Nativism and the Klan Before the War, 1860s to 1930s

The movements in this module that Idahoans most often call "Nazi" have a long family tree, and its oldest branches are not European. They are the anti-Chinese politics of the mining camps and the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Neither was Socialist or Communist, and neither took orders from Berlin. They matter here for two reasons: they show that organized hostility to minorities was already in Idaho decades before Hayden Lake, and they teach a caution about labels that carries through the rest of the module.

Confederate sympathy, the mining camps and Chinese exclusion

Boise State historian Dr. Jill Gill, who has studied Idaho race history since about 2012 for her book Idaho in Black and White, told Boise State Public Radio in 2020 that Idaho became a territory during the Civil War and that Confederate sympathizers were strong in its mining and timber areas. She said the Idaho World in Idaho City was owned and run by Confederates, that place names such as Dixie and Atlanta reflect that history, and that migrants sought a white-dominated region where they would not face competition from Black and Chinese workers.¹ These are one historian's claims in an interview, and a careful writer should attribute them to her.

The census numbers Gill cited tell the demographic story: Chinese residents were about 28 percent of Idaho's population in 1870 and about 0.5 percent by 1920. Idaho was about 71 percent white in 1870 and nearly 99 percent white by 1920, and the Black population fell from about 0.4 percent to 0.2 percent. She attributed Chinese exclusion in part to white labor unions.¹ Idaho Capital Sun's 2025 commentary from the Wassmuth Center's authors records one date from the same era: a convention against Chinese immigration was held in Boise on February 25, 1886.²

The Klan of the 1920s

The Ku Klux Klan was revived in 1915, influenced, in Gill's account, by D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation, and it grew nationally in the 1920s. Gill has documented twelve to thirteen Idaho chapters in that decade, including at least three women's chapters, with recruiters reportedly coming from Washington and Oregon.¹

The best-documented Idaho event is in Boise. The Boise chapter publicized a parade and initiation ceremony in the Idaho Statesman. The Wassmuth Center's authors write that over 350 Klan members marched in a Boise parade, which they date to 1923, and that about 3,000 spectators watched them light crosses at the fairgrounds.² Gill describes a march with floats, fireworks, cross lightings and downtown traffic jams, and she cites a September 9, 1924 Statesman photograph whose caption puts the number at about 350 participants. Correction made in this update: an earlier version of this lesson dated the 350-member parade to September 1923. The Intermountain Histories entry points to 1924 and the Capital Sun commentary to 1923 (see the next section). She also reports marches in Nampa and Payette in 1924, an active chapter in Pocatello and a small one in Shoshone.¹

The same interview reports violence and intimidation, all as the historian's account and none yet matched to a prosecution in the sources read: a Shoshone attack on a Black man, a Lewiston attack on a Black woman in her home and a rumored plan to burn Pocatello's Black Baptist church. Gill cites a Women of the Ku Klux Klan charter from October 1925, a Klan robe from Payette in the state museum and newspaper photographs as evidence, and argues that prominent Klan members posing publicly suggests they did not fear a backlash.¹

One point of balance: the Wassmuth Center's commentary says the Klan's presence in Idaho was less entrenched than in Southern states, but that it left a lasting legacy of segregation and discrimination against Black residents.² Both statements can be true. A dozen chapters is a real organization, and it is also a small one.

What the Idaho State Archives holds

The Idaho State Archives' catalog lists one collection under the subject "Ku-Klux Klan-Idaho": the W. C. Roberts papers (MS 0493, 1872 to 1927), which include correspondence, claims and financial records for Roberts's mines in Blaine County, an account book kept by his son-in-law and several folders on the Women of the Ku Klux Klan.³ That is a thin footprint. It tells a researcher where to start, and it tells a writer to be careful about sweeping claims on the Idaho Klan's membership, leadership or politics. The sources used for this lesson do not name members, and this module does not either.

