Who knew the KKK once ran Denver?

Who Killed...?

Bill Huffman

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

3.8 • 595 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

History Colorado holds two Ku Klux Klan membership books for the Greater Denver area and beyond. The information inside them, which was collected for administrative purposes around 1924 through 1926, dates from the peak of the Klan's influence in Colorado. Together they have nearly 30,000 entries across more than 1,300 pages that record the names and other personal details, such as home and business addresses, of people affiliated with the KKK in metropolitan Denver and other areas. While the first 69 entries appear to be missing, the ledgers otherwise appear to be completely intact. -History Colorado Sources: https://apnews.com/article/co-state-wire-ku-klux-klan-denver-business-racial-injustice-0b0e68c3a7083ca9f2d1372d5b56d929 https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ku-klux-klan-colorado https://youtu.be/60AKLGEv5TU?si=xW1lCwbtYTF1_z6J https://www.denverpost.com/2021/06/06/denver-kkk-history/ https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/rocky-mountain-pbs/ku-klux-klan-ledgers-at-history-colorado/ https://denverite.com/2021/04/21/denver-colorado-kkk-historic-membership-published/ https://www.denverpost.com/2021/06/06/denver-kkk-history/ https://history.denverlibrary.org/news/when-kkk-ruled-colorado-not-so-long-ago https://www.historycolorado.org/kkkledgers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back.
0:05.0	643 is your time this morning and today the History Colorado State Historians Council
0:10.0	will host a roundtable to discuss the Ku Klux Klan's influence in our state.
0:15.0	History Colorado recently digitized KKK ledgers making them accessible to researchers everywhere. Our social equity reporter Micah Smith explains how this move will support racial reconciliation.
0:26.6	The Ku Klux Klan's history in Colorado is extensive.
0:31.6	And tangible proof of that history can be found on the pages of these ledgers.
0:38.3	Here at History, Colorado, in our collection, we have KKK ledgers from 1924 to 1926 in the Denver area.
0:49.3	History, Colorado, Chief Operating Officer Dawn DePrince says they've been in the museum's collection since the 1940s.
0:57.0	Recently, we have digitized those letters so that they are more accessible to the public,
1:03.0	and the searchable nature of them helps researchers and the public come to some understandings around what's in these ledgers.
1:12.6	One of the most shocking discoveries within these ledgers is the number of entries.
1:17.6	There are 30,000 between these two books.
1:20.8	Do you really get a grasp of how widespread and pervasive this was in our city.
1:28.6	De Prince says the ledgers show where clan members lived and worked.
1:32.6	And that can really help you see how this was woven into much of public life and structures
1:39.1	of power. We cannot do the anti-racist work that we need to be doing if we cannot confront this type of
1:46.8	evidence of our past. DePrince says these relics continue to inform us of who we are, which is
1:55.7	imperative when thinking about how Coloradans can move forward. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Who Killed?
2:03.6	I'm your host, Bill Huffman, and this is a Slow Burn Media, Evergreen Podcasts, and Killer Podcasts production.
2:11.6	On this week's episode, we are going to go back a full century to the days when Denver was overrun by a bunch of redneck clansmen.
2:20.4	I was inspired to learn more after listening to the episode The Black Klansman from the
2:25.8	phenomenal podcast, Stuff He Should Know, and I was really unaware of how big of an influence
	...

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