the owners who planned or attempted to screen the film. In all instances where this happened the reason was they felt denigrated the Protestant ministry if not Protestantism itself. The UP wire report circulating in papers in the last days of March 1927 shows some awareness of this issue, but in nearly every story about how the Queens theaters were threatened, it is not mentioned.
In The Pilgrim, a film now 100 years old, Chaplin plays an escaped prisoner who dons the attire of a Protestant minister while on the run, an act that leads to a series of comedic situations as nearly every joke plays on the ironies generated by his ineptitude and desperation to continue the ruse. In one scene, he is pressured by a groom eager to have the minister marry him to his runaway bride, while her angry father follows in pursuit. Greeted in a small Texas town by members of a congregation waiting for their new minister, Reverend Pim, the escapee steps into that role but must go to great lengths to remain hidden. In a scene that would become the focus of Protestant-Klan pique, a bottle of liquor, stolen from his deacon host’s pocket, breaks when the two fall on a banana peel, leaving a stain on the sidewalk they both pretend to not notice.
Following introductions to members of the congregation, the imposter awkwardly tries to carry himself as would be expected of the real Reverend Pim and there are frequent laughs as he fails. Charged with the task of presenting a sermon, the faux minister relates with Chaplinesque physicality the story of David and Goliath and the effect was so entertaining that a young boy, presumably the toughest member of a tough audience, applauds energetically when it is over. Chaplin’s character then takes the collection boxes, like a street performer would after a performance, until the deacon looks down his nose and he returns them.
For the Klan, the performance of the story of David and Goliath registered great offense, but other groups saw it differently. For example, Cinninnati’s Israelite newspaper suggested that a Chaplin rendition of the story as a means of instruction was likely to be more effective than boring sermons:
“...it is a commentary upon our educational system that Jewish parents learned more of the Seder from Caruso’s acting in Halvery’s “La Juive,” and more of the narrative of the Exodus from the cinema, “The Ten Commandments,” than they have acquired in the Sunday School. Charlie Chaplin’s graphic description in “the Pilgrim” of David’s victory over Goliath awakened more enthusiasm for the Bible account than numberless school sessions. We must be able in the class-room to inspire our youngsters with the same eager interest for Jewish history that they at times show for secular occupations.”
To the Klan, and to many Protestants, these gags were evidence of anti-Protestant bigotry in Hollywood. That Jewish rabbis and Catholic priests were spared the mockery only made it worse. Along with Protestant groups, such as the Evangelical Ministers’ Association, the Klan worked to have the film censored, by cutting the film or having it taken down altogether.
According to Tom Rice in White Robes Silver Screens, opposition to The Pilgrim was part of the modern Klan’s strategy to achieve mainstream legitimacy as a “moral force.” The actions to stop screenings of the film, which involved local klaverns partnering with church groups, were reported in an emerging network of Klan publications. This, in turn, helped fan the flames by providing an appearance of more widespread action and centralized control over the protests. In places where they were effective, the film was subject to censorship, with certain scenes or shots removed, or with the film banned altogether. Even in places where it played, stories about the offense generated by The Pilgrim were published in the newspaper.
In Mason City, Iowa, Ralph Ravenscroft, manager of the Palace Theater, was visited by a delegation from the Protestant Preachers’ Association and a representative of the Ku Klux Klan. According to an unattributed wire report, they objected to the scene where Chaplin’s character “makes sport” of saying grace at a meal and in response Ravenscroft cut a fourth of the film. “Since the preachers’ protests the crowds are larger than ever,” the report said.
At the request of a sympathetic board member who claimed that ministers throughout the state had complained, the Pennsylvania Board of Censors was visited by the Evangelical Ministers’ Association. In a Chicago Tribune story that was published widely, Paul Gallico reported that the Pennsylvania ministers requested cuts beginning with the scene where the imposter arrives in town through the entirety of the church service, a critically important sequence of the film, without which the story makes no sense. Hearing of the proposed cuts, First National, the studio that released the film, refused to allow the film to be shown in Pennsylvania, and even Chaplin intervened. In the end, the Board of Censors finally approved the film, but only after removing two of the offending parts: the liquor bottle scene and one where bandits rob a saloon and there is shooting. The Pennsylvania censors made the Daily News in New York, which ran a version of the Tribune story and two images from the film: the holdup scene and one of Chaplin the minister.
Although there is no direct evidence of involvement of the KKK in the Pennsylvania Board of Censors’ intervention, the group’s history in the keystone state is well documented and they did have something to say about the film screening in western Pennsylvania. As as been reported by Tom Rice and others, in a letter to Movie Weekly reporter T. Howard Kelly, Pittsburgh Klan No. 1 took pride in how “The Pilgrim has been driven off the screen in several states by the Klan, and Pittsburgh houses are now suffering because they insist on insulting 75 per cent of the population.” They did not specify how the Pittsburgh theaters were suffering, or would suffer if they continued to show it.