Why the Klan is not "Nazi"

The Klan, the Aryan Nations, Patriot Front and the 1930s Silver Shirts are often lumped together. They share racism and, in some cases, antisemitism. They differ in origin, symbols, theology and politics. For writers, the rule is to use the label the group uses, or the one a court or an archive uses, and to avoid applying "Nazi" to a group because it is hateful. Where this module uses "Nazi," it is because a group adopted the swastika or Hitler's salute itself (the Aryan Nations compound's chapel was decorated with swastikas, according to the Wassmuth Center's commentary) or because a federal document describes the group that way (lesson 10).²

Boise in 1924: the parade date and the numbers

Intermountain Histories, a regional history site, describes a large Klan parade and initiation in Boise on September 8, 1924, with Idaho Statesman photographs published the next day showing about 350 Klansmen, described as unhooded (twenty posed unmasked for the photograph), and about 3,000 people at the fairgrounds. Its entry notes floats named "Little Red Schoolhouse" (banner: "one flag, one county, one school") and "America First" (women), and it reports speeches by Imperial Representatives Dr. J. H. Harmon, who called the Klan a "law and order organization," and W. M. Cortner, who explained that Catholics, Jews and Black Americans were not in the Klan because they had their own organizations.⁵ Gill's National Register study, by contrast, describes the first large Boise parade as September 1923 and puts Boise Klan membership near 1,000 by May 1922 (single source).⁶ Whether there were two parades or whether one source is a slip is unresolved. The Capital Sun commentary also puts its 350 and 3,000 figures in 1923, while the only source that cites a dated Statesman photograph (Intermountain Histories) puts them in 1924; no 1923 count has been seen.

A third-hand detail changes the picture of the 1924 event. Justine Larsen's 2018 Utah State University honors thesis, citing the Mayor E. B. Sherman permit, says the city allowed the parade on the condition that the marchers not wear masks.⁷ The thesis is undergraduate work that cites newspapers and an unpublished study by Mark M. Anderson; it is a map to the primary sources, and each of its citations still needs checking. The practical point for a reporter is that the 1924 photograph shows faces by official condition, not by the Klan's choice.

Twin Falls and the Magic Valley

Larsen's thesis describes the Klan in Twin Falls as an election issue. It reports that Rev. L. E. Berger, a Nazarene minister, began organizing in Magic Valley towns and claimed about 1,000 members in December 1922; that a Klan-backed candidate lost a Twin Falls mayoral race by 44 votes (the thesis places Klan influence there "as early as 1923" and gives no election date) after the Daily News editor campaigned against him; that eight masked Klansmen were arrested in Twin Falls in September 1924; and that a mask ordinance was enforced at a Halloween parade in October 1924. It also reports that former governor James H. Hawley spoke against the Klan (Daily News, November 1, 1924) and that Klan influence there had faded by 1926.⁸ All of these Twin Falls items come through the thesis and are unverified until the Twin Falls Public Library's digital newspaper archive is read. A 2009 column by Steve Crump and a 2013 Times-News feature on the local Klan exist, but neither could be opened for this update.

Two points support a careful reading. First, the arrests, if confirmed, are a rare Idaho example of a local government acting against masked Klansmen, which fits the Wassmuth Center's point that the Idaho Klan was less entrenched than the Southern Klan. Second, the same sources describe a Klan that was splitting by 1925, as the next section shows.

In their own words and in the record

The material below is arranged by who wrote it. Stance is stated for each item, and the Klan's statements are reported as the Klan's statements.

The Klan's own voices

• Published by the organization (advertising and speeches), reported through Larsen. A Klan advertisement in the Twin Falls Daily News charged its opponents with raising a "pretend issue," according to the thesis; its footnote dates the issue April 4, 1923, while its text places the ad after the April 3, 1924 election of Mayor Hodgin, so the year is unresolved. Harmon, speaking in Boise in August 1924, told crowds to back Klan-endorsed candidates and said the Klan's endorsement marks "a good man" (Statesman, August 28, 1924, as quoted by Larsen).⁹
• Internal rivals, in public. In 1924 and 1925 the Independent Klan of America, led in Idaho by Samuel H. Bemenderfer and E. E. Davidson, attacked the main Klan in the Twin Falls press, and Bemenderfer's letters of October 1925 are among the items Larsen cites. Cortner, who made an inspection tour of Idaho (dated 1925 in the thesis text, though its footnote cites Western Recorder issues from 1926) to form a Boise-run realm, left for the Minute Men in January 1926 (Larsen).⁸ The fights show that Klan members did not speak with one voice and that the movement's own press is a source for its quarrels.

