The Ku Klux Klan was active in Maine during the 1920s. Its renewed movement appealed to some residents who feared that immigration, religious pluralism, and political change would alter Anglo-Protestant society. In Maine, its organizing focused especially on hostility toward Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and African Americans.
Origins of the revived movement
The original Klan formed after the Civil War and used violence and intimidation to oppose the political rights of formerly enslaved Black Americans. Although officially disbanded in 1872, a second organization emerged in 1915. It framed its agenda around a restrictive idea of “Americanism”—who qualified as American and who was entitled to belong.
The national organization divided the country into administrative regions, with New England forming one of its domains and each state treated as a realm. In Maine, recruiters pursued audiences across the state and made anti-Catholicism a central element of their message. A prominent public lecture in Portland on January 22, 1923, helped draw attention to the organization’s campaign.
Recruitment and public image
The Maine organization claimed tens of thousands of members at its 1924 peak, although such figures came from the organization and should be treated cautiously. Its leaders sought ministers, politicians, physicians, and other prominent community members in an effort to present the Klan as a respectable civic club.
A women’s auxiliary organized parties, bazaars, holiday socials, and community suppers. These ordinary-looking activities helped normalize an organization whose core program depended on prejudice and exclusion.
Members often appeared in robes and hoods, yet some openly showed their faces and posed for portraits. The public façade did not conceal the group’s purpose. Cross burnings and parades were designed to intimidate those who did not fit its narrow definition of “100 percent Americans.” Anti-Klan demonstrators attended many Maine rallies.
Political influence and resistance
The organization warned that immigrants might gain control of American government and asserted that Catholics could not be loyal citizens because of their relationship to the Pope. It combined those attacks with conventional campaign themes, including prohibition and promises of cleaner government.
During the middle of the decade, candidates supported by the Klan won municipal, legislative, and school committee offices. In 1924, Ralph O. Brewster succeeded Percival Baxter as governor after drawing substantial Klan support. Learn more in the encyclopedia’s entry on Ralph O. Brewster.
Opposition was visible as well. Franco-American residents confronted Klan participants in Greenville, Fairfield, and on the bridge between Biddeford and Saco in 1924. The organization also attacked labor activists associated with the Industrial Workers of the World while intervening against efforts to organize lumber workers and others.
The second national Klan organization was established.
A major Portland lecture brought wider attention to organizing in Maine.
The movement claimed its greatest reach in Maine and became entangled with state and local politics.
Reported Maine membership had fallen to fewer than 200.
Rapid decline
The movement’s popularity in Maine proved short-lived. By 1930, membership had reportedly dwindled to fewer than 200. Public campaigns against the Klan, opposition from state leaders, and reports of violence associated with the organization elsewhere damaged its standing.
Money also contributed to its decline. Recruiters collected initiation payments from new members, making organizing financially rewarding for movement officials. As the Great Depression began and household resources contracted, fewer people were willing or able to pay fees to an organization whose claims and conduct faced growing scrutiny.