The KKK’s Rapid Rise and Faster Fall in 1920s Bellefonte and Vicinity
Philip Ruth, Research Coordinator
June 1, 2025
Note: This article was prepared for the June 2025 issue of The Bell newsletter of the Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association. Because of word-count constraints, the article was published there in a truncated form. The full article is published here.
July 2025 marks the hundredth anniversary of the Scopes Trial, the sensational legal proceeding in Dayton, Tennessee, that pitted Christian fundamentalists and political conservatives (championed by lead prosecutor William Jennings Bryan) against secular and intellectual modernists (personified by defense attorney Clarence Darrow). The trial reignited a national debate over the place of science, religion, and education in America.
At the same time, the resurgent Ku Klux Klan reached its peak of political influence and membership, fueled by nativist and traditionalist backlash against rapid cultural change. Two recent books explore and explain those related developments: A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, by Timothy Egan (Viking, 2023); and Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, by Brenda Wineapple (Random House, 2024). Readers of those books will find many striking parallels between the American political landscapes of 1925 and 2025.
Among other things, the books stoked my curiosity about KKK activities in and around Bellefonte. I had heard rumors of local Klan gatherings in the mid-twentieth century, and have fielded questions related to my research on the Black History in Centre County project as to whether the Klan might have contributed to the dramatic decline in the County’s Black population in the early decades of the twentieth century (my latest sense is: probably not; other factors—including natural and disease-caused death, and out-migration spurred by economic and cross-regional marriages—were much more consequential).
So I began searching for literature on the topic, including digitized newspapers from the 1920s. In short order, I gathered more than 40 newspaper accounts of Klan activities in Bellefonte and neighboring municipalities. I also learned from The Ku Klux Klan in Western Pennsylvania, 1921-1928 (by John M. Craig, Lehigh University Press, 2014) that the Klan emerged in Pennsylvania in 1922, then grew to include more than two hundred chapters in western Pennsylvania alone, with membership totaling at least 140,000. The Altoona chapter or “klavern,” with over 2,800 members, was the largest (which couldn’t have sat well with the city’s 700+ Black residents). In center-western Pennsylvania, the Klan primarily comprised “white Protestants whose main agenda appears to have been anti-Catholic.”
The earliest local activity I found reported in newspapers was a cross-burning in Milesburg, carried out on Thursday night, June 21, 1923, and interpreted by observers as signaling the close of a Klan gathering. As reported in the Democratic Watchman:
Investigation revealed that kneeling about the flaming cross were thirty or more white hooded and white robed individuals whose identity, of course, was not revealed. Whether it was really just the formation of a Klan of disciples of the grand Kleagle or whether one had already been formed and this was a regular meeting is unknown. . . . . Gossip has it that Milesburg will be the scene, ere long, of some regular Ku Klux doings, and the people down there are considerably excited over who may be marked for disciplining according to the ideas of the Klan.
Subsequent newspaper reports noted cross-burnings in Blanchard (August 19, 1923); twice behind the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church on Bellefonte’s Halfmoon Hill (September 1 and September 8, 1923); twice in Beech Creek (September 18, 1923 and June 22, 1924); beside the Bellefonte Hospital (October 8, 1923); in Millheim (late November 1923); outside Howard (February 6, 1924); in Philipsburg (February 10, 1924); and in Pleasant Gap (March 28, 1924). Klansmen customarily punctuated their cross-burnings by setting off at least one explosion of dynamite.
Early in 1924, local Klansmen began engaging in daytime activities, while maintaining their cloaked anonymity. Seventy masked and robed members of the Philipsburg KKK attended a service at the borough’s Church of Christ on Sunday, February 10, 1924. One of them—perhaps the leader who handed the pastor “a special [monetary] contribution”—declared that “there were as many members of the organization in the church in plain clothes as were masked” (Bellefonte Republican, February 14, 1924).
On Sunday morning, March 2, “one hundred fully robed and hooded” Klansman marched into a worship service in Centre Hall’s Lutheran church carrying “a small flag and an open bible” which they “deposited on a table in front of the pulpit” before being “ushered to a block of empty seats in the centre [sic] of the church that had been reserved for them.” According to an observer, the sermon that followed “was directed more to the Ku Klux than any of the other organizations present, and the spirit of [the pastor’s] remarks were construed as favoring the Klan. At the conclusion of the services, the hooded men were quick to leave the church and rapidly faded away” (Democratic Watchman, March 7, 1924).
On Monday evening, March 31, upwards of 60 men attended a recruiting event in Bellefonte’s Odd Fellows Hall, where they heard from “Klan organizers from other sections of the State.” There was no report as to how many of the distributed pledge cards were filled out during the evening, but one newspaper editor professed his belief “that quite a number of Bellefonte men are already members of the organization” (Democratic Watchman, April 4, 1924).
Sensational appearances by Klan klaverns further afield included a “hundred robed Knights of the Ku Klux Klan attend[ing] services at the Evangelical church at Millheim” in mid-May 1924, and a large group of Klansmen “in full regalia” attending a funeral for one of their fallen brethren in a church in Mt. Eagle (midway between Milesburg and Howard) on August 2 (Bellefonte Republican, May 29, 1924; August 7, 1924).