A member's diary

The rarest kind of source is a member's private record. Shelley Dumas, a descendant, wrote in the Lewiston Tribune on August 2, 2023 about the diaries of her great-grandfather Henry Copeman, a St. Maries homesteader who kept them from 1925 to 1929 and who, by his own entries as she reports them, served as treasurer of the Klan in Coeur d'Alene.¹⁰ She quotes entries recording a special bank account for Klan money (March 14, 1925), a lecture by Rev. C. A. Rexroad of Spokane (May 15, 1925) and, on March 17, 1926, "Several fiery crosses burning tonight." This is a family member's opinion column quoting a diary; the diary itself has not been seen, and its holder is not identified. It is neutral in stance, since the descendant reports a discovery and does not defend or condemn. It is still a reminder that ordinary neighbors were members, and that the documents of the Klan in Idaho may sit in family collections.

How others answered

• Oral histories, recorded in the 1970s. The University of Idaho's Latah County Oral History Collection includes interviews with Lola Clyde (October 1976) and Catherine Mahon (October 1976). According to Larsen, Clyde recalled that the Klan in Latah County was aimed at Catholics more than at Black residents, and Mahon spoke of the difficulty a Catholic woman had in being accepted.¹¹ The transcripts have not been checked against the thesis, so these are paraphrases of a paraphrase and are flagged as such. They are first hand recollections made about 50 years after the events.
• Black Idahoans. Gill's National Register study reports that after a rumor that the Klan would burn the Black Baptist church in Pocatello, Black men guarded it, helped by an unnamed light-skinned Black police officer. It also reports a 1926 musical drama staged by Black Boiseans that the Statesman described as a plea for racial equality, and the founding of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Pocatello in 1920.⁶ A recollection recorded in 1965 describes a night parade of hooded riders on Center Street in Pocatello in the 1920s, with burning fuses taken from railroad supply boxes; the collector of that account is not identified, so it is a single-source memory.
• A senator and the mob. Gill, in her Boise State Public Radio interview, says William Borah helped a Black man escape a Nampa mob in 1903, but also helped block anti-lynching bills in a states' rights alliance.¹ Both claims are the historian's, and the second has been attributed to her Blue Review essay that was not opened.
• Later memory of exclusion. Gill reports that in October 1954 a Pocatello bar advertised that it would "solicit white trade only," which she reads as coded respectability.¹² That is a 1954 item, outside this lesson's period, and is included only to show how long the pattern lasted.

One expected item was not found. No Idaho anti-Catholic school bill from the 1920s turned up. Oregon's 1922 school measure is documented in the University of Washington's Klan project, and Larsen writes that exclusionary school legislation was Oregon's, not Idaho's. The lesson makes no claim about an Idaho bill.

People and personalities

These are public actors of a century ago, named only where a source names them in a public role. Naming here says what they did on the record. It does not say what every member of any chapter believed, and attendance at a parade is not membership.

• Rev. L. E. Berger (Nazarene minister): early organizer in Magic Valley towns who claimed about 1,000 members in December 1922 (via Larsen; single-source).
• Dr. J. H. Harmon (Imperial Representative): lectured in Boise in 1924, called the Klan a "law and order organization" and urged support for endorsed candidates. Neighbors in the audience are not described in the sources.
• W. M. Cortner (Imperial Representative for Utah, Idaho and Nevada): made an inspection tour of Idaho (1925 or 1926, the thesis text and footnote differ) and left for the Minute Men in January 1926. Intermountain Histories reports his explanation that Catholics, Jews and Black Americans were outside the Klan because they had their own organizations.
• Samuel H. Bemenderfer and E. E. Davidson (Independent Klan of America): critics of the main Klan from inside the movement in 1924 and 1925 (single-source through Larsen).
• Mayor E. B. Sherman of Boise: reportedly allowed the 1924 parade under a permit that barred masks (via Larsen, citing Anderson).
• James H. Hawley (former governor): reported by the Twin Falls Daily News, November 1, 1924, as speaking against the Klan (via Larsen; single-source).
• The Twin Falls Daily News editor: campaigned against the Klan-backed mayoral candidate (year unresolved; via Larsen; name not recorded in the notes).
• Henry Copeman (St. Maries): diarist and, by his own entries, a Klan treasurer, per his descendant (single-source).
• Unnamed: the Black police officer in Pocatello who helped guard the church, and the Black Boiseans who staged the 1926 drama. Their names were not found in the sources opened.

