Faith Works: A century ago, many Newark, Licking County candidates were KKK-endorsed
As this year began, last January, I started an intermittent series of columns outlining the events of 1923, 100 years ago, in Licking County.
My focus was, and is, the effective Klan takeover of the political process in the county and in large part the state, along with other Midwestern and some Southern state governments.
Timothy Egan’s “A Fever in the Heartland” came out last spring with this same history in mind, about how the second era of the Ku Klux Klan made a very serious run at taking over the country. The first Klan arose after the Civil War to turn back Reconstruction in the South, and in fact was successful in large part by 1877, so that original Klan went dormant.
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During and after World War I, a book and a movie spurred the creation of a dues-paying Ku Klux Klan, which only became a public entity by the first weeks of 1923 in Newark, Ohio, but in a level of organization and public display that shows their leaders had been at work for some time, perhaps as far back as 1919. Whatever their plans, they do not burn crosses and hold torchlight parades until the late winter and early spring of 1923.
Further evidence that there was some momentum behind the 1923 rallies and public ceremonies is that in the general election of 1923, on Nov. 6 that year, the mayor and municipal judge candidates running as Klan supporters won office. A majority of city council was Klan-endorsed, demonstrated by their actions to remove Klan opponents from the police and fire departments, for being Catholic and thereby, the Klan leaders insisted, opposed to Prohibition. Reporting in regional newspapers indicated that they were successful in “cleaning up” the police ranks, but the fire chief and most of the firefighters apparently were Catholic and stood together to resist legally and pragmatically any Klan intrusion into their staffing or operations.
The Klan responded by buying a horse for the police department but gave nothing to the fire department.
H.N. Stevens, the mayor of Newark from 1924 to 1928, won re-election, and was not only very openly a Klan-backed candidate but also the Ohio legal counsel for national Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. This Klan leader over 23 Northern states owned a house on Buckeye Lake and a boat in Toledo harbor and was charged with indecent exposure in Columbus: Stevens drove over to deal with Stephenson’s multiple run-ins with the police over his treatment of women.
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So I can speak freely about Mayor Stevens. Other names are implied or inferred, but the reality is that there was no Klan party. As in Indiana, where both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor were Klan-endorsed, so they couldn’t lose. In the 1923 Ohio election for governor, Carmi Thompson as the Republican accepted Klan endorsement where three years earlier Ohio-born presidential candidate Warren G. Harding refused it; Harding of course won his election, while Thompson lost to Democratic Klan opponent “Honest Vic” Donahey.
What doesn’t answer my many questions about “who” but opens up a window perhaps on “why” is what else was on the ballot on that century past Nov. 6. There were six ballot measures for voters across Ohio; four of them were voted down. One of the two approved was to remove from the State Constitution’s description of voter eligibility the words "white male.”
I’m very glad to see it passed; it worries me that 44% of Ohioans voted against it. In Licking County, a majority did not approve it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s got questions for which there are no simple answers. Tell him what questions keep you up at night at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Faith Works: Many 1923 Newark candidates were KKK-endorsed
