Oregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia

[ND-Dem]

20. In this case, the KKK had more to do with anti-catholicism.

The Oregon Compulsory Education Bill was initiated not by the Klan, but by the Scottish Rite Masons, an anti-Catholic fraternal organization who hoped its passage would act as a model for other states to follow.[9]

The Oregon School Bill required every child between the ages of eight and sixteen to attend public schools in their districts, assimilating immigrant children into American (and Protestant) institutions. The Klan supported the bill as a legislative tool they could use to promote their hatred of Catholics, and shifted attention away from the fact that the Bill would close all private schools and focused on the perceived threat of Catholicism to Oregon’s public schools.[10]

The Masons shared the Klan’s nativist ethos, and saw the bill as a way to stop immigrants and ethnic communities from forming “foreign” organizations and schools in the United States.[11]

The initial success of anti-Catholic organizing in Oregon motivated the Klan to spread into Washington and see if similar legislation could be passed there. The leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon, Luther Ivan Powell, moved to Washington in order to organize a strong Klan force in the state, declaring himself King Kleagle of Washington and Idaho.[19]

Due to Powell’s efforts, there was an increase in Klan membership in the state and the subsequent drafting of Initiative 49, modeled after Oregon’s School Bill. Unlike in Oregon, in Washington, the Ku Klux Klan themselves drafted the bill and put it on the ballot; the measure was often referred to as the, “K.K.K. Anti-School Bill.”[20]

http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/kkk_i49.htm


There was a good deal of anti-Catholicism around here, even when I was young. An aunt told me stories about nuns and their dead babies in the convents. Thankfully, it's mostly disappeared now.