As an extension of their reputation for violent night-riding vigilantism, well known in the south but not as common in the north, the Klan would pay visits or would send warnings or threats to those whose behavior they wished to change—including managers of movie theaters. In the March-April issue of Moving Picture World, it was reported that after receiving three notes from the Klan, a projectionist in Massachusetts asked the local police chief “for permission to carry a revolver.” But as Rice points out, a focus on Protestant moralism gave the Klan a veneer of religiosity and their language is imbued with mainstream, if conservative, values.
In their letter to T. Howard Kelly, the Klan expressed concern about cinematic portrayals of interracial relationships. Rather than directly threaten, they asked him menacingly to “Think it over,” as if he, a reporter, was part of what some today might call the “Hollywood elite.” They implored Kelly to get some “horse sense and give us good plays, but do away with questionable plots.” They asked a question of Kelly that shows just how mainstream the Klan positioned themselves:
“Why not teach high morals, clean living, respect for religion and our flag, and weave these with respect for law and order into the films that will, in times of peace, produce he-men and patriotic womanly women, not cigarette smoking devils who love poodle dogs more than they do babies.”
Kelly’s response, that the Klan members can think whatever they want, but they should be denied the authority to “force their opinion” onto others, accommodated the KKK in more basic ways: “Taken as a whole,” Kelly wrote, “this letter is a sincere effort to prove that the Ku Klux Klan stands for the same things in the matter of motion pictures it allegedly does in the all-important matter of our national life, politically, religiously and socially. It seemingly champions high and inspiring ideals.”
As Rice points out, the Klan objected to other films too, such as Bella Donna (1923), a Paramount remake featuring Polish superstar Pola Negri in her first American role. There was an active campaign by the Klan against her too. The Pittsburgh Klan criticized her “low ideal of womanhood,” invoking Negri’s glamorous image as an independent modern woman. Pittsburgh Klan No. 1 even described The Pilgrim as “Bella Donna’s side partner,” a reference to her refusal to discuss her marital status with the media and her very public relationship with Chaplin during the first half of 1923.
Called upon to play the exotic femme fatale that antagonized white Protestant anxieties about the allure of alien otherness, Negri, like Chaplin, represented a growing “foreign” influence in the movie industry. That Negri and Chaplin were romantic partners in early 1923, and for a brief time engaged, only heightened Protestant distress about the new Americans and their relationship to Hollywood.
Rice shows how the 1923 campaign that coupled The Pilgrim and Bella Donna in the Klan imagination was central to how the modern Klan leveraged the new mass media environment to advance their agenda. They were antagonists of the Hollywood of Negri and Chaplin, but they also created their own enterprises, from magazines and newspapers to a film production studio. They even owned a university, tried to buy another, and for a time as Rice describes in great detail, they developed a film studio they hoped would challenge Hollywood hegemony and its “foreign influence” represented by the likes of Negri and Chaplin.
As it rose to prominence in the early 1920s, the Klan supported other causes driven by mainline Protestants, such as prohibition, public education geared towards Americanization, or banning movie screenings on Sundays. Because they saw corrupting influences as coming from recent arrivals to the US, they were motivated advocates of restrictive limits on immigration. The power of the Klan for a brief time went seemingly unchecked. In the South, especially, they supported candidates for elected office openly and secretly, and they received support in return, openly and in secret. It is well known that there were members of the “Invisible Empire” at all levels of every sector of society, and far beyond the South. The 1921 congressional hearings into whether the Klan warranted a full investigation were full of revelations but ultimately went nowhere and subsequent Klan leadership scandals in the newspapers only caused membership to surge, especially in northern cities, such as New York, and as far west as Oregon.
The 1924 Democratic convention at Madison Square Garden proved to be a high water mark for the national power of the Klan. They used their influence on the convention floor, especially among southern delegations, to turn back an anti-Klan plank and at the same time prevent Al Smith, Governor of New York (and a Catholic), from winning the nomination. After 100 ballots, John W. Davis was the compromise candidate and he lost in a landslide to Coolidge in the general election. 1924 is also when the best estimates say Klan membership peaked at about 4 million. That summer, stories about the Klan ran alongside stories about the convention drama.
