With the recent publication of Colorado’s historic Ku Klux Klan membership ledgers, which were made public for the first time earlier this week and published by History Colorado online in their entirety, now is a good time to remember how the Catholic Church in Colorado – and the Denver Catholic Register in particular – played a critical role in exposing local Klan members in the 1920s and ultimately helped to dismantle the organization in Colorado.
This important chapter in the history of the Church in Colorado was recognized in 2017 by the Colorado Experience series on Rocky Mountain PBS, when the video series explored the role of the Denver Catholic Register in exposing and ultimately defeating the Colorado chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1920s.
The modern narrative of the Klan tends to emphasize its activity in the deep south during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but Colorado, believe it or not, had the second largest chapter of the Klan in the United States in the 1920s, second only to its birthplace in Indiana.
The Klan was so entrenched in Colorado that it was impossible to be elected to political office, or gain a leadership position in the city’s institutions, without the backing of the Klan. It’s estimated that at its height, the Klan in “Kolorado” boasted a membership of about 35,000 to 40,000 members.
Businessmen, to show their support, and also worried about being targets of powerful Klan boycotts aimed at non-Klan members, would rename their companies in such a way that it was impossible not to know they were members or friends of the Klan, such as the Kanon Koal Kompany, of Canon City, Colorado.