The Klan Walks in Washington

This article from the magazine The Literary Digest, a popular weekly publication, tells the story of the August 1925 Ku Klux Klan march along Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall. Held August 8, 1925, an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 Klansmen participated in the event. Many were worried about violence at the event, but a strong police presence as well as the stipulation that marchers could not wear masks helped to keep the march peaceful.

The Literary Digest (New York). View original.

8/22/1925

“Oh, say not so!” gasped a Maryland newspaper the other day when everybody was “quivering in excited anticipation of 100,000 ghostly apparitions wafting through the streets of the national capital to the stirring strains of the ‘Liberty Stable Blues,’ “ and word came from Washington that the mammoth parade of the the Ku Klux Klan had been called off. This Maryland paper, the Baltimore Evening Sun, cried “Darn! There goes a-glimmering the thrill of a lifetime.” But the mammoth parade had not been called off, and news that it had not was provocative of press comment the country over. For example, “Go to it, Klan!” said one editor; “let the nighties gleam!” The Baltimore Sun, in an editorial headed “Have a Heart!” said: “Washington languishes, a fit place for hookworms and sleeping sickness. Into that depressing solemnity comes the Ku Klux Klan to kick up a few didoes. Deprive it of its fiery cross? Gosh, no!” The Syracuse Herald said: “Ku-Kluxism is least harmful and menacing when the sun shines on it. Only in the dark can it make trouble. For that reason, we say, let them parade.” When Thomas L. Avaunt, former Klan official who is now the head of the Protestant Knights of America, protested to President Coolidge against the proposed demonstrations, the Memphis Commercial Appeal protested, “Avaunt, Mr. Avaunt, and the the Ku Klux parade!” This was the common attitude, except at the Capitol, where a certain apprehensiveness prevailed, and the Washington News took pains to declare, “There isn’t going to be the slightest disorder,” while the Washington Evening Star said “There is no occasion for alarm,”….