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 Invisible Empire took over Anaheim and had a member list into the hundreds. He graciously provided the Weekly a copy, and boy, are we going to have fun over the next couple of weeks!

The provenance of the list is unknown–no one knows for sure who compiled it or even when–but it does list the names, addresses and occupations for hundreds of men. It was instrumental in defeating the Klan, an incident long celebrated by orange-crate historians. Most of the names are that of regular ol' working-class Whites–but not all of them.
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Over the next couple of weeks, the Weekly will reveal some of the more prominent names on the list, men immortalized in city and county annals via parks, streets and businesses, as well as in the history books as pioneers, as good men–as everything except Kluckers. Tune in next Monday for the first installment! And for the Weekly's previous coverage of the original Klan in Orange County, read this and that.

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