Anita Gaul
After reading the Jan. 2-3 editorial by John Coulter, I felt compelled to comment. My major disagreement with his article is the attempt to discredit and dismiss local history of the KKK as false, unimportant, destructive and hateful. He attempts to do this in three ways.
First, he dismisses this research on the KKK in Southwest Minnesota by claiming the Klan never gained a foothold here; it was confined to the South. This is absolutely false. There is no dispute among “those that understand our history” that the Second Klan, the Klan that existed in the 1920s, was strongest in the North and West and not the South. In fact, the Upper Midwest was a hotbed of Klan activity. 30,000 Minnesotans had joined the KKK by 1923. Locally, there were Klan chapters in Montevideo, Canby, Pipestone, Lake Wilson, Windom, and Lakefield. There were crosses burned in many other area towns including Tracy, Fulda, Dawson, Benson, and Luverne. The evidence is clear: the Klan did, indeed, g
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Special to the Independent
SLAYTON Anita Gaul never imagined that the Ku Klux Klan had a history in her hometown, not until she came across a 1920s newspaper article.
While doing research for a history book she wrote about women from southwestern Minnesota who played a role in World War I, she noticed an item from the former Lake Wilson Pilot about a cross burning that took place in nearby Chandler. It became a first step toward tracing 1920s KKK activity throughout the region.
She came back to the topic later, when she had time for some extra research. She is employed as a history instructor for Minnesota West Community and Technical College.