Presentation sheds light on rise and fall of KKK
NORWICH – Chenango Links welcomed Andrew Pragacz, Public History Program Coordinator at the Bundy Museum of History and Art, on Monday for a program centered around the Ku Klux Klan in Binghamton during the 1920s.
Pragacz is the editor of "The Forgotten Kapitol: The Ku Klux Klan in Binghamton, NY, 1923-1928," which was written in the mid-1970s by Jay Rubin as his undergraduate honors thesis and republished in 2016 with the help of Pragacz.
In 2016, while brainstorming new exhibit ideas for the museum, Pragacz decided to contact Rubin about his book which led to an exhibit called "Dirty Laundry: An Unbleached History of the Ku Klux Klan in Binghamton."
"2016 rolled around and I was trying to think of a new exhibit to do," said Pragacz. "Of course things were really heating up; discussion about immigration, a larger national discussion around race and racism, so I said, 'You know what? This is the perfect time to do an exhibit on this.' And so we did, September and October of 2016; the timing was no coincidence."
Monday's program, cosponsored by the Chenango County Historical Society, was well attended with over 60 people at the Bohemian Moon to hear Pragacz's presentation about the second of the three Ku Klux Klans, which existed in the 1920s following World War I.
"The social base was middle class Protestant white men," said Pragacz. "We tend to think of the Klan and racist ideas by and large as the product of kind of rural, uneducated, unenlightened folks. This is not what the Klan was then and arguably it's not what American racism looks like today either."
Pragacz said the second Klan first tried to form in New York City before being met with resistance and moving up to Binghamton. He said Klan members were white supremacists, Protestant Christians, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic, people who supported prohibition, felt strongly about immigration restrictions, and were segregationists.
"After they got kicked out of New York, they came to Binghamton where they found a more receptive audience," said Pragacz. "They purchased a Klan Hall in the middle of downtown, which is now the Martin Luther King, Jr. Promenade. You can't make this stuff up."
Binghamton became the New York State capitol of the second Klan, Pragacz said, for a number of reasons, including the area's large population of white Protestant men, and Broome County's stance on prohibition, which was aligned with the Klan's.
The Klan effectively contested the 1924 Binghamton mayoral election, Pragacz said, so effectively that the local Republicans, Democrats, and even Socialist party members banded together to support an anti-Klan candidate, who would win the race.
By the end of the 1920s, the Klan would formally decline as a result of the cost it took to operate, and also a widely publicized scandal by one of its grand masters, who was convicted of raping and murdering a woman. But by then many of its missions had been considered successful.
"In 1928 you had prohibition, that was one of their big demands, forcing prohibition. You have immigration restrictions, restricting immigration of catholics, which had been effectively done through the immigration laws of 1924 and '25. And Jim Crowe of course," said Pragacz. "So all of the things that they were trying to accomplish had effectively been accomplished."
At the end of the presentation, Pragacz took questions from the audience, a couple of which referred to if the Klan exists in some form still today.
"I think the Klan itself as an organization really isn't the important thing," said Pragacz. "It's the ideology, it's the way that they will say things like, 'We are for freedom of religion,' and then try to prevent Catholics from being schoolteachers.
"That seems to me a common way of doing politics at the moment, this kind of rejection of tolerance as a concept and a very kind of strict conformity––a necessity to be 100 percent American. I think there's a deep resonance, and of course we're seeing the resurgence of organized elements of racist organizations, but to me the deep important part is actually studying their rhetoric, which hasn't left us indeed."
Pictured: Bundy Museum of History and Art Public History Program Coordinator Andrew Pragacz presented on “The Forgotten Kapitol: The Ku Klux Klan in Binghamton, NY, 1923-1928” at the Bohemian Moon Monday night, with over 60 people in attendance. (Grady Thompson photo)
Pragacz is the editor of "The Forgotten Kapitol: The Ku Klux Klan in Binghamton, NY, 1923-1928," which was written in the mid-1970s by Jay Rubin as his undergraduate honors thesis and republished in 2016 with the help of Pragacz.
In 2016, while brainstorming new exhibit ideas for the museum, Pragacz decided to contact Rubin about his book which led to an exhibit called "Dirty Laundry: An Unbleached History of the Ku Klux Klan in Binghamton."
"2016 rolled around and I was trying to think of a new exhibit to do," said Pragacz. "Of course things were really heating up; discussion about immigration, a larger national discussion around race and racism, so I said, 'You know what? This is the perfect time to do an exhibit on this.' And so we did, September and October of 2016; the timing was no coincidence."
Monday's program, cosponsored by the Chenango County Historical Society, was well attended with over 60 people at the Bohemian Moon to hear Pragacz's presentation about the second of the three Ku Klux Klans, which existed in the 1920s following World War I.
"The social base was middle class Protestant white men," said Pragacz. "We tend to think of the Klan and racist ideas by and large as the product of kind of rural, uneducated, unenlightened folks. This is not what the Klan was then and arguably it's not what American racism looks like today either."
Pragacz said the second Klan first tried to form in New York City before being met with resistance and moving up to Binghamton. He said Klan members were white supremacists, Protestant Christians, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic, people who supported prohibition, felt strongly about immigration restrictions, and were segregationists.
"After they got kicked out of New York, they came to Binghamton where they found a more receptive audience," said Pragacz. "They purchased a Klan Hall in the middle of downtown, which is now the Martin Luther King, Jr. Promenade. You can't make this stuff up."
Binghamton became the New York State capitol of the second Klan, Pragacz said, for a number of reasons, including the area's large population of white Protestant men, and Broome County's stance on prohibition, which was aligned with the Klan's.
The Klan effectively contested the 1924 Binghamton mayoral election, Pragacz said, so effectively that the local Republicans, Democrats, and even Socialist party members banded together to support an anti-Klan candidate, who would win the race.
By the end of the 1920s, the Klan would formally decline as a result of the cost it took to operate, and also a widely publicized scandal by one of its grand masters, who was convicted of raping and murdering a woman. But by then many of its missions had been considered successful.
"In 1928 you had prohibition, that was one of their big demands, forcing prohibition. You have immigration restrictions, restricting immigration of catholics, which had been effectively done through the immigration laws of 1924 and '25. And Jim Crowe of course," said Pragacz. "So all of the things that they were trying to accomplish had effectively been accomplished."
At the end of the presentation, Pragacz took questions from the audience, a couple of which referred to if the Klan exists in some form still today.
"I think the Klan itself as an organization really isn't the important thing," said Pragacz. "It's the ideology, it's the way that they will say things like, 'We are for freedom of religion,' and then try to prevent Catholics from being schoolteachers.
"That seems to me a common way of doing politics at the moment, this kind of rejection of tolerance as a concept and a very kind of strict conformity––a necessity to be 100 percent American. I think there's a deep resonance, and of course we're seeing the resurgence of organized elements of racist organizations, but to me the deep important part is actually studying their rhetoric, which hasn't left us indeed."
Pictured: Bundy Museum of History and Art Public History Program Coordinator Andrew Pragacz presented on “The Forgotten Kapitol: The Ku Klux Klan in Binghamton, NY, 1923-1928” at the Bohemian Moon Monday night, with over 60 people in attendance. (Grady Thompson photo)
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