More vicious than the Klan
Across a driveway from the Highland Park Fire Department stands a boarded-up, multi-story office building.
Author Tom Stanton gazes at the structure, one he says is filled with the echoes of powerful officials and mass killings.
“The old city hall is gone, but this is an administrative building,” he said. “Over time, the fire department was here, the police department was here. It was also home to a court. All of those organizations would have had members in the Black Legion.”
The Black Legion
It’s a vigilante group built on bigotry, crime and murder.
And Stanton knows it well.
His book, “Terror in the City of Champions,” follows the hate group’s movements during a time when Detroit sports teams were all winning titles.
He notes the Black Legion was born in Lima, Ohio, from the fading ashes of a Ku Klux Klan the Legion’s founder felt was too tame.
“There was a little bit of animosity because the guy who started the Black Legion had left the Klan. He didn’t view it as aggressive enough, the Klan, and he felt there needed to be an organization that was willing to do more,” Stanton said.
It was the 1920s and 30s. Jobs were scarce.
University of California Santa Cruz Professor Emerita Dana Frank examined those years.
She says the era was ripe to create a ready market for Legion recruits.
“Working class white men were looking for an answer and they’re looking for a scapegoat. And they turn to the Black Legion, an overtly fascist, white supremacist, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-African American secret organization.”
A haven for hate
The white supremacist group spread across Ohio and Michigan.
And Stanton says Highland Park became a hotbed of Black Legion activity.
The enclave’s police chief, fire and police commissioners and a city councilman were all members.
Even, Stanton says, Highland Park’s mayor at the time, Ray Markland.
“The publisher of the “Highland Parker,” Art Kingsley, was targeted by the Black Legion because he kept ripping into Mayor Markland. One of the gunmen for the Black Legion moved into Highland Park with the idea of assassinating him. In the end, he didn’t. The gunman had infiltrated the American Legion and came to actually like what Kingsley stood for.”
Others were not as fortunate.
Legion members dressed in black robes emblazoned with skull-and crossbones symbols, their hoods topped by pirate hats bearing the Jolly Roger.
Death was their motif.
The Legion committed an estimated 50 murders in Michigan.
Historian Dana Frank says the group lured new recruits to parties or barbeques, then suddenly forced them to join the Legion at gunpoint.
“It was even more secret than the Klan had been,” Frank said. “A lot of these Legion people had been in the Klan. They would be wearing black outfits with gold trim and pirate hats. And it’s quite chilling. Who sewed that robe? Somebody’s wife or daughter or mother.”
Author Tom Stanton adds that “recruits” joining to save their lives, while planning to avoid the hate group afterwards, were in for a shock.
“Many of those 50 murders were actually killings of Legion members,” he said. “They had violated the code or didn’t come to meetings or in some ways were an affront to what the Black Legion supposedly stood for.”
The Black Legion unravels
Yet Stanton says what eventually exposed the Black Legion’s crimes was the killing of federal organizer Charles Poole.
And his death stemmed from an age-old motive for murder, jealousy.
“A local official of the Black Legion was upset that Poole was married to a woman that he had a crush on years before down south. He hatched this plan to spread the word at meetings that Poole had abused his wife. ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
The answer was to pronounce a death sentence.
“They got a couple of carloads of guys. Poole was taken out to Gulley Road, not too far from the Rouge auto plant, and assassinated.”
Investigators initially didn’t realize the murder was connected to the Legion, so no law enforcement officials working with the group could squash the probe.
They eventually traced the killing back to a hitman for the hate group.
Stanton says the self-described “executioner” Dayton Dean, then committed the Legion’s cardinal sin.
He confessed to the crime. And to the existence of the secret society he was part of.
Stanton said, “Dayton Dean wasn’t the brightest guy and he was easily manipulated by investigators. They promised him cigars and special treatment in his prison cell. He loved the attention and he was willing to talk. He just couldn’t resist it.”
Dean also unveiled the bloody secrets of the Black Legion in court.
Historian Dana Frank says evidence later showed the Wayne County prosecutor in the case, Duncan McCrea, had been part of the Legion himself, though he vehemently denied it.
“(McCrea) chose to prosecute in 1936. And that’s what really broke the story. The membership basically crawled back into the woodwork. That doesn’t mean that they changed their ideas. But the risk of being part of the Black Legion had become much greater.”
Court cases capture a national audience
There was a second trial involving the hate group months later, this time for the murder of Silas Coleman, who had been killed prior to Poole’s death.
Coleman was shot by a Legion member who wanted to know “how it felt to kill a Black man.”
The cases resulted in multiple convictions and national headlines.
Within a year Hollywood had already made two movies based on the events.
One featured a young Humphrey Bogart as a fictional version of the group’s hitman.
In a desperate, terrified voice, Bogie said, “They’ll kill me for telling you. Them Black Legion guys don’t fool. I can’t get out. Nobody ever lived to get out of the Legion.”
But author Tom Stanton says the trials raised concerns about who actually was in the hate group.
“Wives and children were discovering that their fathers were members of the Black Legion. It was a secret society, even from your spouse. People were wondering, ‘Is my neighbor a member? Public officials?’ It was this great mystery, like the stuff of a radio serial at the time.”
In fact, a popular radio show created an episode loosely based on the trials, where the renamed “White Legion” was brought down by the hero of the series.
“I am the one they call The Shadow,” boomed a voice over the airwaves. “The White Legion is about to be exposed!”
The secret society disappears
But in real life, historian Dana Frank says FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover knew all about the Black Legion and its ties to the Klan.
Yet no other members were ever charged.
Frank says some researchers believe they know why.
“J. Edgar Hoover didn’t go after the Black Legion because Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president at the time, didn’t want him to. There were Ku Klux Klan members and racists in Congress, particularly in the Senate, and the New Deal coalition was dependent on the votes of those Southern Democrats. And they would not want him to touch the Black Legion.”
Frank says the FBI director argued the hate group had not violated federal law, despite Michigan officials’ assertion that the Legion’s activities had crossed state lines.
“Hoover immediately shut down any investigation. He told all his agents not to do any further investigation of the Legion without his explicit permission,” Frank said.
The U.S. was then hurtling towards World War II.
And the Black Legion seemingly vanished from the national consciousness.
Author Tom Stanton says those associated with the group had a stake in erasing it from history.
“Most people didn’t want to tout their involvement. They wanted to bury it,” he said. “The black gowns were discovered in swamps. Some were burning them. It wasn’t something to be proud of.”
Stanton says scrubbing the memory of the Legion extended through generations.
“Decades on, you don’t want to be bragging about your great grandfather who was a member of a hate organization. And great grandpa probably didn’t want anybody to know about it either, other than the guys who were at the meeting.”
After almost a century, historians agree few people recall the Black Legion’s atrocities or its role in Michigan and especially Highland Park.
Ironically, the hate group that secretly inspired terror has regained one of its most cherished goals.
Anonymity.
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