|
|
 |
Garst
Museum Hosts February Speakers Series
On Sunday, February 24, 2019, at 2 p.m., Garst Museum welcomes Dr.
William Trollinger from the University of Dayton as a guest speaker.
Dr. Trollinger’s program “Terrorizing Immigrants and Catholics: The Ku
Klux Klan in the 1920s” will reflect on this sensitive and difficult
time in American history.
Having virtually disappeared in the late nineteenth century, the Ku
Klux Klan exploded onto the national scene in the early 1920s with
perhaps 5 million members at its peak. While the original Klan
concentrated its animus against the newly freed slaves, this “second”
KKK had an expanded list of social scapegoats that included immigrants,
Jews, and Catholics. While the original Klan was based primarily
in the South, the second Klan had its greatest numerical strength in
the West and Midwest. In fact, Ohio may have had more KKK members than
any other state in the Union with an estimated 400,000 Klansmen and
Klanswomen.
In this presentation, we will explore why the Klan was so strong in
Ohio, what activities the Ohio Klan engaged in, and in what ways the
folks targeted by the Klan fought back. Darke county was not
immune to Klan activities. On June 14, 1923, there was a Ku Klux Klan
rally at the Darke County Fair Grounds. Garst Museum has photos
documenting this rally. Discrimination and hatred towards ethnic
groups, Jews, and Catholics were not uncommon in the 1920s. Is history
repeating itself?
Dr. William Trollinger is professor of history in the History and
Religious Studies Departments at the University of Dayton. He is also
director of UD’s Core Integrated Studies Program, which features an
innovative five-semester interdisciplinary curriculum. He earned his
B.A. in English and History from Bethel College (MN) and his M.A. and
Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin−Madison. His research
has focused on twentieth- and twenty-first−century American
Protestantism, particularly fundamentalism, creationism, and Protestant
print culture. His publications include God’s Empire: William Bell
Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism (University of Wisconsin Press,
1990) and Righting America at the Creation Museum (John Hopkins
University Press, 2016); the latter he co-authored with his wife, Susan
Trollinger. He has also done significant research on the Ku Klux Klan
in Ohio in the 1920s; one result of this work is “Hearing the Silence:
The University of Dayton, the Ku Klux Klan, and Catholic Universities
and Colleges” (American Catholic Studies, Spring 2013) for which he won
the 2014 Catholic Press Award for Best Essay in a Scholarly Magazine.
He enjoys speaking on the 1920s Ohio Ku Klux Klan.
All Garst lectures are free and open to the public. However,
regular admission will apply to tour the museum, which includes the
outstanding National Annie Oakley Center, Crossroads of Destiny, Lowell
Thomas exhibit, and Longtown display. Funding for this program was made
possible, in part, by the Harry D. Stephens Memorial Foundation and by
the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
The Garst Museum is located at:
205 N. Broadway, Greenville, OH 45331
937-548-5250
website: www.garstmuseum.org
email: information@garstmuseum.org
|
|
|
|
