What a stark contrast in the news there was in August 2017. As I grieved for the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the very public re-emergence of Nazis and white supremacists, I was also heartened by the events organized to honor the 200th birthday of Centralia founder George Washington, a man who faced racial prejudice throughout his life.
Our area has a more than 100-year history of prominent white supremacist, nationalist and authoritarian groups operating in Lewis County.
To be clear, this obviously wasn’t just a Lewis County issue. Both Oregon and Washington at one point had laws on the books that discriminated against non-white land ownership and other civil rights. These mid-1800s “exclusion laws” — preventing non-white individuals from becoming citizens — set the stage for the political groups we later saw rise in Southwest Washington.
After the re-establishment of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915, members began to gain in numbers through the 1920s. On July 26, 1924, the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds was host to a KKK rally of an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 attendees from around the region.
The local KKK was very active socially, organizing dancing events and card parties, officiating member funerals and advocating for their views politically. They even appeared in parades, tying for first place in the 1924 Vader Fourth of July parade, the same year as the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds rally.
A historical commentary from The Chronicle archives states: “There were also cross burnings in Eastern Lewis County in 1927. One of them, at Mossyrock in March was performed by about 65 Klansmen, and later in the year a cross was burned in Randle, and a Bible was left nearby.”
Other firsthand accounts tell of a cross-burning that occurred on Seminary Hill in Centralia around the same decade.
The KKK appears to have faded from view a bit during the 1930s, giving rise to the next wave of nationalism and fascism in Lewis County — the Silver Legion.
The Silver Legion, or “Silver Shirts,” was founded in 1933. The white supremacist, anti-semitic group’s teachings were often compared to those of the Nazis. Their uniform of silver shirts was actually modeled after Hitler’s “Brown Shirts.”
In 1939, Chehalis was featured in LIFE magazine as part of a look at fascism in America. The group’s state liaison officer lived in Chehalis, recruited members locally and hosted various events. Archives in The Chronicle indicate that many local residents were unhappy to see Chehalis featured in LIFE magazine for such activities.
Silver Shirts fell from prominence following World War II. The next prominent ultra-conservative nationalist group would rise in Lewis County around the 1960s civil rights movement — the John Birch Society.
The John Birch Society re-emerged around the same time as the KKK rose to prominence again during the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
On the outside, JBS seemed like a “reasonable” organization. The group claimed that it was not a political group, but rather an educational group that distributed information. Over the years, the group would oppose major causes like the civil rights movement and the United Nations, along with sex education in schools.
“Birchers” had frequent opportunities, presented and hosted by local JBS groups, to learn about how the drug opium was a Chinese communist plot to control the world.
The group was even so popular at one point that there was an “American Opinion” bookstore on Oak Street in Centralia.
Rev. Stephen Gill Spottswood, former chairman of the NAACP and a clergyman, states in a 1961 Associated Press article that the JBS is “in a way is more of a threat … that iron-pipe mobsters in Alabama,” continuing by saying that JBS “wears the robes of respectability and does not conduct its campaigns in gutters and alleys.”
By the mid-1960s there are numerous articles in The Chronicle archives regarding local JBS activity. Many people didn’t dislike Birchers so much as they disagreed with the group’s founding members and the air of secrecy and conspiracy theories that surrounded the group. By the end of the 1960s, there were believed to be about 80 Birchers in Lewis County.
By the 1970s, major political parties — both Democratic and Republican — had expressly denounced the JBS, stating that the group’s members were too extreme and caused too many distractions. Many believed that JBS members acted covertly against the goals of both major parties.
Many elected officials and others throughout the rest of the 1960s and 1970s continued to compare the views of the JBS with the KKK and other white nationalist movements. The KKK had been denounced by nearly every major church organization and elected official by the end of the decade.
Former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke claimed that there were still active KKK members in Lewis County well into the mid-1970s, though he declined to give names or specifics.
It appears that there was a significant decline in activity in both groups into the 1980s, though there was at least one JBS booth at the local Southwest Washington Fair in the late 1990s.
It’s unclear if any active Birchers or Klan members are left in Lewis County today.
Knowing our region’s discriminatory history against minorities, it’s especially uplifting to see how the community is responding to the “Our George Washington” celebration.
Perhaps this is the beginning of a chapter where Lewis County will begin to become regionally known for its inclusivity and diversity, rather than for exclusivity and extreme views.
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Brittany Voie is The Chronicle’s senior web developer and a Saturday columnist. She can be reached at bvoie@chronline.com.