New York was typical of northern cities that saw membership spike in those years. The popularity of the Klan in Suffolk and Nassau counties is well documented, but New York City was also host to open advocates for the Klan and its positions beginning in late 1920 when the first complaints about the Klan in NYC made it to the newspapers. The Klan claimed that New York’s Albert Pike No. 1, the first Klan unit north of the Mason-Dixon line, was chartered in 1921 before the New York World ran a series of reports about the Klan that scandalized the nation while sending their membership numbers soaring, especially in New York. The next year, Oscar Haywood, a southern minister and Klan organizer who had been preaching at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan, was accused of disseminating Klan literature at services, and newspapers ran accusations that the church was “infested” by the Klan.
To stem the Klan tide, Governor Al Smith signed the “Walker Law,” introduced by New York State Senator – and eventual mayor of New York – James “Jimmy” Walker, who was, like Smith, a client of the Tammany machine. The Walker Law required oath-bearing societies to file their organizational documents, including membership lists, with the Secretary of State. Although it named no group, it was understood as an attack on the Klan, as it was meant to be. Overnight, the move essentially outlawed the Klan, which had a rumored 50,000 members in the New York City area.
Critics and supporters alike felt the law was ineffectual, and even though attempts to repeal it showed Klan influence in places like Suffolk county, scholars suggest that after the passage of the Walker Law, the interest of marginal members diminished in places like New York. And this may have been true for a while. Rev. Haywood, whose name appeared frequently in the paper and who was Governor Smith’s most visible antagonist from inside the Invisible Empire, was not intimidated by Mayor Hylan who tried to ban the Klan from New York City, or Governor Smith. Haywood’s performative style, if not the content of his sermons, brought the wrath of more traditional church leaders, such as Calvary’s pastor Rev. John Roach Straton, and he was sacked, eventually moving on upstate, landing for a time in Buffalo where he was a figure in the growth of the KKK there.
But if a single day in December in 1924 is any measure, the Klan was a visible, if controversial, presence in Queens and Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on December 15 that 700 people turned out to see Rev. Paul F.W. Lindner, Grand Cyclops of Nassau County, speak in Woodhaven, Queens. Invited by Rev. Irwin Jaxheimer of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Woodhaven, Lindner, a business leader from Malverne, spoke to the congregation in full regalia. On that same day, on that very same page of the Daily Eagle, Rev. Arthur K. White of Pillar of Fire Church on Sterling place, Brooklyn, is quoted as saying that “The Ku-Klux Klan is needed in the United States to offset the onslaught of foreign groups.”
So, while New York City has not been considered a locus for Klan organizing, it most certainly was, especially in Queens. NYS Attorney General Nathaniel Goldstein in 1946 said that in the 1920s there were eight klaverns in Queens. Evidence, however, shows there were more than that, with klaverns in Astoria, Long Island City, Flushing, Glendale-Ridgewood, Springfield, Ozone Park, Hollis, and multiple units in Jamaica and Richmond Hill and this does not even include the women’s units, the off-brand Klan factions and the Kiddie or Junior Klans. Before you think Woodhaven was somehow exempt, note that Jamaica Klan No. 41 met at the Hillside Temple on 96th street long after most scholars assume the Klan was dead everywhere.
If there is some mystery why, four years after the initial screening of The Pilgrim, Sunday screenings along the Jamaica Avenue corridor aroused the wrath of the local Klan, it’s also no surprise.
The threats made against the Garden and Roosevelt theaters in Queens for planning to screen the film were the among first of a series of events in Queens involving the Klan over the next few months and well into 1928. Of those events, at the center was the 1927 Memorial Day parade that ended in a skirmish between the police and the Klan, and with seven detained, including a young Fred Trump. A few days after that, John Franz, a Brooklyn Times reporter, was invited to attend a Klan meeting in Queens, to which he was driven while blindfolded. In his story, he described the meeting attended by approximately 500 men. A few days after that, a cross was burned on the ridge in Forest Park. About 8 feet tall, and wrapped in oily rags, the cross was placed on top of the water tower near the Forest Park Golf Course clubhouse, now a New York City Parks Department building known as Oak Ridge. Not long after it was set alight, a policeman quickly extinguished it.
In 1924, the Klan, largely flexing muscle rooted in Southern states, was able to stop Al Smith. By the Spring of 1927 it was clear that they would have to mobilize in the north to stop him in 1928. Not only focused on the national arena, the Klan in the months that followed the Chaplin affair were a factor, if not foil, in the political drama of Queens that followed: a play of political corruption, grand jury investigations, and criminal prosecutions set against a threat of terror periodically exercised. The Pilgrim incident was an early “premonition” of what was to come.
But what really happened in this Chaplin affair? Did the Klan in Queens object to the film, as had been the case in 1923, or did they mobilize because newspaper accounts of his life made him an unacceptable figure?
