history

We Remember as Gratiot Goes to the Movies Alma Series Part IV: “Transitions, 1919-1920”

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Movies in Alma in 1919 from the top: Houdini at the Idlehour Theater in May 1919; the Kilties come to Alma at the Idlehour, October 1919; “washed air” arrives at the Idlehour prior to the onset of summer, June 1919.

In mid-January 1919, after closing due to the Influenza Epidemic, theatres such as “The Liberty” and “The Idlehour” attempted to reconnect with Alma moviegoers. During the first week of reopening, something new happened in  Alma, as both theatres showed different movies each night to attract business.

Although proprietor Gilbert Genesta announced the previous fall that he sold his interests in the Liberty, he soon opened another movie theatre in Alma. This time, in April 1919, Genesta planned to lease part of the Studebaker garage in the Spinney block and offered what the Alma Record deemed a “cheap grade of pictures” that would show for only ten cents. By August, Genesta had acquired a new lease, and he planned to make massive improvements inside, hoping to seat between 800 and 1,000 people. “Genesta’s Ten Cent Theatre” planned to make money by showing movies that did not appear elsewhere in town featuring Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith.  

However, Genesta sold this theatre again to R.J. McLaughlin of St. Johns, who renamed it “The Regent.” The Regent ran for a while but eventually closed. Was this deal Genesta’s plan all along, or was he just a restless owner and entertainer who needed to be on the move? Although he claimed he was moving to California, Genesta would revisit and perform in Alma throughout the 1920s. In 1930, Genesta’s death in Frankfort, Kentucky, shocked Gratiot County. While performing his trademark water barrel escape, Genesta could not escape and died as a result of being trapped. Newspapers reported that his death was due to an equipment malfunction. Geneseta did not know it that night, but his barrel was damaged when it was unloaded at the theatre earlier in the day, resulting in his inability to open the escape lid properly.

Another reason Genesta left the county’s theatre business when he did was possibly due to the big news that came to Alma in May 1919. Two Detroit engineers, L. Francis Murphy and Horace H. Esselstyn, announced they had secured lots just west of city hall to build Alma’s first modern movie theatre. It would be 52 feet wide and 132 feet long, with a brick front and seats for at least 800 people. This theatre had a fully equipped stage to offer big attractions and a new heating and ventilation system for seasonal use. The basement contained the heating plant, coal, and dressing rooms. With all this room, Strand ownership hoped that major Vaudeville programs would perform there. Although the new owners modeled the theatre after “The Majestic Theatre” in Detroit, they settled on a new name for their theatre in Alma. It would be called “The Strand  Theatre.”

While it planned to open in 1919, it would be late May 1920 before the Strand offered its first show. Constructed by Broughton and Son, the total investment in the building exceeded $125,000, and many in Alma wondered if the new theatre would survive. However, on the opening Saturday night, 950 people jammed inside to watch the Strand’s first show. Victor Gipe from Detroit was hired to play the new $10,000 orchestral pipe organ. People arrived early to listen to Gipe’s music due to his reputation as one of the best “picture players” in Michigan.

As the first show closed, Manager C.A. Miller stepped onto the stage to tell the audience that the more money they spent on the Strand, the better the pictures would be. A photographer then came on the stage, snapped a flashlight picture of the audience, and the Strand was off and running – a run that would last for over 70 years in Alma.

The opening of the Strand Theatre coincided with the period many called the Roaring Twenties – a decade of new motion pictures, vaudeville, and the coming of “Talkies.”

Copyright 2024 James M. Goodspeed

We Remember the Underside of Gratiot County’s History, Epilogue: “What Should We Learn from the 1920s Ku Klux Klan?”

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Above: A Ku Klux Klan meeting takes place in Michigan during the 1920s. The reverse of the photograph reads “Gratiot County.” Looking at the elevation in the background, could this location be in either south or southwest Gratiot County? Or, is it somewhere in Arcada Township? Photo courtesy of Tami Haskett Smith.

