The Kontinental Klan

Prohibition’s failure had some consequences no one seemed to anticipate. Illegal moonshine flowed more freely than legal booze either before or after the nation went dry. Illegal traffic in liquor fostered criminal activity which led to organized crime. But another rather bizarre consequence was the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan across the Pacific Northwest. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan claimed a platform that claimed to be anti vice and corruption It was also pro patriotism in the wake of World War I. The Klan targeted blacks, Jews, Catholics, and foreign born people. In Montana, since there were very small African American and Jewish populations, the KKK targeted Catholics and foreign-born residents.
Montana’s leader, or Grand Dragon, was Lewis Terwilliger, a former mayor of Laurel. Terwilliger christened Butte the “worst place in the State of Montana” because of its cultural diversity and its many Catholics. Little wonder that Butte is where Montana’s first chapter organized in 1923. There were eventually some forty chapters in a number of Montana cities and towns during the depressed 1920s into the 1930s.
On September 10, 1925, Laurel residents were shocked to see a burning cross on a butte four miles west of the city. The Laurel Outlook reported that the fire lit up the night sky and "it looked like all the dragons, wizards, witches, ghosts—or whatever they are called—from all over the country had gathered there." Wearing their customary white flowing robes and peaked hoods, some 2500 members gathered on the butte. Fireworks announced the initiation of one hundred new members.
Nationally, the Klan organized in Georgia in 1915 retaining much of the dress, rules, and cross-burning of the original nineteenth century organization. In Montana and the Northwest, however, the Kontinental Klan, as it was called, was not as violent as its counterparts elsewhere. Prospective members had to be native born, white, Protestant, Gentile, and American citizens. Interestingly, many of Montana’s 5,000 members were women who belonged to separate women’s chapters of the Kontinental Klan.

Women of the Billings Ku Klux Klan  No. 7 gave this memorial marker in 1928. What is marked, however, is a mystery; only the stone remains. Courtesy of Harry Axline.

Jack Beauchamp

Artist Jack Beauchamp was born in Indiana in 1906. His family relocated to Fort Benton and later came to Helena where Beauchamp graduated from Helena High School. He studied art and painting, and during the Great Depression, Beauchamp won several competitions to paint murals in U.S. post offices. In 1941, he became the Helena Art Center director at Carroll College. While he was in Helena, Beauchamp’s art was often exhibited and locally coveted and collected. In the mid-1940s, he left Helena for wider markets in California and painted murals and portraits there until his death in 1956. One of his well-known projects was a series of historical murals painted for Kenny Egan in 1943 on the walls of Helena’s Mint Cigar Store and Tavern at 20 1/2 North Main Street. When the bar was later demolished, owners carefully removed the murals from the walls and stored them. In 1981, the Dennis and Vivian Connors family donated the murals to the Montana Historical Society. There they remained until an opportunity to display them came in 2003. The Commission Room in the City-County Building was undergoing restoration. Commissioners secured Helena artist Robert F. Morgan to create three paintings depicting local history. Jack Beauchamp’s murals were brought out of storage, cleaned, and hauled via crane through a fourth-story window.

Montana Historical Society Museum collection

Today the colorful murals of the two artists not only enhance the historic ambience of the Commission Room, but also tell a local story. When Jack Beauchamp was art director at Carroll College, Morgan was just beginning to study art and was his student. The work of the two acclaimed artists together, teacher and student, brings history full circle.

Friday Photo: Butte's Salvation Army

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 74-37

Men enjoy a meal at the Salvation Army in Butte during the Great Depression. The calendar appears to show April 1935.

Friday Photo: The Bookmobile Comes to Fairfield

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 89-38 F5

During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration funded library service demonstration projects—including this bookmobile—as part of the New Deal. These children are browsing through books in Fairfield, Montana.

Friday Photo: Advertising Butte

Are you planning a vacation this summer? Do you get ideas from travel brochures or magazines? Here's the cover of a pamphlet, published during the Great Depression, that aimed to lure tourists to Butte, Montana.

Montana Historical Society Research Center

Published in 1933 by the Butte Chamber of Commerce, the brochure describes the city this way: "Beautiful by night, unique by day, Butte is literally 'a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid.'" You can read the rest of the promotion here.

What do you think? Based on this description, would you visit Butte?

