Rhode Island’s First Light Infantry (called the FLI for short) was disintegrating fast. It was 1927, more than a century after its 1818 founding, and it was able to count less than 25 members. It seemed certain that the Infantry would become merely a part of history—until boys and men suddenly began coming to enlist in hordes. Hundreds of interested individuals, both young and old, quickly filled the member lists of the FLI and many Rhode Islanders couldn’t figure out why. Confusion reigned again—then slowly dissipated—when the next public event of the FLI was announced alongside a notation that tickets could be purchased from an organization calling itself the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Founded in Tennessee in 1865, during the reconstruction of a South that many who leaned toward white supremacy did not like, the KKK had no tolerance for Blacks, Catholics, Jews, or anyone foreign-born. Clad from head to toe in hooded white robes, with their faces concealed, the KKK began a legacy of cross-burning and terrorization.
From Tennessee, the KKK spread out across the nation. By 1871, South Carolina was experiencing one of the most deadly campaigns of domestic terrorism that had ever been recorded on American soil. However, the flames of the Klan began to flicker for the next few years until reignited during the 1920s. The decade brought forth a resurgence of the 19th-century efforts of the Klan to gain strong footholds in every corner of America. This time, the idea surged forward fluidly. Oklahoma was quickly invaded by the organization. Membership exploded in Maine. Eventually, Indiana could claim the most powerful branch of the KKK in the country, with up to 40 percent of its native-born, White, Protestant men believed to be on the roster.
Historically, Klan membership has been highest in the southern and Midwestern states. During the 1920s, membership was estimated to be 30,000 in Oregon and 195,000 in Ohio. Between 1915 and 1944, membership estimates counted 60,000 in Florida and 240,000 in Indiana. At its height, the Klan was able to claim about 4 percent of the American population as members.
From Tennessee, the KKK spread out. As early as 1923, Klan literature was being passed around Rhode Island. In 1924, Klansman Morris S. Westervelt came from New Jersey with his wife and two children and settled into a cottage in Arnold’s Neck so that he could serve as King Kleagle (the Klan word for chief recruiting officer) of the newly established Providence County Klan. To conduct his work for the organization, he rented an office at 535 Broad Street in Providence. The tug-of-war between those who supported the Klan and those who didn’t was so constant that The Rhode Island Pendulum allotted an entire open forum column, throughout 1924, for Westervelt and his adversaries to wage a war of words against each other in print.