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On Labor Day in 1924, nearly 15,000 Ku Klux Klansmen in white robes descended on Lansing. They marched from East Michigan Avenue to Washington Avenue, headed for the state Capitol.
A crowd of 50,000 lined the route cheering the Klan floats, banners and hooded members during the massive “State Klonvocation.”
Lansing police directed traffic and “members of the Klan aided the officers in keeping the aisle clear for the procession,” according to coverage in the State Journal.
“The Avenue was a veritable river of white as far as the eye could see,” the article read.
Seven decades later, in late April 1994, the KKK received a very different reception when 27 Klan members rallied on the Capitol steps.
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Does every moment of a movie have to work for you? Or can you enjoy an imperfect one if it fills in places around the edges of your imagination? Don t Come Knocking is a curious film about a movie cowboy who walks off the set, goes seeking his past, and finds something that looks a lot more like a movie than the one he was making. There are scenes that don t even pretend to work. And others that have a sweetness and visual beauty that stops time and simply invites you to share.
The opening shot is the key. On a black screen, we see two openings into the sky. From how they re placed, they could be the eyeholes in a ragged mask, maybe the Lone Ranger s. Then the shot reveals itself as a rock formation in Monument Valley; millions of years of evolution have left behind these two holes, joined by arches to the walls of a long-ago river canyon.