Steel Valley Klan by William D. Jenkins

Author:William D. Jenkins [Jenkins, William D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, General, 20th Century, Social History
ISBN: 9780873386944
Google: wt8kqNDOAboC
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Published: 1990-06-15T02:41:49+00:00

7

The Niles Riot

Set out for the great city of Nineveh and preach against it; their wickedness has come up before me.

—Jonah 1:2

They stood silently in a field north of Niles at 10:00 A.M. on the morning of 1 November 1924. After Mayor Kistler swore in the nearly one hundred fifty Klan members, it was not clear whether the white ribbons dangling from their lapels designated them as a Klan guard or as police officers. Their assignment was to clear the way for Klan members, to protect their constitutional right to parade through Niles without interference. After dynamite had exploded on his front porch several days earlier, Kistler was in no mood to compromise. A violent confrontation was at hand.

It was a series of events over the previous year that had produced such an unsettling scene. What had begun as a cultural clash was now a war. More than half of the Niles population was Irish and Italian, and they believed that the Klan threatened their way of life. Prejudiced statements from national and local leaders had convinced both Irish and Italians of the need to unite in opposition. The Italians took the lead in Niles; their concept of honor and their experience with governments in Italy that were oppressive and corrupt led them to a more physical—indeed, violent—means of stopping the Klan. And the more physical the confrontations, the more determined the Klan to impose law and order.1

Somehow Harvey Kistler had not believed that it would be that difficult to reform Niles when he first assumed office. A political novice, he expected to exercise control over every aspect of his administration, to set high standards for public officials—particularly within the police department—and to crack down on vice in Niles. The willpower of a committed Christian was his strength, the talisman that would guide him on his crusade. Kistler smugly underestimated the staying power of the entrenched bootleggers.

Behind Kistler stood the prayers and moral certitude of local Protestant churches. In March 1924 the Methodists sponsored a revival led by Dr. George Hugh Birney. Before overflow crowds Birney complained of the “no-man’s land of warfare in the Mahoning Valley,” and questioned the indifference of many churches to the moral conditions that existed in Niles. He challenged the citizenry to “struggle and take risks and sacrifice until victory is assured against the sin that slays the soul.”2 Birney had an ally in the Reverend Robert Ketchum, of the Baptist church, who had come a year earlier from Butler, Pennsylvania, with a reputation as a crusader and a “bear on bootleggers.”3 Ketchum was to assume the mantle of leadership in the moral crusade.

Supported primarily by Klan members, Kistler focused his first reform efforts on the police force. Surprisingly, despite Lincoln Round’s troubles with Governor Donahey, Kistler reappointed him as police chief.4 His ace in the hole, however, was his cousin, O. O. Hewitt, whom he named as the director of public safety. In his forties at the time of appointment, Hewitt was a soft-spoken man of average build, but his prominent jaw projected a sense of determination.

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