← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Kevin_O'Keeffe
Thread ID: 17226 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-03-10
2005-03-10 18:13 | User Profile
[url]http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=4695[/url]
A poignant poem follows a partial history of the little-known New England Ku Klux Klan, and the conflicts and petty nationalisms that cut across the White communities of New England -- an understanding of which can point us toward the light of a wider view.
by Ellin Anderson
NATIONS MAY BE WON by force of arms, but not so the little outpost nestled in a curve of the river. When the first settlers arrived, in the middle of the 1640s, the natives had already been decimated by illness, and with Providence seeming to smile down on them, the English herdsmen readily accepted this gift of green pastures beside still waters. In the spirit of foresight, the eastern side of the settlement was anchored with an Indian fort, while practicality and ambition set as many water mills at the western end of town as its ponds and streams could hold. At the center of the enterprise, a chain ferry pointed North like a silver wand linking Polaris with the wolf-haunted swamps to the south.
Water is life, and to grow significant commerce in early America, it took a river. In the days when roads were little more than cow paths and Indian trails, this improvement on the King's Highway may as well have run with silver and gold. Merchant sloops and wool-barges kept company with schools of leaping salmon, while ever-more elegant houses rose up to face the roaring freshets of spring. Thus the colonists prospered, for about 50 years, until the heirs of Passaconaway and their French allies came down from the North to make one last stand. Following deeds of valor and cruelty on both sides, at last the English triumphed, and for another 150 years -- broken only by the two conflicts with Great Britain, in which the wide green shores were spared further bloodshed -- their place in the world seemed secure.
When the village was about 200 years old, into this verdant paradise came a new way of life. Drawn by an abundance of water power, the textile manufacturers established their enterprise upstream from the old grist mills, at the southern end of town -- which was thenceforth known as the Mills. From the mid-19th century onwards, hundred of Yankees were coaxed off their farms to work amidst the hum of machinery that soon grew to a nationwide roar. But even before the Mills were producing woolens to supply Federal soldiers in the war between North and South, a new and more eager pool of labor had appeared on the scene.
With bare and bleeding feet, the newly arrived Irish immigrants walked the 30 miles and more from Boston to the mill village and its promise of daily bread. The mill owners obliged them, and provided for every need -- although housing in the rows of sound tenements and snug cottages was guaranteed only to those who agreed to send their children into the Mills. While continuing a child's education through high school was grounds for eviction, many brave Irish families defied this mandate and struck out on their own. In this wise, whole clans of teachers, priests, policemen, attorneys, and men of business emerged from the Mill barracks.
Most remained, however, and were well favored for their loyalty. Other groups were not: In particular, Italian immigrants were denied employment at the Mills, only because their concern for better working conditions pushed them towards organized labor. In those days of unregulated industry, no mill owner in his right mind would invite the Union bogey to the feast.
Meanwhile, in "Yankee Village," a cluster of Colonial homes and farms fanning out from the church green, life went on as it always had -- until the 1920s, when some of the entrenched Irish became unruly. Instead of the long-remembered Indian gamut of tomahawk and knife, Yankee farmers taking their goods to the city some five miles to the west found a new ordeal at the Crossroads near the Mill Pond. There, Irish loiterers waited to pelt the Yankees' wagons not only with insults and abuse, but with rocks, bottles and sods of turf.
Should the farmers call in the authorities? What could they do? Throw the lifeblood of the Mills in jail -- or anger their families, some now in positions of authority themselves? What was to be done? As if in answer to their need -- and in tune with a growing sense of anxiety over change within America's shores -- a stranger arrived in Yankee Village and offered to help. He called himself the Kleagle.
From the intricate harbors of Rhode Island to the far hill country of the North, Puritan Klansmen arose in their tens of thousands like a New Model Army against the twin specters of "Popery" and unchecked immigration. In the 1920s, the Klan's influence extended far into the sphere of politics, and many an aspiring New England statesman either enjoyed Klan backing or fell by the wayside. Northern New England was a special Klan bastion, and rumor had it that one of our most famous Vermonters, President Calvin Coolidge, was not only sympathetic but a secret Klansman himself.
Early in the long, dry summer of 1924, on a steep hillside hard by the Crossroads, a fiery cross rose up against the night sky. This wind-sharpened ridge with its honor guard of tall pines belonged to a Yankee dairyman whose pastures and barn loomed over the Mill tenements. Soon the roads were lined with people gazing in wonder at the old symbol of defiance that had once summoned Scotland's Highland Clans. Following the midnight spectacle, other such lightings occurred, and the newly organized Klavern took part in several Fourth of July celebrations.