The sources do not give a direct account of how police or judges dealt with the Klan, apart from the permit condition in Boise and the reported Twin Falls arrests and ordinance. That gap is itself a finding.

Numbers in the record

Numbers in the Idaho Klan record, with what each counts and how firm it is

Figure	What it counts	Source and stance	Status
12 to 13	Idaho Klan chapters in the 1920s, including at least three women's chapters	Jill Gill, Boise State Public Radio, July 30, 2020 (historian, interview)	Secondary; chapter list requested but not seen
About 1,000	Boise Klan members by May 1922	Gill, National Register study (state historic preservation context)	Single source
About 1,000	Members claimed in the Magic Valley by Rev. L. E. Berger, December 1922	Larsen thesis (2018), citing local histories	A claim by an organizer, reported second hand; unverified
About 350	Klansmen in the Boise parade, described as unhooded	Intermountain Histories (Statesman photo caption, Sept. 9, 1924)	Secondary; caption not seen directly
About 3,000	Spectators at the fairgrounds	Intermountain Histories; Wassmuth Center commentary	Secondary
44 votes	Margin by which a Klan-backed mayoral candidate lost in Twin Falls (election date not given; thesis dates Klan influence from 1923)	Larsen thesis, citing the Twin Falls Daily News	Unverified until the paper is read
About 400	Hooded Klansmen at the Ada County initiation (the thesis text dates it April 9, 1924; its footnote cites the Statesman of Nov. 5, 1924), alongside about 700 initiates	Larsen thesis, citing the Statesman	Thesis read; newspaper not opened; date conflict inside the thesis

All counts are as reported by the named source. None comes from a Klan membership roll, and no roll has been located.

Were there Nazi sympathizers in 1930s Idaho?

This lesson began with the plan to answer that question, and the plain answer is that the sources gathered so far do not say. A search turned up discussion of the Silver Shirts and fascism in Washington State in the 1930s, and of the founder of that movement, but nothing this module has verified about Idaho chapters, rallies or members. The research file for the module contains no Idaho Nazi-era material either. So the sentence that can be written is: "No Idaho chapter of a 1930s pro-Nazi organization has been documented for this module, and the question needs archival work." A search for Idaho chapters of William Dudley Pelley's Silver Legion, the group usually called the Silver Shirts, again found only national material. A later update can replace that sentence if the Idaho Digital Newspaper Project, the Idaho State Archives or the FBI's released files turn something up.

Idaho's wartime record has other chapters. Minidoka, the incarceration camp in the Magic Valley for Japanese Americans, is the subject of the module on ordered liberty, and the Minidoka Irrigator is one of the Idaho titles on Chronicling America.⁴ They belong to the history of how Americans treated a minority in wartime, not to this module's account of organized extremist movements.

How to research the Idaho Klan

1. Request MS 0493 at the Idaho State Archives and read the Women of the Ku Klux Klan folders.
2. Search the Idaho Statesman for September 1923, April 9, 1924 (a reported open-air initiation in Ada County) and September 1924 through the newspaper's archive or the Boise Public Library, and note the exact captions.
3. Read Dr. Gill's Idaho in Black and White and ask her for the chapter list that supports the 12-to-13-chapter figure.
4. Check local newspapers in Nampa, Payette, Pocatello, Shoshone and Lewiston for the 1924 incidents before repeating them.
5. Use the Idaho Digital Newspaper Project (described in 2015 as covering Idaho pages from 1864 to 1922) and the Library of Congress's Chronicling America for the same years.

