Phoenix, Arizona in the days of the KKK


As much as I love Phoenix, Arizona, I have to admit that there are some things that I'd just rather not think about. But today I'm thinking about a time when the city that I love was populated with people whose goal it was to intimidate people whose race, religion, nationality, or whatever, wasn't what they wanted it to be. Time-travel with me to the days of the KKK. I've chosen 1915, not because that's when it began (it began soon after the Civil War), but when it had a resurgence, encouraged, believe it or not, by the President of the United States. Yes, you can Google it if you don't believe me. If you're a history buff, you know.

I'm assuming that you're familiar with the KKK, which stands for "Klu Klux Klan" (which really didn't mean anything), and nowadays we would call it a hate group. And like any hate group, they defended what they thought was right, to keep things in their community the way that they thought it should be. Because times were changing, and many people preferred the way that things had been in the past, not that long ago. Like when slavery was legal.

The KKK focused on terrorizing people that weren't in their particular group. Their goal was to see if they could chase these people away, and if they couldn't do that, they would do whatever they could to discourage them from participating in the community, by running businesses, or voting. And yes, the KKK was a secret society - it wasn't as if they advertised in the newspaper, but in a small town everybody would know. So make no mistake, these people didn't just arrive in town to terrorize, they lived there. They were neighbors, people who owned businesses, people that you would see at church. That is, assuming that you went their church, Phoenix was segregated.

Phoenix remained a segregated community, by law, up through the 1950s. And to this day there are still people who would rather not have people of another race, religion, or nationality live there. The laws changed dramatically in 1964, with the Civil Rights Act, but as anyone who has lived in Phoenix who hasn't fallen into a particular demographic (I'm trying to be delicate here) knows, it's been an ongoing fight to be seen as a citizen with full rights.

Speaking for myself, as someone who could walk into any KKK meeting with no questions asked (I'm a white guy, but not pure Aryan - what Hitler would call the "Master Race"), I've met a lot of people who are very comfortable speaking their minds with me on things that the KKK would have agreed with. I have found it chilling, but I like living in Arizona, and in my experience these people, who still exist, are more talk than action. I've always considered it part of the risk of living in Arizona, along with scorpions, rattlesnakes, and gila monsters, all of which I simply stay very far away from.

I enjoy history, but really I'm a time-traveler, and I see a better future ahead. Thank you for time-traveling with me!

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Comments

  1. CelesteOctober 22, 2020 at 9:19 AM

    I lived in Arizona for 35 years, and not once, did I consider a run in with white supremacists as a "risk" of living in Arizona. Now Alabama or somewhere like that, maybe. I also don't think I ever met any white supremacists. I'm sure they're there, like anywhere else, but Arizona is not the first place I think of when I think of white supremacy.

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