The answer to that is dependent upon where and when you read about it. The further the publication was from Richmond Hill and Woodhaven, the less accurate its story was. After Monday’s initial report, the story rippled outward, first to the city papers, then to the wire services. While local papers, such as the Long Island Daily Press of Jamaica, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Thursday weekly Leader-Observer in Woodhaven, all basically had the same story, the city-wide papers, like the New York Sun and the Daily News, seemed to be sourcing the story from the Daily Press account. The Daily News even mistook Woodside for Woodhaven.
On Friday, April 1, the Friday weekly Richmond Hill Record hit the streets and, with all the benefits of proximity to the action and the clarity of a few days’ to get it right, provided the definitive version of events of the previous weekend.
According to the Record, which had as its source the unnamed manager of the theaters, the Richmond Hill klavern held a meeting in the evening of Friday, March 25, where the planned Sunday screening of The Pilgrim was discussed. In 1927, this was possibly Richmond Hill No. 83, an important klavern that served as a training unit for the Klan, not just in New York City but Long Island also. However, research is ongoing: another Klan unit also met near the Garden Theater in Richmond Hill. There was also No. 152, a women’s auxiliary unit based in Richmond Hill. There was also another Klan faction with a strong presence in the neighborhood. There will be more about this in upcoming posts on Beyond the Valley of Ashes.
After a resolution condemning the film was passed at the meeting, klavern members formed a committee to make calls to the theater management Friday night and Saturday. Around eleven that night, they visited the theater but it was learned the manager had left for the evening, the klansmen left the threatening message.
On Saturday morning the phone began ringing at the theaters. According to the Record, more than 40 calls were received at the theaters from men and women, but the Record said that rather than repeating the written complaints about Chaplin’s personal life, they were “...because in one scene Chaplin takes the part of a Protestant minister and a whisky bottle falls out of his pocket as he walks down the aisle of a church.”
By all accounts, it was sometime later Saturday when the manager took the note to the police precinct in Richmond Hill. The police promised to protect the theaters, instructing officers to pay closer attention, increasing patrols in the area, and by some accounts stationing a vehicle in front or a guard at the doors on Sunday afternoon.
But sometime Saturday night, and despite the promise of police protection, the Garden and Roosevelt theaters changed the bill to another feature. Although the representative of the theaters expressed doubts as to the authorship of the note, in the end that did not matter.
Consistent with earlier reports, the Record quoted the words of the representative of the theater management company, who said, “Whether the Klan was actually behind the warning or not, we of course, do not know. But we did feel that the note was an expression of the feeling of some of the people living in the neighborhood of our theatres. We are operating community theatres and it is our desire to please, not displease, the people of the community. We therefore changed the program.” This mentality was repeated when less than two weeks later the Klan in Freeport in Nassau County objected to the screening of Chaplin’s Pilgrim there.
The screenings of replacement films took place without incident, and but for the articles in the newspapers the entire Chaplin affair would have likely been forgotten.
In the last paragraph of the Friday Richmond Hill Record, we learn that newspaper had a source the others did not. Apparently, on Tuesday, after the initial articles were published in other papers, the editor of the Record received a phone call at home from an unknown man who did not identify himself, except to say that he controlled “all the Ku Klux Klan units in the Metropolitan district.” The man did not “affirm or deny” that the Klan was behind the threats against the theaters, but the purpose of the call to the editor was to correct the record, as published elsewhere about the motives for the action against the screening of The Pilgrim.
The man, according to the editor, “...took exception to the statements made in the daily papers to the effect that the Klan was opposed to Chaplin personally on account of his family troubles.” Instead, directly contradicting the earlier reports, the man told the editor they were opposed to the film “...on account of the way he belittled the ministerial profession.” The Record also reported that he said they would “feel the same way regardless of the creed of the minister so portrayed.”
Given their secretive nature and that there are virtually no records to consult, it can never be proven who made that call. Understanding anything about the KKK, like other secret societies of that era, can be a challenge. Depending on how one understands words like “control” or “metropolitan” quoted in the Richmond Hill Record, there are only a small number of people it could be. In future posts on this website you will meet them all.
In 1927, the Klan prepared to march in Memorial Day parades throughout the Northeastern United States and nationally-recognized Klan figures had moved to the area and were staging KKK efforts from Queens, including Richmond Hill No. 83, the Emmett D. Smith Klan Post No. 38 in Jamaica, as well as units in western Long Island towns like Freeport, Hempstead, Malverne and Valley Stream. The Chaplin affair was a prelude to what happened next: just as the Klan was winding down nationally after a precipitous decline in membership, it became a visible presence in Queens, active in public life in ways it has not been since, at least not in New York City. For a time, Queens was the center of a national effort to undermine the presidential aspirations of Al Smith, and the campaign of 1928 was as brutal a display of bigotry in a political campaign as have ever seen—and hopefully will never see again.