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🎙️ This episode, we delve into a dark and unsettling chapter of Colorado history — the era when the Ku Klux Klan created a shadow government that infiltrated Denver’s City Hall and eventually reached the State Capitol.

We explore the societal and economic conditions that made it possible for a secret terrorist group of the 1870s to be born again in 1916 as a fraternity— and how, by the 1920s, they seized power with the aid of Freemasons, Woodsmen, and other fraternal organizations

But the so-called Invisible Empire wasn’t invincible. We break down how internal corruption, scandals, and rising public opposition brought the Klan’s Colorado reign to a swift and dramatic end.

Discretion Advised: sensitive topics

#WesternHistory #ColoradoHistory #DenverHistory
#BenjaminStapleton #JohnGalenLocke #BrownPalaceHotel #TabletopMountain
#PhilipVanCise #PhilHGoodstein #LindaGordon

Sources:

The second coming of the KKK : the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American political tradition

By Linda Gordon

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34082146-the-second-coming-of-the-kkk

In The Shadow of the Klan: When the KKK Ruled Denver 1920-1926

Phil H. Goodstein

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2158055

Stapleton accused of paying off history museum to remove family’s KKK past from exhibit

By: Madeleine Schmidt

https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2018/04/stapleton-kkk-past-paying-off-history-museum/8585/

“Murder Wasn’t Very Pretty”: The Rise and Fall of D.C. Stephenson

By Abbott Kahler

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/murder-wasnt-very-pretty-the-rise-and-fall-of-dc-stephenson-18935042/

Woodrow Wilson: “It is like writing history with lightning.” Quote or No Quote?

By: Joe Coohill/Professor Buzzkill

https://professorbuzzkill.com/2017/08/30/qnq-29/

Colorado Under the Klan

By James H. Davis

https://www.historycolorado.org/story/2023/12/06/colorado-under-klan

The Klan in Charge: They Said It Couldn't Happen Here, but It Did

By Alan Prendergast

https://www.westword.com/news/gangbuster-kkk-klan-denver-mayor-da-van-cise-stapleton-16438675

Ben Stapleton Joined Ku Klux Klan for Political Power, Historian Says

By Conor McCormick-Cavanagh

https://www.westword.com/news/ben-stapleton-used-kkk-to-gain-power-in-denver-11727640

Episode photo from Westward

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