Pictograph Cave Cannibals

English professor H. Melville Sayre of the Montana School of Mines at Butte led the first archaeological excavations at Pictograph Cave, a National Historic Landmark, near Billings. Under foreman Oscar T. Lewis, a Glendive rancher and self-taught archaeologist, the dig was funded by the Depression-era New Deal Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. It put numerous crew members to work. According to locals who frequented the excavation site as visitors in 1937 and 1938, both Sayre and Lewis told fantastic tales. They claimed to have found evidence that Ice Age occupants practiced cannibalism. They backed up their story with the supposed discovery of human teeth, a human skull with knife marks consistent with removal of the tongue, and butchered human rib bones bearing human teeth marks. While Sayre’s formal report to Governor Roy Ayers is considerably less flamboyant, he does mention that some items yielded evidence consistent with cannibalistic activity. Lewis further speculates in his notes that notched bone projectile points found in the caves came from Inuits in the Arctic. He figured that the Inuits harpooned buffalo that did not die, but migrated south where they were eventually killed by the early inhabitants of the Yellowstone Valley. Writer Glendolin Damon Wagner, who wrote about evidence of cannibalism among other indigenous peoples, painted a vivid picture of the finds in Pictograph Cave in the Rocky Mountain Husbandman of May 3, 1938. But when professional archaeologist Dr. William Mulloy took over the Pictograph Cave excavations in 1941, these tales died a swift death. If evidence of cannibalism existed, it has been lost along with many of the artifacts discovered under Lewis and Sayre. Most scientists discount cannibalism among Montana’s first peoples as nothing more than bunk.


Bill Browne, photographer, Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-96 P3 #18

Archaeologists Gus Helbronner (left) and Wahle Phelan during excavation of Pictograph Cave, c. 1937 Click the photo for a bigger version.

Homestead Horror!

A Plentywood rancher once told of a childhood experience that made a lasting impression. Before the Rural Electrification Administration brought electricity to many ranches in the late 1930s, the New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration helped Montana farmers by channeling some ten million dollars worth of contract money into the desperate economy. Some families who benefitted from this new money splurged on automobiles. This particular family was proud of their new car, and in the evenings they would go visiting. One warm spring evening as the family returned home after such a visit, they drove into the driveway. As they approached the dark house, the headlights flashed upon the attic window, and they saw a white figure moving back and forth in the light. As was the family custom, the children drew straws to see who had to go into the dark house first to light the kerosene lamp. The short straw fell to this youngster. He was terrified, but his father told him to get to it, and so he approached the house with weak knees. Instructed to discover what was in the window, the youngster slowly made his way up the stairs, taking the treads one by one. He thought he would faint he was so scared. Finally he got to the top stair, took a deep breath, and flung the door open. Relief flooded through him. During the cold winter months, his mother used the attic to hang the laundry, and hanging in the window was a forgotten pair of long johns swaying in the breeze.

John W. White

Today's Montana moment celebrates Black History Month with a look back at the life of John W. White of Kalispell.

Kalispell’s historic Central School today is home to the Northwest Montana Historical Society and serves as a community center and museum. But from 1894 to 1991, Central served students. Back in 1932 during the Great Depression, students of social science and history were studying the Civil War. The school’s longtime janitor, John W. White, knew a thing or two firsthand about one of the main issues. White was born a slave in North Carolina. He was ten when the war ended and freedom changed his life. He came west where he and his wife, Helen, settled in Demersville. They moved to Kalispell with its founding in 1891. White worked at Central School for more than thirty-five years. He had no formal schooling, but he was a self-taught scholar, an avid reader, and believed in education. He began his long workday at four A.M., and at the end of every day when the halls were quiet, he would take up his place by the furnace with a book in his hand and do some serious reading.


Image from the Museum at Central School

White, beloved by generations of Central children, saved his money to send four of his own children to college. But this special day in May, 1932, as White neared the end of his long life, he set aside his mops and brooms to tell the children about his own personal experiences. White’s lectures on slavery that day had the children riveted to their seats. He passed away two years later in 1934, but he left Central students with a perspective they did not forget.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Christmas at the Rio

In December of 1935, Helena was still suffering from the Great Depression and the devastation of the recent October earthquakes. The series of temblors left many families in dire need, camping out in their yards for weeks as winter cold set in. Thanksgiving passed with more earthquakes, more terror for the community. Children especially felt the uncertainty of these very bad times. But with the start of the holiday season, people got into the spirit, stores realized good profits, and things began to look better. Movies helped people cope. The Rio Theater on North Last Chance Gulch had opened the year before, in 1934, and was celebrating its first anniversary. Theatre manager Paul McAddams had an idea for a way to celebrate this special occasion. He teamed up with the Helena Kiwanis to throw a special Christmas party for all the children of Helena. There was a flurry of planning, and Christmas morning dawned cold, clear, and mercifully, the Helena valley was peaceful. As the sun came up, there was a steady procession of children streaming into the theater.  After a morning of free comedies, novelties, and cartoons, Santa Claus arrived on the stage and the Kiwanis Club helped distribute free candy from his pack. McAddams said at the time, “We consider children our best friends as they consistently advertise the shows. Their knowledge of pictures and stars is remarkable … It is our Christmas present to the children of Helena in celebration of our first anniversary, and we wish them a Merry Christmas.” Following the party, shows resumed with continuous showings of In Person starring Ginger Rogers.