Finally, at the end of July, the iron men of Yankee Village donned the white robe and red cross for a major rally, to be held on a towering hill above the old Church. As elsewhere in Massachusetts, they were not unopposed:
"In most cases, the pattern was the same. Anywhere from several hundred to ten thousand Klansmen would assemble for a meeting, often with visiting kluxers coming in from other states. Local crowds would gather on the edge of the Klan field or guarded perimeter, milling about, straining to catch a glimpse of what was going on within the hooded circle, muttering derisive and hostile comments and threats. Then, when a burning cross flamed against the dark sky to mark the end of the meeting, the crowd would surge forward. Amid a shower of stones, sticks, and often bullets, a general melee would ensue....Even when ten thousand Klansmen rallied in the multinational college and mill town of Worcester, their numbers did not prevent trouble. On the first day a plane rented by the Klan was brought down by a rifle shot, and early the next morning gangs of local boys and young men stoned cars and beat up Klansmen leaving at the end of the meeting." (Hooded Americanism: The History of the Klu Klux Klan, by David M. Chalmers, Third Edition, copyright 1987, Duke University Press.)
Thus it was in Yankee Village, when 3,000 Klansman raised the triumphal cross (although due to a drought in which the surrounding hayfields might have caught fire, it was never set alight). In the riot that ensued, four men who came to protest the Klan were peppered with buckshot and hospitalized. Yet this was not the end of the Klan in that locale: They simply moved on to the next town, where they received a warm welcome. In fact, less than a year later, the headlines screamed: "Klansmen Give Money to Buy Pastor an Auto."
Yankee ingenuity made its mark on Klan tradition in Northern Essex Country when some Klansmen illuminated a cross with electric light bulbs. These could be run off a car battery for mobile operations, such as parades and weddings. (Why leave a mess to clean up when you can just drive away?)
Among families that are still known as pillars of their communities, such low-key Klan activity continued up until the Great Depression, when the string-pulling behind that episode also served to empty the Yankees' pockets of their monthly Klan fee. But the harassment at the Crossroads had stopped, and by 1925, Klan power and pressure had created new Federal laws to curb immigration.
In the decades that followed, although not untouched by change and war, the little town at the bend in the river continued to flourish. More and more immigrants moved in from Boston, giving the town a truly pan-European flavor. By the early 1960s, with the Mills long silent, peace and quiet reigned. Often, above the dull hum of TV sets, the wind in the tall pines by the river was all you could hear at night.
But a shadow was growing in the East -- whispers of an ancient fear.
Fear: that old fear of control by a foreign power, of enslavement in one's own country, hard-won and preserved by one's forefathers. Fear, this time for real. And within that shadow and fear of foreign control, Irish and English, Catholic and Protestant were all equally vulnerable -- and equally expendable. Soon, under this deepening shadow, President John F. Kennedy -- a symbol of Irish success in America -- lay betrayed and slain. Yes, nations may be won by force of arms, but they are easily lost to indifference -- which is merely another form of blindness. And in a nation where even the young are blind, let the shadow fall where it may!
BLIND
by Ellin Anderson
Blind, and forgetful of the past he knew, He found the robe where someone sought to hide That moth-white satin in a sea of blue Farm denim, with the peaked hood tucked inside.
The west wind sang, the river was in flood -- Could this long garment possibly be his? Spring sunlight stirred the old New England blood -- "I'll have to ask my nephew what it is."
The young man shuddered. How could he describe The burning cross, the horror on each face When Irishmen fought off the hooded tribe -- Obscene, yet not entirely out of place
In pasture land of rocks and apple trees Where witches swung, where natives used to range, And died in fever. Folly's rush to seize The sharp twin horns of progress and of change,
Was best forgotten. Let him fade away Believing that those weathered hands were clean: "An old knight's costume from some high-school play -- I'll give it to my son for Halloween."
"Give it to me." The old man took the hood, And put his fingers through each gaping eye. "Bury me in it, where my totem stood; Plant olives on the hillside where I lie; See if the wind we've sown can ever die."
[url=http://www.nationalvanguard.org/bsearch.php?author=Ellin%20Anderson]More works by Ellin Anderson[/url]
[url=http://home.earthlink.net/~ellingreeranderson/]Ellin Anderson's home page[/url]
Vermont poet Ellin Anderson has won many awards for poetry in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. A lifelong resident of New England, she was born in Boston on April 18, 1958, graduated from The Pingree School in 1976, and received a B.A. in Art from Mount Holyoke College in 1982. Anderson has been published in The Longfellow Society Journal, The Boston Poet, Mediums, Pleiades/ArtsNorth, and Orbis, as well as [url=http://www.nationalvanguard.org]National Vanguard[/url] magazine. She created and produced ââ¬ÅPoetry With Ellin Anderson,ââ¬Â a weekly radio show on WNBP (Newburyport), which was sponsored by World Learning Incorporated and the Summer Abroad Program.
Anderson is a member of the Longfellow Poetry Society, which meets at Longfellowââ¬â¢s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts. She has received praise for her work from Massachusetts poet X. J. Kennedy, who comments: ââ¬ÅEllin Anderson has a keen sense of the past, yet at the same time can be triumphantly contemporary. Her skill and resourcefulness delight.ââ¬Â
Ms. Anderson has, for the last several years, been a member of the [url=http://www.natall.com]National Alliance[/url], as well as an active participant in the [url=http://www.natallboston.com/]Boston-area Local Unit[/url] of the Alliance.