The Day the Klan Came to Town
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Average rating5
15
Ratings1
Average rating5
The year is 1923. The Ku Klux Klan is at the height of its power in the US as membership swells into the millions and they expand beyond their original southern borders. As they grow, so do their targets. As they continue their campaigns of terror against African Americans, their list now includes Catholics and Jews, southern and eastern Europeans, all in the name of “white supremacy.” But they are no longer considered a terrorist organization. By adding the messages of moral decency, family values, and temperance, the Klan has slapped on a thin veneer of respectability and has become a “civic organization,” attracting ordinary citizens, law enforcement, and politicians to their particular brand of white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant “Americanism.” Pennsylvania enthusiastically joined that wave. That was when the Grand Dragon of Pennsylvania decided to display the Klan’s newfound power in a show of force. He chose a small town outside of Pittsburgh named after Andrew Carnegie; a small, unassuming borough full of “Catholics and Jews,” the perfect place to teach these immigrants “a lesson.” Some thirty thousand members of the Klan gathered from as far as Kentucky for “Karnegie Day.” After initiating new members, they armed themselves with torches and guns to descend upon the town to show them exactly what Americanism was all about. The Day the Klan Came to Town is a fictionalized retelling of the riot, focusing on a Sicilian immigrant, Primo Salerno. He is not a leader; he’s a man with a troubled past. He was pulled from the sulfur mines of Sicily as a teen to fight in the First World War. Afterward, he became the focus of a local fascist and was forced to emigrate to the United States. He doesn’t want to fight but feels that he may have no choice. The entire town needs him—and indeed everybody—to make a stand.
Reviews with the most likes.
Most of us don't want to talk about the embarrassing stuff from our past. This is as true of us as a nation as it is of us personally. This fictionalized retelling of a true event reminds us that not talking about our abusive past only gives hate air to breathe and catch fire again.
As a Christian, I am saddened that people who call themselves by the name perpetrated this hate and violence, believing they were doing the work of God. I think that was a god of their own making. An idol they used to empower them to commit these atrocities.
Regardless of our faith, culture, or history, I believe we will always continue to take from those who are different from those in power, who believe different, who talk different, and have different traditions, until we as a nation learn to embrace each other and truly accept and respect each other in these differences. Let us work for that goal.
