Ku Klux Klan Day at Elizabethville Attracts Huge Crowd, 1926

Posted By Norman Gasbarro on April 4, 2018

A report on the attendance of more than a thousand persons for the first Lykens Valley Ku Klux Klan Field Day appeared in the Lykens Standard in 1926.

This post is a continuation of the reporting on hate groups that were active in the Lykens Valley area in the years following the Civil War. It was a widely known fact that the third iteration of the Ku Klux Klan had a significant presence in the Lykens Valley and adjacent valleys during the early years of the 20th Century. This third iteration of the Klan was strongly white supremacist and was opposed to equal rights for African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants.

From the Lykens Standard, 10 September 1926

KLAN DAY AT ELIZABETHVILLE ATTRACTS CROWD

ELIZABETHVILLE, 1 September 1926 — It is estimated that more than a thousand members of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan gathered in the park here on Saturday, for the Lykens Valley Field Day, the first event of its kind to be staged at this place.

During late afternoon and early evening, long lines of card from all parts of the valley began to stream into the town, and were parked in the fields surrounding the park as well as on the most of the streets of the town.

In the evening, several hundred men and women of the order, hooded, and following a float of the little red school house, moved thru the main streets of the town, with little demonstration and returned to the grove to continue their program of events. Mr. C. B. Lewis, the order’s state head, spoke to a very large assemblage that overtaxed the grandstand and overflowed into the field surrounding the speaker’s stand to hear him explain the principles and ideals of the order.

Similar stories of this event can be found in other articles that have been previously posted on this site. See: Ku Klux Klan Rally in Elizabethville Attracts More Than A Thousand, 1926.

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