The British author and poet Thomas Hardy once wrote, “Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.” The first time I heard this quote, journalist James P. O’Donnell used it after seeing Hitler’s bunker in Berlin in the summer of 1945. O’Donnell then wrote an account of Hitler’s last days and adapted it for a 1980s movie on HBO.

Looking back over one hundred years ago in Gratiot County, there has been much that seemed to be too strange about the activity of the Ku Klux Klan to have happened here – but it did.

Growing up in Gratiot County, I never once heard anything firsthand about the 1920s KKK, even though I had four grandparents who grew up during that period. In my life, the closest I came to contact with the Klan was as a student when I overheard a story told by an upperclassman at my high school. As I remember his account, in the early 1970s, a student brought a grandfather’s Klan uniform to school as part of a presentation to a history class. Years later, nothing came from my investigation into tracking down the story.

In 2009, I was in a class at Central Michigan University, “American Social History, 1865-Present,” taught by Dr. Stephen Jones. The first assigned book was James Loewen’s  Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. Loewen’s book examined the history of how white communities in the Midwest and the North gradually pushed out and removed Black communities from their midst, creating “sundown towns.”

As I read the book, I soon found Michigan connections. One dealt with writings regarding Owosso, Michigan – where I had family members and my paternal grandparents lived for a short time. While investigating Loewen’s treatment of Owosso as a “sundown town,” the role of the Ku Klux Klan appeared in the 1920s. References to the Klan in other parts of Michigan (like Alma, Michigan) immediately got my attention. At the time of that reading, I remembered that a former CMU history professor, Dr. Calvin Enders,  researched the Klan in Michigan during the 1970s and 1980s. Although I did my M.A. degree under Enders’ supervision in the 1980s, we never talked about the Klan very much (even though Dr. Enders was deep into Michigan KKK research).

By the time I came along in 2009, Dr. Enders’  wife donated his papers and research to the Clarke Historical Library in Mt. Pleasant, where my investigation into the Gratiot KKK began. I was stunned by what I found and read.

The Klan was very active in the 1920s, and at least one incident regarding Gratiot County Realm No. 24 garnered state and national news. As I investigated the sources on my early trips, I am sure other researchers in the library heard me mumbling or proclaiming as I went through Gratiot County sources, “I can’t believe this.” The history was that gripping, and despite what Hardy and O’Donnell said, it was hard to believe.

During an early trip to the Clarke, I found that the curator was becoming increasingly interested in what I was doing regarding Gratiot County and the Klan. He politely asked questions about my research and then asked me to visit his office. I wondered what research rule I had broken, but he told me I was not in trouble. Instead, he told me another story about the Gratiot Klan from the 1920s.

A few months before my research began, the curator received a phone call from someone in Gratiot County who had materials that they considered donating to the Clarke. The only stipulation was that names had to be removed from the documents – in one case, it was the original KKK Realm No. 24 charter. The donor wanted to preserve history and offer it to the Clarke Library. Still, he did not wish to reveal names that were associated with the Klan in 1920s Gratiot County.

Under proper archival procedure and rules with donations, the curator would accept the items but could not delete or tamper with names or other information. History was history, and it had to be preserved. Unfortunately,  when the anonymous Gratiot Klan donor heard this, he decided not to donate the items.

At this meeting, I was asked whether I knew anything about these Gratiot Klan documents and charter or if I could investigate where the items were. Unfortunately, as I was starting research, I couldn’t help. But, I became interested in finding the Klan items.

As of this writing, I have not located the Gratiot Klan charter items dealing with Realm No. 24. Since 2009, despite this, I have traveled across Michigan, Indiana, and even to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., to try and find as much as I could about the KKK in our county’s history.

What I learned – and what Gratiot County should learn – is that nothing is too strange to have happened in our midst. The Klan was here, and many of its activities and actions today seem alarming. What is even more shocking is that most people in Gratiot County today don’t know that the Klan was here, that it was highly active, and that it fostered division, disharmony, and intolerance in Gratiot County.

It is disturbing to me that at least two generations living in Gratiot County in the early 20th century heard about the Klan or must have known someone involved with it. 

