The white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic organization known as the Ku Klux Klan established itself in Oregon in 1921, when Klan members from the southern United States came to recruit members. By 1923, Oregon Klan leaders claimed that the state had 35,000 members in over 60 chapters. Klan members won elections for local, county, and state offices in 1922, and the organization helped elect Democrat Walter M. Pierce as governor of Oregon. Klan members and their allies in the Oregon State Legislature passed bills prohibiting foreign-born residents from owning land and prohibiting public schools from using textbooks that criticized the founders of the United States. The Klan in Oregon also helped to pass an initiative mandating that all children from ages 8 to 16 attend public school, a measure meant to target Catholic schools; this measure was never implemented, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1925. The number of Oregonians who were members of the Ku Klux Klan dwindled in the mid- and late 1920s, due both to displeasure with the leadership style of Exalted Cyclops Fred L. Gifford and multiple scandals involving the Klan in other states.
The collection consists of typed minutes for a meeting of Ku Klux Klan members in eastern Oregon, likely in Baker County. The minutes are typed on official Klan stationery, and name the Klan officers present, as well as noting 84 attendees in total. The minutes briefly document what happened in the meeting, which included reports from the school board committee and hospital committee; the appointment of a committee to investigate an unspecified matter in Durkee, Oregon; a talk by a visiting Klan member from Portland, Oregon, named Klock; and discussion about prospective candidates for membership. The minutes also note that there was a discussion about whether to endorse William H. Stayer for U.S. senator, but that the matter will be decided later.
Collection is open for research.
The Oregon Historical Society owns the materials in the Research Library and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from copyright owners.
Eastern Oregon Ku Klux Klan minutes, Coll 886, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Gift of Teena Hubbard, June 2019 (RL2022-026).
Other materials at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library relating to the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon include: Ku Klux Klan records, Mss 22; Ben W. Olcott papers concerning the Ku Klux Klan, Mss 308; Ku Klux Klan La Grande, Oregon Chapter records, Mss 2604; Roger Rasmussen collection of Baker Klan No. 13 records and Ku Klux Klan research materials, Coll 862; and the vertical file Pacific Northwest - Politics and government - Ku Klux Klan.