Ku Klux Klan

Welcome to Ku Klux Kounty!

Fanning Elementary, Plummer Auditorium and other OC streets, parks and monuments named after local pioneers who were Klan members

One Weekly Reporter's Weekend Dressed as a KKK Member

If you ever plan on wearing a Klan robe around Orange County, (either attempting to intimidate minorities or as part of an ill-conceived Halloween costume), the first thing you need to know is that the public response to the sight of your ludicrous cone-head will be immediate. As model/gui ... More >>

'The Baytown Outlaws': Diligently Profane and Inane

A stew of cartoonishness feeds no one

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Edmund J. Finley and Tom J. Simmons, Santa Ana World War I Vets

Remember that controversy a couple of years ago, when the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report talking about the increase in white-power movements in the military, a report that conservatives immediately demonized to the point where the SPLC eventually had to backtrack on its findings even ... More >>

John Patrick Rogers, Career Townhome Community Asshole, Faces Serious Charges

And you thought your neighbor was a dick: John Patrick Rogers has a court date Thursday tied to what's apparently been a career of terrorizing other residents of his Huntington Beach townhome community. Rogers pleaded not guilty at arraignment in Westminster Monday to five felony counts of stalking ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Harry Ipsen and E.A. Long, Placentia Treasurer and Councilmember

Amazingly, for a city that was founded on apartheid, for a city that has the most severe Mason-Dixon line in Orange County, Placentia didn't have many Ku Klux Klan members during the 1920s.It wasn't as if the city's Mexicans and gabachos got along. In the 1930s, the city would explode with racial vi ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: A. Verd Napier and James E. Rymer, OC Newspapermen

And this series is BACK after my short hiatus...somewhere. Miss it, pathetic fanboys? Of course you did!Since I didn't do anything for two weeks, you get a two-fer: two pioneering Orange County newspapermen who were Klan members, although A. Verd Napier and James E. Rymer were hella difficult to une ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Dr. Walter W. Davis, Health Officer for Brea

First off, this column has finally been acknowledged for its nerdy brilliance with an award! The Orange County Press Club awarded me the "Real OC" award--essentially, the story that best tells the essence of Orange County. The panel of judges weren't OC reporters but rather outsiders, so they were r ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Lawrence A. Stevenson, Orange Councilmember

The surviving membership roster of the Orange County Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s isn't perfect. There are pages missing, not all the Klukkers have home addresses assigned to them, and some of the names are misspelled--which makes the mystery of finding out which local pioneer was Klan and which me ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Oswald Richard Meissner, Brea Councilmember

All good things must eventually pass, and so it came to be that by the end of the 1920s, the power of the Ku Klux Klan in Brea was on the wane. They had a good run, having set up in 1922 as part of the original KKK in Orange County and weathering the jihad that District Attorney Alexander P. Nelson ... More >>

Gustavo to Give Mini-Lecture on History of Mexican Food in OC NEXT FRIDAY TOMORROW at the Samueli Theater!

​As you've known for years, 2012 is the year that my much-promised Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America finally gets published. The debut lecture here in OC is April 12 at the Fullerton Public Library--but you can get a brief, brief preview next Friday TOMORROW at the Segerstrom Center for ... More >>

Alexander P. Nelson Was the Klanbuster

Ninety years ago, the KKK tried to take over Orange County—only to encounter the district attorney

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Morris W. Martenet, Jr., Anaheim Councilmember, Owner of Martenet Hardware

​Last year, Martenet Hardware in Anaheim closed after a century of serving the city. We went there as far back as I could remember for our construction needs, never completely forsaking it for Home Depot or even when a Lowe's opened up nearby. By then, the Martenet family no longer owned it, havin ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: George Annin, Fullerton Police Officer, Councilmember

​Given that the Fullerton Police Department's murderous ways are getting mucho coverage this week due to the Kelly Thomas killing, let's turn our attention anew to the department's old days, when it featured many Kluckers among its ranks, Kluckers who were hell-bent on turning Fullerton into a ref ... More >>

Is the Term 'Mexican' Becoming Extinct?

[¡Ask a Mexican!] And is 'Make Sick O' the best Mexi slur ever?

'Jerry Springer: The Opera' Is Very Merry!

The Chance Theater's staging overcomes a lame second half to satisfy your inner freak

Profiles in OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: William E. Fanning, Brea Schools Pioneer, Namesake of Fanning Elementary

​The legacy of school segregation in Orange County really needs no introduction 'round these parts. But what still needs to get examined is the political allegiances of the architects of such policies--beyond the mere racism that existed in Orange County before the 1950s, and toward the Coast to C ... More >>

Profiles in OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Samuel F. Hilgenfeld, Buena Park Minister, Founder of Anaheim's Hilgenfeld Mortuary

​Look for any hints of Anaheim's Klu Klux Klan past in the city, and they'll be next-to-impossible to find. After voters booted the Klucker-majority council and police force from power in 1925, city fathers did their darndest to eradicate any vestiges of the Invisible Empire, so you'll rarely see ... More >>

Profiles in OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Clyde Fairbairn, Longtime Olive Resident/Nice Guy

​The secrets people keep. A couple of years ago, a couple of amateur historians wrote up reminisces of Clyde Fairbairn, for whom Fairbairn Street in Orange is named. Fairbairn was a longtime resident of Olive, a community now mostly gone, gobbled up by Orange in the past half-century, but once cen ... More >>

Profiles in OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Hoyt Corbit, Yorba Linda Pioneer, Fan of Richard Nixon

​When Richard Nixon became president in 1968, the national media rushed to the Podunk city of Yorba Linda, the Dickster's birthplace and a town that had just incorporated a year earlier and was still largely citrus groves and rolling hills instead of the exclusive estates and gated communities tha ... More >>

Profiles in OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Dr. Roy S. Horton and Marshall Keeler, Santa Ana Unified Trustees

This kid'll be our mascot until we get an official logo for this series...​Are you like me and laugh when historical conservationists give names to buildings based on people who once lived there or commissioned said structure? Probably not. Anyhoo, the Dr. Horton Building stands on Third Street in ... More >>

Announcing the 'Which OC Pioneers Were KKK Members?' Series!

