Welcome back to square off.
The news seemed to come out of nowhere.
The City of Tempe was looking at renaming
several parks, streets and schools.
The reason researchers discovered they
were named for men who were members of a
local Ku Klux Klan chapter a century ago.
In the 1920s, late last week,
the City Council moved ahead
with the renaming plans,
but one question nagged at me.
Why was all this coming to
light 100 years later?
With some help, I found the person.
Who had the answer Tempe resident drew
Sullivan began digging into the white
supremacist groups presence about
10 years ago, and he kept going to.
Sullivan joins us to tell the story.
Welcome to square off.
Alright, thanks Bram.
So Tempe was home to the Butte
chapter of the client in the 1920s.
Two things come to mind when
we think of the Klan.
Cross burnings and lynchings.
What was the Tempe chapters mission?
Well, the the clan of the
1920s was in a lot of ways.
I mean, while they were a white
supremacist organization,
they were also really concerned
with morality and for the clan,
that was a very Protestant vision,
very religious vision of morality,
and so that MP clan like the
Phoenix clan and the Mesa and
Glendale clan were organized.
We're an organization that was,
you know, anti Catholic.
Anti Mormon, anti Jewish.
They were very much concerned with
a singular kind of religious.
Vision of morality in the
southwest and in Arizona.
Did you see, based on your research,
the kind of violence that the
Klan was known for elsewhere?
Yeah, it's it may not have
been quite on the scale of the
Klan revival in other places,
but there were documented incidents
of a number of acts of violence
and attempted lynchings of black
residents of Maricopa County.
There was a incident where a Mormon
school principal was attacked,
a white Mormon school principal in Mesa,
and that was an act of violence that led
to a sort of reckoning with law enforcement.
Which some clan members presumed clan
members at the time were brought up
on charges and that sort of led to
the unraveling of the clan as they
were really ascendant in in feet in
the Phoenix area and around 1922.
So let's go back to the
beginning of your involvement.
You're not a historian.
By training your somebody with
an interest in the topic,
you did a lot of digging.
As I said earlier,
what turns you on to this subject?
I I have been like a part time college
student for a few years and around 2011
I I took a history class at Maricopa
Community College in Arizona history and
as a result I would find anywhere I could
copies of the Journal of Arizona History
just to read sort of recreationally,
and I also there was a series that
was coming out around the same time,
published in Orange County about the.
Pioneer families of of Anaheim
that were clan members,
and so I I started thinking.
I wonder if there's you know a similar
trajectory of the Klan in Phoenix.
And so I did some digging and sure enough,
and I'm holding this copy of the
Journal of Arizona History from 1973.
There's an article in here written
by a grad student from ASU in
which she kind of outlines the
brief history of the clan from.
Around 1921 to 1923 in what was then
known as the Salt River Valley.
And so I'm I'm a real bibliography hound,
and so from there I kind of start looking
at its secondary and primary sources and
started trying to kind of sniff it out
and finding some other major academic
works that were written by ASU students.
And that led me to primary sources like the
macclintock papers at Burton Barr Library.
And I just went down there my own
time and did some research and.
Uhm?
Put,
put some information together that I'd
gathered and saw that you know there
was a list of Tempe clan leaders that
had been leaked to Colonel Mcclintock
as well as to a local journalist.
At that time,
and the list included,
some of the really high profile names,
including one that really stood out to me,
which was Hugh layered because
of the layered families sort of
prominence in named places in Tempe,
pause there for a second.
So you've hit on two things.
A few things, so this history wasn't hidden,
it was there if you went looking for it.
And then there's the role of
people live in Tempe and in the
area will know the Mcclintock Dr.
I used to live right off it.
You mentioned Colonel James Mcclintock.
He's a central figure in
bringing some of this to light.
Explain that.
Yeah, so when I mentioned earlier
there was the attack on the principle
in Mesa that led to a grand jury
investigation of the clan and and
Colonel Mcclintock was the jury foreman.
He was also pretty well placed because
information was being fed to him through
contacts he had in the Los Angeles area,
and that's significant because a
traveling Klan organizer had been
rated in the Los Angeles area and
the Los Angeles County Attorney
held the membership roster for the.
Western States clan membership and
included in there was the Tempe
and Phoenix clan and those were the
the two local clans that had their
memberships lead both to Colonel
Mcclintock and to this local paper.
The result of that was there was a
separate investigation opened by that
grand jury in which they subpoenaed
20 Phoenix prominent residents who
were named in the list 18 of the 20,
I believe showed up for their subpoena.
In the grand jury had determined that
18 of the 2018 who came were were
clan members based off interviews
and other information,
and so the list that were leaked
to Colonel Mcclintock into the
the press were were legitimate.
Uhm, pieces of information.
And so these weren't just
guys in in Tempe at least.
There are many prominent members
of the community on that list.
Yeah, and it was. I mean really,
the Tempe one really pales in
comparison to the Phoenix one
because then in the Phoenix list it
was the Maricopa County Attorney,
the Maricopa County Sheriff,
the Secretary of State,
a number of prominent
businessmen and civic leaders,
and that fell in line with the
clan strategy of that time,
which was to recruit through
the cover of organizations like
the Rotary Club and business
organizations like the Merchants
and Manufacturers Association.
Helped bring this forward.
There were others involved,
neither you nor I are claiming that you,
you know, did the entirety of this work.
Tempe Historical Research,
Tempe Historical Society did a lot
of research and ultimately produced
a report for the Tempe City Council.
People were shocked by this.
They just had never heard this
history and that includes the
relatives of many of the men named
whose names are on schools and
streets and parks in Tempe and one
relative said at a hearing last week.
Quote a piece of paper 100
years old is flimsy evidence.
Or just say to that man.
Well, I would say you know it it it took
50 years for there to be major writings
about this era of the Klan produced,
and part of the reason why is in it.
It took a lot of the participants
of the Klan of the 1920s,
passing away and dying before there was this.
You know evidence that started to be
produced as to their involvement,
and if you look at in the case of Phoenix
this you know what I've referenced
these writings that came out of ASU.
That's 50 years ago.
So it's it's been 50 years since these,
you know, students and researchers started
looking at the Klan in Maricopa County.
And it's taken another 50 years for that
information to kind of trickle up to the the,
you know, corridors of power,
where at this moment there are some people.
Who are listening and are you
concerned about about this?
Past as far as what the Tempe Historical
Society has managed to collect?
I mean some of the names that
were there I've never seen before.
And part of the reason why is that
the I believe the clan you know
and I don't believe this.
I can cite this,
but the clan in Tempe lasted
longer than that trial.
That trial that Colonel Clintock
was involved in was in 1922,
but the clan in Tempe was active through
1925 and so it's it's very likely
that there were other residents of
Tempe who did join the clan and what
the Tempe Historical Society has on
Earth and they they need to produce
the documentation and they need to.
Contextualize it so that these family
members can see what these documents are,
but if it is as it sounds and it.
Does sound as though it could
could be accurate.
You know credible documentation.
This is like the biggest discovery of.
The Tempi clan sense the research
of these students 50 years ago.
Alright, we got ended there. Juice Sullivan.
Thank you so much for joining us.
OK, thank you.