Still open

• Membership, leadership and political reach of the Idaho Klan. Partly answered: Boise near 1,000 by 1922 (single source), 12 to 13 chapters (Gill), Twin Falls municipal politics and an internal split, all awaiting primary newspapers.
• Whether the Boise parade was in 1923, 1924 or both.
• Whether any incident described in the interview was prosecuted. Partly answered: eight masked Klansmen reportedly arrested in Twin Falls in September 1924 (via Larsen, unverified); none found for the Shoshone, Lewiston or Pocatello incidents.
• The location of Henry Copeman's diaries and the Anderson study of the Idaho Klan.
• Idaho Klan newspapers (such as the Western Recorder of Payette, cited by Larsen for Cortner's itinerary): not found online.
• Idaho organizations sympathetic to European fascism before 1945.
• The Idaho laws and local ordinances that targeted Chinese residents, with dates.

Learn more

• Intermountain Histories, A Large KKK Parade and Initiation Ceremony in Boise: A short entry on the September 1924 parade and its speakers.
• Larsen, Rise of the KKK: Political Rhetoric of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in the West: An undergraduate thesis with Idaho newspaper citations; use it as a map to primary sources.
• Wassmuth Center for Human Rights: Boise's human rights center; start with its history pages and its Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial.
• Idaho Digital Newspaper Project: pre-1923 Idaho newspapers for checking Klan and anti-Chinese claims.
• Why Idaho's Racist History Matters, Part 2: The second half of the Gill interview, from World War II to the Aryan Nations years.

Notes

1. "Why Idaho's Racist History Matters, Part 1," Idaho Matters, Boise State Public Radio, July 30, 2020 (interview with Dr. Jill Gill). Read it online. Claims are the interviewee's and should be attributed to her. ↩
2. "Refusing to let hate have the final word: the hidden history of human rights in Idaho," Idaho Capital Sun, January 8, 2025 (commentary). Read it online. The same text appears on the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights website. ↩
3. Idaho State Archives, subject "Ku-Klux Klan-Idaho," W. C. Roberts papers, MS 0493 (1872-1927). Read it online. ↩
4. Library of Congress, Chronicling America, Idaho digitized newspaper title index, which includes the Minidoka Irrigator. Read it online. ↩
5. Aidan Capristo, "A Large KKK Parade and Initiation Ceremony in Boise, Idaho," Intermountain Histories. Read it online. Secondary and neutral; cites the Idaho Statesman photographs of Sept. 9, 1924. ↩
6. Jill Gill, African American Civil Rights in Idaho, National Register Multiple Property Documentation Form, Idaho State Historic Preservation Office (c. 2021), p. 16 and nearby. Read it online. A government document by the same historian as note 1, so not independent of it; only partly read. ↩
7. Justine S. I. Larsen, "Rise of the KKK: Political Rhetoric of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in the West," Utah State University honors thesis (2018). Read it online. Undergraduate thesis; its Idaho newspaper citations are unverified. The Sherman permit is cited there to Mark M. Anderson, "Idaho: an Experience in Klancraft." ↩
8. Larsen thesis (note 7), on Berger, the Twin Falls mayoral race, the September 1924 arrests, the Independent Klan of America and Cortner. These items come through the thesis from Twin Falls Daily News issues of 1923 to 1925 and local histories by Steve Crump and Jim Gentry; none was opened for this update. ↩
9. Larsen thesis (note 7), citing the Twin Falls Daily News (footnote date April 4, 1923; text date April 1924) and the Idaho Daily Statesman of August 28, 1924. Quotations are reproduced as the thesis gives them and have not been matched to the newspapers. The Klan's own statements are self-interested by nature. ↩
10. Shelley Dumas, "The secret I discovered in Great-Grandpa's diary," Lewiston Tribune, Aug. 2, 2023 (opinion). Read it online. First hand diary entries as quoted by a descendant; the diary itself was not seen. ↩
11. Latah County Oral History Collection, University of Idaho Library, interviews with Lola Gamble Clyde and Catherine Mahon, 1975 to 1976. Read the Clyde page. The content here is as summarized by Larsen; the transcripts were not read. ↩
12. "Why Idaho's Racist History Matters, Part 2," Idaho Matters, Boise State Public Radio, Aug. 13, 2020 (interview with Dr. Jill Gill). Read it online. The historian's account. ↩