When the Ku Klux Klan gathered in Harpswell on the Fourth of July in 1925, it wasn’t behind closed doors or in the dark of night. Their picnic and parade attracted hundreds of klansmen with their families. A photograph from that day shows Harpswellians in klan regalia, hoods back and faces showing. One wears a scarf reading, “100% American.” Women and children pose with them.
For the few years in the 1920s that the KKK operated in Harpswell, it did so openly and apparently with wide support. A 1924 Brunswick Record article about a Harpswell klan gathering estimated that 65% of Orr’s Island adults were affiliated with the local KKK.
Despite the klan’s popularity at the time, there are few traces of the group left in Harpswell today. The photograph is one — a copy hangs in the Orr’s Island Library, along with an essay that gives historical context.
Only one of the klan’s signature robes is known to exist from that time. Found in the house of Charles Morrill, leader of the Orr’s Island klan and captain of the steamboat ferry between the island and Portland, it is now in the collection of the Harpswell Historical Society.
In the last few years, a few Orr’s Island residents have begun to grapple more publicly with the klan’s history on the island and their own families’ involvement with it. They feel uncomfortable knowing their relatives joined a group founded on prejudice, but they accept that the klan is part of the community’s history.
The klan returns — with a pyramid scheme
The Orr’s Island klan chapter was part of a larger movement in the 1920s, according to Gary Lawless, co-owner of Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick. Lawless gave a lecture on the so-called “second klan” at Bowdoin College in September. He said researching klan activity is his way of resisting present-day hate speech and discrimination.
The klan began in the South after the Civil War. It existed as an unorganized insurgency, using violence to threaten Black politicians and their allies. The first klan faded away as federal law enforcement cracked down and Reconstruction came to an end.
Lawless said the klan returned after the release of the wildly popular 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation.” He described 50 klansmen riding across Bowdoin College’s campus in full regalia in 1916 — members of the class of 1911 back for their fifth reunion. Taking cues from the movie rather than the historical klan, the second klan adopted the pointed hoods and burning crosses now synonymous with the group.
In the 1920s, Lawless said, the klan began to expand more aggressively, and with a clear economic motivation. Each new member paid $10 to join, in addition to buying the robe, hood and other regalia.
Lawless described the 1920s klan as a pyramid scheme, with recruiters passing their earnings up the organizational hierarchy. The group earned as much as $50,000 a year — more than $900,000 in today’s dollars — during its heyday in Maine, Lawless said. The leader of the state organization, F. Eugene Farnsworth, was keeping about 40% for himself.
The klan tailored its message to each region where it was active, Lawless said. In Maine, where there were few Black people or Jewish people, the klan leaned on anti-Catholic animus. That was an easy sell when Mainers were worried about losing mill jobs to French Canadian and Irish immigrants, many of whom were Catholic.
An island fisherman’s view
In the 1974 biography “Charlie York, Maine Coast Fisherman,” by Harold B. Clifford, the subject recalls staffing a tent at a klan picnic where people could pay to throw baseballs at an image of the pope.
Klan leaders presented the group as a moralizing force that would put a stop to gambling, drinking and infidelity. That message resonated with Charlie York, an Orr’s Islander who said the klan “had a principle of brotherly love for feller members and they was a high moral tone to it.”
Charlie York seems to have been enthusiastic about fraternal organizations in general. In addition to the klan, he joined the Masons, the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men and others.
In the book, he described the klan’s method for settling grievances, such as an episode involving stolen lobsters and a dispute about one man’s supposed dalliance with a married woman.
After a vote, the chapter would send a group to burn a cross on the accused’s lawn. Then, when that man came to complain or demand an explanation, the group would invite him to apologize for his alleged wrongdoing and join the klan.
The KKK did not last long in Maine. Farnsworth resigned in 1926. By 1930, the klan had declined from a 1923 peak of 20,000 members in the state to just 225, according to the Maine Historical Society.
The klan had an even shorter run in Harpswell. Charlie York said he was turned off when the klan started telling members how to vote. And with the high cost of dues, he said, “We come to believe it was sort of a racket.”
Reckoning with ‘uncomfortable’ history
Gerry York is Charlie York’s grandson. He remembers reading about the klan in his grandfather’s biography decades ago. He has found numerous newspaper articles about the klan’s activities in Harpswell and neighboring towns, including an announcement about a “Klam bake.”
More recently, along with other members of the “cousins’ lunch” islands history group, he has been trying to identify people in the 1925 picnic photo. Some names are written on the print at the Orr’s Island Library. He wants to compare it to another print at the Harpswell Historical Society, to see if they list different names. Other identifications come from his and others’ memories.
He said the group has put names to about half the people in the photo, but hasn’t been able to make much progress beyond that. He knows some people might not be willing to speak up if they do recognize a face from the photo, given the klan’s notoriety. “It’s uncomfortable that it was here,” he said.
Another member of the genealogy group, Melinda Richter, remembers hearing her grandmother, Leona Harris, talk about klan picnics and social gatherings when Richter was young. It was only as an adult that she saw the 1925 photo. By then she understood what the klan was.
Richter, Gerry York and other Harpswellians attended Lawless’ lecture. For Richter, learning about the klan’s moneymaking scheme helped her understand why Orr’s Island was a locus of klan activity. Morrill, the group’s leader and the steamship captain, was recruiting people from Portland to attend gatherings on Orr’s.
Morrill plays a central role in Steve Black’s understanding of the Harpswell klan. Black’s parents bought Morrill’s former house on Orr’s Island in the 1970s, and Black discovered one of the picnic photo prints in the attic as a child. His brother Chip found the klan robe that is now at the Harpswell Historical Society. Black’s grandfather attended the picnic, and his grandmother held teas to recruit for the women’s auxiliary of the klan.
Black’s efforts to understand and illuminate the klan’s activities in Harpswell have run parallel to Richter and York’s. They are part of his lifelong effort to understand prejudice and acknowledge atrocities, in the hope that people today might avoid repeating the injustices of the past.
Black said that as a child, he idolized Morrill, whom he saw as a local hero. In addition to captaining the steamship, Morrill had organized island firefighting efforts. As an adult, knowing what the klan stood for, Black refused to admit to himself that Morrill could have been involved. He rationalized what he found by telling himself the items must have belonged to Morrill’s son. It was only in the last few years, he said, that he accepted that Morrill was not just involved in the local klan, he led it.
Gerry York, too, is still grappling with his grandfather’s connection to the klan. “I don’t think Charlie was a bigot, but I guess he was,” he said. “He must have shared some biases with the klan.”
At the same time, he wants to give his grandfather some grace, knowing people today have more information at hand. Then again, he said, people still make jokes about French Canadians.
Ultimately, Gerry York believes people are moving in the right direction: “Prejudice dies slowly, but it does.”