The Klan’s biggest local splashes, however, were made in and around the County seat beginning in August 1924. “Some three hundred men from Bellefonte and various portions of the county” showed up for “a regularly scheduled [Klan] meeting in the court house on Wednesday evening,” August 13, according to one report. “Admission to the meeting was by card only, but anybody who wished to attend was given a card at the door, so that it was not entirely a secret affair.” None of the attendees were “gowned or hooded” (Democratic Watchman, August 15, 1924). That meeting was prelude to the Bellefonte klavern’s staging several days later of “a public initiation on the old fair grounds” (now the site of Bellefonte’s Wastewater Treatment plant). “While no public announcement had been made of the event,” a newsman observed, “the grapevine telegraph or radiograph was evidently working satisfactorily, as a large crowd of spectators, probably five or six hundred, were present to witness the demonstration” on August 18. Between the “explosion of two bombs announc[ing] the opening of the ceremonies” and the singing of the closing hymn “Nearer My God to Thee,” 36 “novitiates” swore an oath of allegiance to the Klan, which likely included promises to not reveal the group’s secrets to outsiders, and to uphold its principles against perceived threats from Catholics, Jews, African Americans, and other groups deemed incompatible with the Klan’s vision of America (Democratic Watchman, August 22, 1924).
On the heels of that spectacular gathering, local Klansmen mounted an even more ambitious “Demonstration” at the Grange Park in Centre Hall on Saturday, September 13, 1924, drawing “several thousand spectators” to the exhibition partly through the promise of a “Big Display of Fireworks.” The schedule of band music, drills, parades, patriotic salutes, prayers, and public expressions of Klan principles culminated in the “naturalization of a class of 40 candidates under the light of a fiery cross” (Centre Reporter, September 18, 1924). Over the following months, and into 1925, groups of roused Klansmen and Klanswomen made showings in church services in Pleasant Gap, Hublersburg, Bellefonte, Jacksonville, and Runville.
Few newspaper reports addressed the animus driving local KKK activities. A rare exception was an account of some Klansmen attending a Sunday morning service at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Pleasant Gap, which included a sermon in which the pastor reportedly “urged the Klansmen to be true to the principles for which the Klansmen say they are banded together—promotion of true American ideals of Liberty—[while] emphasizing the fact that the Klan is neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Catholic, but pro American” (Bellefonte Republican, January 22, 1925). Rarer still—and even more enlightening—were reported statements by a female speaker at a packed “meeting for women of the Ku Klux Klan, held at Howard” on May 29, 1925. Uttered a few weeks before the opening of the Scopes Trial, the comments outlined a Protestant Christian, white supremacist, nationalist ideology, wrapped in the American flag :
The speaker presented facts which were surprising to many, concerning the evils of our present mode of living, and urged every christian [sic] man and woman to do their bit for humanity and generations to come. [She] explained the motto of the Ku Klux Klan as “not for self but always for others”; she also mentioned that the 12th chapter of Romans has been adopted by them as their law of life because it contains more of the practical rules for christian living than any other one chapter of the Bible; and also presents many of the sacred principles which the Klan seeks to stimulate. The creed of Klanswomen is to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior; the separation of church and State in administration and organization but united in their mission and purpose to serve mankind unselfishly; the American home as the foundation upon which rests secure the American Republic, the future of its institutions and liberties of its citizens; in the free public schools where our children are trained in the principles and ideals that make America the greatest of all nations; that the Stars and Stripes, most beautiful on earth, symbolizing the purity of race, the blood of martyrs, and the fidelity of patriots; in the supremacy the constitution of the United States, and consecrate ourselves to uphold them with emphasis on the 18th amendment; in the freedom of speech, of press and of worship, it is the right of all citizens whose allegiance and loyalty to our country are unquestioned; that the blood of white should not be mixed with other races; that the government of the United States must be kept from control of alien races and the influence of inferior peoples; that the people are greater than any foreign power or potentate, prince or prelate, and that no other allegiance in America should be tolerated; that the future of the nation rests upon the purity and united effort of our native born, white Gentile, Protestant men and women; that under God the women of the Ku Klux Klan are sent to help preserve and protect our nation, our State, community, children and homes, and insure our happiness now and forever (Democratic Watchman, May 29, 1925).
Five months after this meeting, Indiana KKK Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson was put on trial for the rape and murder of his assistant Madge Oberholtzer. The proceedings exposed widespread criminal corruption and hypocrisy among Klan leaders, undermining their claims of moral integrity and lawfulness. The public also learned of internal divisions within the Klan that had thwarted efforts toward good governance and moral reform. As disillusionment and public opposition grew, the Klan’s political influence and membership plummeted. By some estimates, the quarter-million dues-paying Klan members in Pennsylvania in 1926 dwindled to fewer than 30,000 by the close of 1928, then to fewer than 4,000 by the early 1930s. When a cross was burned “on the mountain above Coleville” one night in January 1930—several years after the area’s most recent cross-burning—locals were “somewhat mystified as to whether it was the work of the Ku Klux Klan or merely a prank of mischievous boys” (Democratic Watchman, January 17, 1930).