Bill Warner Sarasota Private Investigations Says 100 Years Ago 1924 Binghamton State Capital for Ku Klux Klan in New York State Led By Hiram Evans

PHOTO CREDIT BROOME COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. AMERICA FIRST: Binghamton Was The State Capital for the Ku Klux Klan in New York State for 5 Years. The Forgotten Kapital: The Ku Klux Klan in Binghamton, New York, 1923-1928 by Jay L. Rubin. Binghamton was home to the New York State headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. Dr. Hiram Wesley Evans was the Ku Klux Klan's Imperial Wizard and Imperial Cyclops from Nov 1922 through to June 10th 1939, KKK boss Hiram Evans frequented Binghamton NY during that time frame.

In the 1920s, Membership in the KKK reached several million people almost exclusively white, native-born, Protestant women and men like in Binghamton NY. And in communities where the KKK really took root like in Tennessee, "this meant that a very sizable part of the eligible population was in the Klan." The KKK was even successful at "block recruiting" of whole clubs or congregations at one time.  

During the 1920s, a resurgent KKK moved North with their white supremacist “100 percent American” message. Millions joined the Klan and rallied to its various causes, including suppression of Blacks, restricting immigration of Eastern and Southern Europeans, limiting the political influence of Catholics and Jews and strictly enforcing Prohibition. After an unceremonious forced retreat from New York City, the KKK moved their headquarters to Binghamton NY in 1923.

PHOTO CREDIT BROOME COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. FBI REPORT: Contributing to criminal chaos of the 1920s was the sudden rise of the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK. In the early 1920s, membership in the KKK quickly escalated to six figures under the leadership of advertising guru Edward Young Clarke. On St. Patrick's Day in 1923, Binghamton city residents were shocked to discover pamphlets promoting the Klan had been left at their homes. The Klan's state headquarters were housed in a building near Henry and Wall streets in Binghamton NY.

PHOTO CREDIT BROOME COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. The KKK was active in many areas of New York state, including Ithaca, Syracuse, Niagara Falls and New York City with Binghamton as the 'Kapital'. Parades of men and women members of the Klan marched in along Court Street in downtown Binghamton.

PHOTO CREDIT BROOME COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Cross burning and KKK rallies were held at Stow Flats in Binghamton and in the Union District of Endicott. Binghamton's past KKK activity sparked a new controversy in 1993 when civil rights activists called for the removal of a reference to the activity in a tourism brochure distributed by the Broome County Chamber of Commerce. By the middle of the decade, 1920's, the KKK boasted several million members. The crimes committed in the name of its bigoted beliefs were despicable—hangings, floggings, mutilations, tarring and feathering, kidnappings, branding by acid, along with a new intimidation tactic, cross-burning. The Klan had become a clear threat to public safety and order.

Dr. Hiram Wesley Evans was the Ku Klux Klan's Imperial Wizard and Imperial Cyclops from Nov 1922 through to June 10th 1939, KKK boss Hiram Evans frequented Dyersburg TN in 1925. KKK boss Hiram Evans home base was in Atlanta GA and Washington D.C. but he came to little Dyersburg TN for the wedding of his attorney J. A. Comer to the daughter of the Mayor of Dyersburg TN towards the end of December 1924. KKK boss Evans was taken ill on the last day of the wedding festivities and needed a very serious operation, acute appendicitis, at Dyersburg General Hospital on Jan 1st, 1925. KKK boss Hiram Evans stayed at the Atwood Hotel located on the corner of Main Avenue and Court Street in downtown Dyersburg TN for the whole month of Jan 1925 recuperating after the serious operation. Ku Klux Klan bosses, R.K. Lyle and Norman K. Campbell stayed in Dyersburg TN with National KKK big boss Dr. Hiram Wesley Evans at the Atwood Hotel for 30 days in Jan 1925. For the whole month of Jan 1925 Dyersburg TN was the home of the KKK National office. 

A Kangaroo Court conviction was the "legal" form of justice in Dyer County TN for decades. Dyersburg TN was a KKK stronghold from 1865 through the 1920's, at least 9 black men hanged (lynched or burnt or to death) in front of the Dyer County Court House up through the 1920's. The grand oak tree that stood in front of the Dyer County Court House was nicknamed the "Mike Lynching Tree", yes Dyersburg Dyer County TN has a lot to be ashamed of, no editorial newspaper scrubbing will ever make it clean! "Tennessee is the state where the Ku Klux Klan was founded. The Klan in Tennessee was concentrated in the western divisions, (Dyersburg and Dresden), and eastern divisions of the state, being introduced into Knoxville in the spring of 1921 when Grand Kleagle Henry P. Fry recruited members there, in Johnson City, Bristol, and other upper East Tennessee cities. On August 26, 1874, a mob of white men (KKK) seized 16 Black men from the Gibson County Jail in Trenton, Tennessee, and lynched all of them.

Newspapers across America on December 2nd to December 5th 1917 had the following headline on page 1, TENNESSEE LYNCHING OUTRIVALS WORST GERMAN ATROCITIES DURING WWI, damming the good people of Dyersburg TN. On Dec 2nd 1917 Lation Scott aka Lation Jenkins, a black man, was tortured and burned to death by a Dyersburg TN mob (KKK) of thousands. And you thought ISIS was bad, in the deep South 'lynching' could mean hanging or burned to death at an iron stake after the victim was shot, stabbed, castrated and disemboweled. The torture and lynching of Lation Scott was widely reported on at the time, with Baltimore newspaper The 'Afro-American' running the headline TENNESSEE LYNCHING OF LATION SCOTT IN DYERSBURG OUTRIVALS WORST GERMAN ATROCITIES DURING WWI and coverage in The New York Times.

Bill Warner Private Investigator Sarasota, Florida