KKK in Maine

Ku Klux Klan in Maine

by Audrey Erickson While you will see A Tuna Christmas portraying a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)—a White supremacist terrorist hate group—in Texas, it is important to acknowledge the Northeast’s history of engaging with the KKK. In fact, Maine had the largest enrollment of Klan members of all northeast states in the 1950s, and bringing awareness to Maine’s past and present race dynamics is crucial to the anti-racist work that we can do in Maine today.

The KKK got its start in America following the Civil War, as a social club for Confederate veterans. The club quickly turned into White Southern pushback against Reconstruction, which instituted constitutional amendments to protect the civil rights of Black Americans and sent federal agents to the South to establish more democratic state governments. Through meetings, conferences, and illegal raids, the KKK quickly established themselves as an excessively violent and racist group, resulting in their disbandment by 1870. That year also saw the passing of the Force Act and, in the following year, the Ku Klux Klan Act. Both acts “authorized federal authorities to enforce penalties upon anyone interfering with the registration, voting, officeholding, or jury service of blacks.” By 1882, the Ku Klux Klan was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, although the vast majority of members and chapters had disbanded by this point.

Unfortunately, the organization was only gone for a short time, as the KKK had a resurgence in 1915, when people were inspired by Thomas Dixon’s The Clansmen and its movie adaptation, The Birth of a Nation, both of which are known for their racist ideologies and positive portrayal of the KKK. The Birth of a Nation was a hugely popular film, with screenings nationwide and even at the White House, under the presidency of known KKK sympathizer Calvin Coolidge. The success of the film signified how these White supremacist ideas had gained traction and made their way into mainstream culture. Strategically invoking patriotism and nostalgia for the old South, the new iteration of the Klan focused on garnering support from smalltown White Americans who felt threatened by the surge of immigrants that had come to America in the last few decades and changed the ethnic and racial make-up of communities. By the 1920s, the Klan’s membership was higher than it had been in the late 1800s, with over 4,000,000 members. This was during the time that Maine began to get involved with the terrorist organization.

The BirTh Of A nATiOn direCtor d. w. griFFitH Posing witH kkk-symPatHizer President CalVin Coolidge. While the Klan was—and is still today—most closely associated with their anti-Black bigotry, the KKK was against any form of immigrants to America, and intentionally capitalized on the preexisting tension between the Englishdescended Protestants and the Irish-Catholic immigrants who were relocating to Maine at an unprecedented rate. With these tensions rising, the Klan was able to find a foothold in Maine more than any other northeast state, with thousands of member enrollments. Once their presence was established, the KKK targeted

Portland’s Chamber of Commerce and enlisted help from White supremacists in Maine to put pressure on the Chamber to change the structure of the local government.

The plan was called the “Sumter Plan,” or later the “Dayton Plan,” named after the US cities in which the Klan had successfully restructured city and government operations to impede the growth and prosperity of Black communities. It involved convincing the local government to replace elected city mayors with city managers, hired and controlled by a reduced city council to reflect the reduced number of electoral districts, and the plan—promoted as a forward-thinking way of making government more efficient and business-friendly—actively gave Black communities less voting power. Further, there were no elected figures to go to when their jobs were taken away and given to White men who would be able to be promoted up through the company.

By 1923, Portland had made moves to implement the Klan’s plan; the previous nine electoral districts were redrawn into five, the city’s mayor removed and replaced with a city manager, and the previous 27 councilors reduced to five, all elected by a city-wide vote that weakened the Black population’s input

Digging Deeper on the outcomes. This kind of restructuring that has taken power from Black voters has continued over the last century, with damaging long-term impacts. Even today in Portland, the way electoral districts are drawn dilutes the power of Black voters, and poverty and policing rates for Black people in Maine are disproportionately high when looking at the rates of White Mainers. As put by Samuel James, host of the podcast 99 Years, which delves into Maine’s history with the KKK and the state’s current status as having the smallest Black population, “When you have a system designed to strengthen White supremacy, the outcomes are fairly predictable.”

So what is to be done, when the legacy of a White supremacist country looms closer than we may have thought? Part of our responsibility is to understand this history and the parts we’ve played in it; while A Tuna Christmas touches on the influence the KKK has on small southern towns, it is important to know that Maine has its own history with the group. Understanding where our current inequalities stem from and instructing ourselves further will help us figure out how to take action now, from voting, to getting involved with community organizations, to educating the people in your own life.