And then, somehow, over time, people erased the 1920s Ku Klux Klan Realm No. 24 from Gratiot County’s memory.

It was not too strange to have happened here.

Copyright 2024 James M. Goodspeed

We Remember the Underside of Gratiot County: The Ku Klux Klan Part II. “Crowds and Capers: Klan Fever Hits Gratiot, 1924-1925”

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From the top, the Ku Klux Klan in Gratiot County: A Ku Klux Klan meeting takes place somewhere in the mid-Michigan area in the mid-1920s; The Gratiot County Fair held “Klan Day” and an official KKK wedding; Lewis J. King was one of a trio of so-called evangelists who came to Gratiot County under the auspices of the Klan. The three men would cause an uproar in the county before they left; A notice about the new Klan Kampground in Arcada Township.

The following is part two of a four part story concerning the Ku Klux Klan in Gratiot County during the 1920s – and a forgotten part of this county’s history which appeared one hundred years ago.

They called themselves the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan, Realm Number 24. If there was anything that many Gratiot County residents found out in the 1920s about the Ku Klux Klan, it was not invisible, and many people in the county were curious about it. This public interest was the case from 1924 to 1925 when the Klan peaked in popularity and attention within Gratiot County.

Starting in 1924, the KKK went on the offensive in southeast Gratiot by holding meetings at the packed Ashley Christian Church and a hall in Bannister, where hundreds also came. In this area of the county, the Klan attempted to intimidate and harass Catholics who were of Slovak, Czech, and Polish descent. The Klan then went and burned crosses on the property of both Father Nimrichter and the Slovacek family. The Slovaceks faced Klan members who came onto their property and threatened them to leave the community. In response, some Slovacek men used pitchforks to drive off these masked intruders.

The late summer and fall of 1924 witnessed more efforts by the Klan to try and convince people that it was growing in membership and as a movement. In August, “Klan Day” took place at the Ithaca Fair; anyone attending events at the fairgrounds could have their cars parked by Klan members. The Gratiot County Herald reported that earlier that day, over 12,000 people came into Ithaca to observe  200 Klansmen, many of whom were on horseback, lead a float with an Ithaca High School student on it dressed as Cupid. It was the largest number of people to assemble for a gathering in Ithaca until that time in history.

  The parade encouraged people to come to the grandstand that night to witness mid-Michigan’s first official “Klan wedding.”  At the beginning of the week, an article in the Gratiot County Herald informed anyone who wanted to buy the bride a gift about how they could do so. Reverend Leon May of the Forest Hill Church of Christ, a Klan member and Grand Kludd (state chaplain) of the Michigan KKK, performed the wedding. And yes, the couple purchased a valid marriage license.

The KKK soon received state and local attention when it announced the purchase of a 120-acre farm in Arcada Township to make it the first Ku Klux Klan Kountry Klub Klavern in Michigan. The klavern operated at that location for at least two years. One meeting in October 1925 attracted over 300 Klansmen, Klanswomen, Juniors, Tri-K girls, and American Krusaders. This entourage participated in picnics, golf,  tennis, and baseball games between Klan teams as far away as Lansing and Saginaw.

In July 1925, the ugliest incident in Gratiot County’s chapter of the KKK took place in Alma’s Wright Park. Three self-professed evangelists came to Alma from Indiana to conduct so-called religious revival meetings.   Afterward, Lewis J. King, George Garner, and R.C. Garner eventually left Alma in such turmoil that the after-effects of these “meetings” dragged on in Gratiot County for another sixteen months.

Most did not know that King and the Garners had been invited here by some county residents and that the trio had a long list of arrests across the Midwest for disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, and being general nuisances. All happened wherever they went  for what they advertised in the name of “White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Christianity and One Hundred Percent Americanism.” The Gratiot County Ku Klux Klan showed its support for the three men by regularly attending their meetings in Alma in large numbers while in complete Klan dress. However, in Alma, it seemed that issues with the Klan were like a powder keg that was about to explode.

Copyright 2023 James M Goodspeed