Tempe History Museum History from p 17 nue and Fifth Street that has since been de- molished. He died in 1944 at age 78. Byron was a Mason and Shriner and was politi- cally active in Tempe. He died in 1939 at age 67. Clyde Harlan Gililland was a 30-year veteran Tempe City Councilman and mayor. He was president of Tempe Ele- mentary School Board and represented District 3, served as Tempe Rotary Club president, and worked for the Tempe Volunteer Fire Department. He died in 1967 at age 67. The months-old effort to purge these five names lulled since October, with fierce opposition and the possibility of a hefty price tag. Those in opposition blamed “cancel culture” at an October city council meeting. But according to a local self- taught historian, Drew Sullivan, who has studied the Klan in Tempe for about a de- cade, the opposition is wrong. Klan’s Arizona Heyday “This is a story that took 50 years to be- come public,” said Sullivan, who was inte- gral in getting the initiative off the ground. Klan activity was first publicized in 1922 when Klansmen kidnapped a Mormon school principal in Mesa, beat him, and branded “KKK” onto his face with acid. A Maricopa County grand jury indicted a dozen suspects, but after 125 hours of court deliberation, the case ended with a hung jury. But the same year, a raid on a Klan base in Los Angeles unearthed Phoenix and Tempe member rosters, Sullivan said. Twenty names were penned on the ros- ter, including Arizona’s then-secretary of state, Ernest R. Hall, according to the Jour- nal of Arizona History. The county grand jury found 18 of those on the roster to be dues-paying Klansmen, after local journal- ist James Henry McClintock investigated the group. McClintock Drive is named for him. Joining Hall on the list of suspected 18 Klan members were the state treasurer, the mayor of Tempe, every candidate for the previous Phoenix City Council election, plus Maricopa County’s sheriff and top prosecutor at the time, according to histor- ical records. The county attorney later tes- tified he thought he was joining a professional business group, after initially denying membership, records show. The grand jury probe led to the indict- ment of an Arizona Gazette editor, a Klans- man, for kidnapping and beating a Black shoeshiner in the desert outside Phoenix. Tom Akers, the editor, was extradited from Atlanta to Phoenix. A Maricopa County jury ultimately found him not guilty, although he later de- fended the Klan in a newspaper interview, saying, “Thank God for the [Klan’s] courageous and praiseworthy act” in what he called a fair consequence for holding the arm of a white woman. The probe also found the Klan tricked recruits into joining under the guise of “business and frater- nal clubs,” including the Cholla Club, the Masonic Lodge of Phoe- nix, and the Tempe Rotary Club. That Rotary chapter was co- founded by Harvey Harelson. Years later, historians found a 100-year-old receipt for $10 in membership dues issued by the Klan treasurer to Harelson. That is what prompted scrutiny of Harleson Park on Warner Ranch Drive. “One piece of paper seems like flimsy circumstantial evidence to discredit a founding pioneer of Tempe,” said his grandson, Ted Harelson. He and several other surviving family members of the five alleged Klansmen have spoken out against changing the signs. Others are against it because of how much it may cost. “It would be premature to attempt to guess” the cost to rename the hot-seat landmarks, Tempe spokesperson Nikki Ri- pley said. Tempe City Manager Andrew Ching expects to appoint members to an advisory committee that will meet in the coming weeks, Ripley said. The committee is ex- pected to plan for all aspects of the name changes including estimated costs. “Bringing this issue forward for com- munity awareness and consideration is the right thing to do,” Ching said. “Together The KKK’s questionnaire. “They were strongly devoted to law and order, yet they were law-breakers,” said Sue Wilson Abbey of the Arizona Histori- cal Society. The Tempe History Museum used re- cords from the historical society and the Phoenix Public Library in its research — the driving force behind the push to change the public signs. “They spouted Americanism in one breath and attempted to infiltrate state and local governments in the next,” Abbey said. we can acknowledge the past and make purposeful decisions that reflect our com- munity values of equality and anti-discrim- ination.” The Klan was active between 1921 and 1925 in Phoenix and Tucson. Klan activity continued in Arizona’s rural mining towns but imploded by 1925. Some criticize the Klan for being hypocrites. Google Maps The 1893-built Laird and Dines building in downtown Tempe (left) and the school named after Hugh E. Laird. An editor’s note written in the Klan’s Phoenix newspaper dating back to 1922, compared the Klan’s goals to those of a Masonic Lodge. “We do not believe that any true Ameri- can citizen will oppose what the Ku Klux Klan stands for,” the edi- tor of The Crank wrote at the time. He said the Klan’s goal was “the making of this country a White Man’s country for White Men.” The Arizona Daily Star had al- ready denounced this, saying in 1921 that the Klan was “in direct rights of Ame violation of all rights of Ameri- cans” and a “disgrace to the U.S.” Hypocrisy led to the Klan’s downfall, according to historians. Klansmen used patriotic and Protestant rhetoric to coerce members, but when the violence began, members bolted. And that was the end of the Klan in Arizona, his Arizona, historians say. The Klan Now Arizona Historical Society But the Southern Poverty Law Center claims there were KKK groups in Mesa from 2003 to 2005, in Tempe from 2008 to 2010, and in rural Arizona’s Mohave County as recently as 2015. In 2012, neo-Nazi extremist J.T. Ready recited Klan slogans before killing his girlfriend, three of her family members, and then himself in Mesa, according to FBI documents. The Western White Knights of the KKK in Arizona had a website and were actively recruiting as recently as 2016. The website has since been taken down. Arizona Historical Society archivist Isa- bel Cazares described the Klan records as “rather small.” Only records from 1921 to 1925 exist in the half-full file box that is available for public inspection in Tempe. Harelson doesn’t trust these scant records as proof of his grandfather’s immorality. Neither does Robert Bowers, a descendent of the Redden family. >>p 20 JAN 27TH– FEB 2ND, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
