Gratiot County Klan news from the mid-1920s: The top of the front page of the Gratiot County Knighthawk, the Klan newspaper published in the county in August 1928; the Gratiot Klan was very active in participating in state KKK affairs as this notice from 1926 indicates; three Klan preachers entered Gratiot County in the summer of 1925, led meetings which lead to a riot and then faced charges which ultimately went to the State Supreme Court; even small communities like Sumner members participated in Klan meetings such as the one in New Haven in the late summer of 1924.

This is part three in a four part series on the Gratiot County Ku Klux Klan and it activity in Gratiot County during the 1920s.

Alma had a problem with the Klan in the summer of 1925 when three out-of-state itinerant “preachers” held religious meetings in Wright Park. Before their initial one-week engagement ended, Alma Mayor Creaser attempted to find the trio and inform them that their permit would not be renewed because of the controversy of these meetings.

              Lewis J. King, George Garner, and R. C. Garner were well-known in the Midwest in pro-Klan circles. At one time, they claimed to be Protestant Christians who converted from Catholicism; King himself professed to be an ex-priest and sold books about his conversion and anti-Catholic teachings at his meetings.

              Coinciding with King’s meetings was the spreading of a scurrilous rumor by the Ku Klux Klan that Catholics at St. Mary’s Church were secretly stockpiling a horde of guns and ammunition in the basement of the church.

              When King appeared at Wright Park the evening after being told that his meetings were over, he and a large group of supporters approached the main gate, where they encountered Alma Mayor Creaser and several police officers. At that point, “The Riot in the Park” began.

              King argued that he had a right to hold a public meeting and that the large crowd behind him did, too. Resisting the officers, they stormed the gate, yelled for the crowd to follow, and barged into the park, running over Creaser and the police officers while knocking over fences in their way. One of the Garners, draped in an American flag, was seen out front leading the crowd. As a result, Lewis J. King continued his inflammatory preaching in Wright Park for yet another night in Alma.

              The next day, the Alma City Commission fielded numerous complaints from the public and had the three offenders arrested. After making bail, King defied the Commission by conducting a meeting at the Alma Christian Church. Meanwhile, over ninety people signed a petition concerning the arrests, demanding Mayor Creaser’s resignation. Bolstered by this support, King again tried to hold meetings in the park but then agreed to move them onto a private lot in northwest Alma.

              On August 2, weeks after the incident in the park, the police arrested the preachers for defying a city order, resisting officers, and inciting the public. However, the men made bail again and continued holding revival meetings and pubic baptisms on the Pine River. During one of these King-Garner meetings in Alma, a crowd of 300-500 Klansmen dressed in full Klan attire showed up in support.

              In November, the King-Garner trial, which took place in Ithaca, gained statewide attention. Gratiot County Prosecutor Romaine Clark and the state Assistant Attorney General led the prosecution. According to the Alma Record, “a large crowd that jammed the courtroom and overflowed into the corridors” listened intently to the proceedings during the trial. Clark moved quickly, forcing King to admit he had never been a Catholic priest, that he never became a citizen of the United States despite living here for over fifteen years, and that he had been involved in dozens of conflicts and fights across the United States – all involving his religious meetings.

              After 4 ½ hours of deliberations, the jury found King and the Garners guilty of resisting a police officer. However, the defense requested a thirty-day appeal, and each man was released on $3,000 bail (provided by several Gratiot County residents). Meanwhile, the case worked its way up to the State Supreme Court.

              One year later, the men lost their appeal; King received one to two years in Jackson State Prison, while the Garners were sentenced to eighteen months in Ionia. However, in the end, none of the men served more than four months for their crime.

  Copyright 2023 James M. Goodspeed