​Last week, Luis F. Fernandez--the historian who rediscovered the long-forgotten desegregation story of Alex Bernal--went to the Anaheim Heritage Room and got a copy of a list that had long eluded him: the membership roll of the Orange County chapter of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s, when the ... More >>

Racist OC Register Reader Fustercluck of the Day

Headline: Celebrants Kick Off Kwanzaa Week​ Comment by SAVEUS2: WOW!!! What a beautiful Community celebration, the food, entertainment, decorations and the very educational and informational program was very well done....It was a pleasure to see the community come together and support such a cultu ... More >>

'Art Shack'-ing Up

The Laguna Art Museum brings skeezy slums and screwball shanties to beach-babe-ville

Racist OC Register Reader Fustercluck of the Day

​Headline: Teen Fatally Stabbed at Anaheim PartyComment by SOUNDOFF2: Cant' we all just stab along?Comment by LIVINREALITY: Hey SOUNDOFF2,! I love it it !!!! That's actually really funny. To answer the question. No they can't. not enough intelligence between them to get the timing right . another ... More >>

Racist OC Register Reader Fustercluck of the Day

​Headline: ACLU Request FBI Documents Related to 'Ethnic Mapping'Comment by GETRIDOFEINGPC: the aclu when first founded had good intentions but now they are far from what they used to be. Personally they should be disbanded as they are no better than the NAACP, Nation of Islam, Black Panthers ... More >>

[Year In Review] OC Weekly's News Blog, Navel Gazing, Gazes Back at 2009

Most Racist City in Orange County--Is it Fullerton??? Our Top Five

Henry W. Head, founding father of OC, longtime Santa Ana doctor...​I was speaking with a local GOP operative recently when he said something that shocked me. The topic was my recent cover story on the Candy-Ass Gang, the trio of pendejos and one pendeja who prosecutors say drove into Huntington Be ... More >>

More Proof Santa Ana is Racist at its Core: Jefferson Davis Pie!

Davis: Culinary godfather of SanTana?​My one vice in life is buying books related to Orange County, and our fair land's numerous social organizations have gathered and published their recipes over the years. The oldest cookbook in my collection is one compiled by the Ebell Society of the Santa Ana ... More >>

In Defense of Klanaheim

The Los Angeles Times story published this Monday telling the world Anaheim is now majority-Latino has drawn nothing but derision from the Latino Anaheimers I know (read this musical takedown by Weekly contributor and KPFK-FM 90.7 Subversive Historian Gabriel San Roman). "Oh no, they didn't put in a ... More >>

OC's Rich Vein of Klanniness Tapped Out?

Call it racist gentrification (redundant, right?): The Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist group that virtually created Orange County, can now barely be found among our county's pale-colored treasure trove of bigots. Californian politician and proud clucker Dr. Henry William Head helped engineer Ora ... More >>

Turkey People the New Holocausted Jews?*

What is it about Orange County that creates fools who make ridiculous comparisons of their causes to the suffering Jews experienced during the Holocaust? A couple of years ago, it was the Minuteman mexicana, Lupe Moreno, rambling about how Mexican immigrants were the new Nazis, while American whites ... More >>

The Curious Case of the Bowers Museum KKK Tree

Outside the Bowers Museum (the original part, not the multimillion-dollar addition) stands a beautiful, still growing crape myrtle tree. It blooms every spring, adding a bit of genteel, colorful charm to the already-purty facility. You've seen this tree if you ever drive or walk past the Bowers on M ... More >>

On Thin-Skinned SanTana Historians

Moxley fends off idiot Republicans; Nick Schou battles conspiracy loons; Vickie Chang gets the hipsters riled up. My petty, non-pedo-apologist fights? Local amateur historians. My post last week about SanTana's missing segregationist history in a recent Images of America book about the county seat ... More >>

Letters From OC Weekly Readers

'Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay' Is a Forced Act Two

The KKK Took My County Away: Meet the Klansman Who Helped to Found Orange County

Orange County Founded by KKK?

In preparing for a--shameless self-promotion alert!--coming Navel Gazing profile of Orange County hate groups, I came across a stunning--though not surprising--revelation: Orange County was officially founded by the Ku Klux Klan. This insight comes courtesy of Dr. Henry William Head, a Civil War ve ... More >>

The Acting-Loving Jack Anderson

The county is still abuzz about the failed jewelry heist at the Shops at Mission Viejo that left an idiot in a bad wig dead and the Orange County Sheriff Department investigating its own since two deputies shot the guy. Given that Kirk Christian Knight (just one letter removed from KKK!) fired at th ... More >>

OCC Excommunicates the Pledge

In a meeting on Wednesday night, Orange Coast College student trustees voted to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from their meetings, citing an incompatibility between nationwide submission to God and justice for all. Student trustee Jason Bell explained his position to Reuters: "That [under God] part ... More >>

Diary of Mad County

July 12 - July 18

Anaheim

Letters

Diary of a Mad County

Letters

The Good Old Days

Pro-airport activists invoke anti-Semitism in their campaign to build El Toro International

Springboard for Hitler

Anaheims the Shack has become Nuremberg-rally central for OC racists

Letters

Oh, Brother

Fantasy Candidates