White supremacists in SLO County: Ku Klux Klan wanted to start local chapter in 1979
The Confederate battle flag never entered the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol during the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln was president — but it was there on Jan. 6, carried by supporters of President Donald Trump.
The insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol building included people sporting Trump regalia, Confederate battle flags and Nazi attire. One man wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt.
As of Friday, a total of five people have died as the result of the siege — including Brian Sicknick, a Capitol police officer.
This wasn’t isolated violence. Six men were indicted in December 2020 for a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Other acts intended to menace voters and elected leaders have taken place throughout the United States in recent weeks, such as graffiti on the homes of the leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Schoolbook history tends to focus on the inspirational but racism has been a strand of the American story since the beginning.
The nation’s founding documents allowed southern states the political benefit of counting every five slaves as three people for taxation and representation purposes, while preventing slaves from voting.
Racism does not get more institutional than having it written into the U.S. Constitution.
The nation was nearly broken by the Civil War when the contradictions could no longer be reconciled. In the end, slavery was abolished and full citizenship including the right to vote was extended to all people born in the United States.
Shortly after the Civil War, white supremacist ex-Confederates founded the Ku Klux Klan to murder, intimidate and block equal access for those freed to political and economic opportunity.
The Klan was mentioned in the earliest newspapers published in San Luis Obispo.
The Pioneer became a virulent white supremacist paper after a ballyhooed non-partisan start.
A year later the Tribune was founded as pro-reconstruction and civil rights alternative — although it would have an uneven record on anti-racism under various editors. For instance, the newspaper endorsed shameful anti-Asian policies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Over the years the Klan’s membership rose and fell — often regenerating when civil rights activity sparked a racist counter-reaction.
The San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram ran an Associated Press article on April 28, 1922, stating that three members of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and more than 100 members of the Los Angeles Police Department were on Klan membership rolls. The Los Angeles City Council adopted a unanimous resolution condemning the Klan as a “menace to public welfare.”
The Klan stirred again as civil rights laws were passed in the 1960s and stories from just a few decades ago contain language eerily similar to words spoken today.
Stoking fear of the other, dangers of communism, violent culture war, distracting arguing over semantics, aliases and secret meetings are all long established parts of the racist playbook.
Democracy requires engagement, and technology can spread misinformation quickly.
As recently as the 2020 presidential election, San Luis Obispo County residents received anonymous robocalls purporting to be from the Ku Klux Klan, prompting an investigation.
In Aug. 20, 1979, Carol Roberts wrote about a man who wanted to establish a Ku Klux Klan chapter in Grover City, the South County city now known as Grover Beach. It’s excerpted here for length.
Knights of KKK plan county unit
A Knights of the Ku Klux Klan headquarters will soon open in the South County, a Grover City man said this morning.
Jerry Jessee, 33, who said he’s the Klan’s main organizer for San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, was the only person injured in a clash Sunday between the Klan and demonstrators in Castro Valley.
Although the Associated Press reported the meeting was conducted to discuss the Vietnamese boat people and illegal aliens, Jessee said the main topic was communism.
“We were up there to fight communism,” he said. “The group that attacked us marched toward us with bullhorns, communist flags and banners. They were chanting ‘Not white power, not black power — Communist power. Death to the Klan,’ ” Jessee said.
He claimed the demonstrators were Communists. The Associated Press said they were members of the Committee Against Racism, a group which has frequently called for equal treatment for minority groups in protests from Boston to San Francisco.
He said he was treated quickly and without anesthetic for his head wound at Eden Hospital after the fracas which was finally broken up by Alameda County sheriff’s deputies. “The doctor just wanted to get me out of there,” he said.
“We’re not the Ku Klux Klan. We’re the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan ... a rebuilding of the old Klan which has been abolished,” Jessee claimed.
According to the Associated Press, between 35 and 50 persons showed up for the meeting of the white supremacist organization. A spokeswoman for the two groups which own the building — the Castro Valley chapter of the American Legion and the Castro Valley Women’s Club — said the Klan rented the hall under the name “White Paint Publishing Co.”
