White supremacy has a history in Rochester

There are no Confederate monuments in Monroe County, and no white supremacist rallies are scheduled. But the Rochester area, proud as it is of its role in the anti-slavery movement, does have a history of racist groups and gatherings.

It dates at least to 1872, when the local hero of that anti-slavery movement, Frederick Douglass, had his South Avenue house burned down while he was out of town.

Douglass immediately suspected white supremacists: "One thing I do know, and that is, while Rochester is among the most liberal of northern cities, and its people are among the most humane and highly cultivated, it nevertheless has its full share of that Ku Klux

spirit which makes anything owned by a colored man a little less respected and secure than when owned by a white citizen."

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The Rochester Union and Advertiser newspaper said the fire was surely an arson, but added, without evidence: "The testimony thus far obtained points strongest to colored persons as the guilty party."

The burning marked the end of Douglass' residence in Rochester. James Duffy School 12 and the recently renamed Frederick Douglass Community Library stand where his house used to be.

In 1922, a Ku Klux Klan meeting hosted by the Knights of Malta, on East Main Street, was exposed after the Democrat and Chronicle intercepted an organizing letter, which promised to inform recipients of the precise time and date of the meeting after they answered a series of questions, including: "Are you a gentile or a Jew?" and "Do you believe in white supremacy?"

The featured speaker at the meeting was C. Lewis Fowler, a Klan organizer in New York. The Knights of Malta said they were not affiliated with the Klan, but rented their hall to anyone "of good moral character." The newspaper, in a strident editorial, said the Klan was "catering to the worst instincts of human nature, and is undertaking to block the wheels of progress in enlightened thought."

Four years later, the Klan had perhaps its largest ever rally in Monroe County, a "konklave" in downtown East Rochester on Sept. 25 and 26, 1926. Local historian and columnist Arch Merrill reported 40 years later that the estimated attendance was 19,000, while a contemporary Democrat and Chronicle account put it at 8,000 on the first day, despite the pouring rain.

The newspaper described it as a "colorful scene," with crosses burning on stage and "members of the organization stroll(ing) around the grounds in full regalia."

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The Democrat and Chronicle's coverage of the event was limited after a reporter and photographer were turned away because the photographer was Catholic. The reporter protested until a Klan leader blew a whistle and summoned about 40 members, some of whom tried to pull the photographer from his car.

Merrill reported there were also KKK gatherings in the 1920s in Fairport, Pittsford, Honeoye Falls and Brockport, as well as smaller outlying communities.

A 1926 story on a Klan initiation ceremony reported there were about 2,000 members in Rochester, and "would be largely augmented" in the coming months.

A Times-Union reporter went along to a cross burning outside Pittsford in 1933.

"We don't burn crosses; we illuminate them," one of the illuminators told him before setting fire to the cross, 30 feet tall and wrapped in oil-soaked burlap.

In 1957, a black couple, James and Alice Young, attempted to buy a house on Millbank Street in the 19th Ward. After a real estate agent would not arrange the sale, they had a white person buy it and transfer the deed to them.

Shortly thereafter, they received a letter threatening to burn the house down. It was signed, "KKK of Millbank Street."

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In 1976, Democrat and Chronicle columnist Bill Beeney said he recalled seeing a cross burn on Pinnacle Hill in southeast Rochester in the early 1930s, when he was a child.

"It made you feel funny, sort of scared and awed at the same time, without really knowing why, if you were a youngster," he wrote. "There was something unclean and evil about the sight of the fiery cross. It made you feel crawly."

JMURPHY7@Gannett.com