The Ku Klux Klan in Williamson County, Part Two

In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan, “a movement dedicated to organized intolerance,” was revived near Atlanta, Georgia, after a dormancy of forty-five years. The Klan appeared to be a small and harmless order, predicated on southern sentimentalism and mild patriotism, until 1920-21, when its organization and national officers were changed. From then on, its spread was rapid. Continue reading

The Ku Klux Klan in Williamson County, Part One

KKK 1870s sizedThe first Klan was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by six veterans of the Confederate Army. Ku Klux Klan groups spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement during the Reconstruction era in the United States. As a secret vigilante group, the KKK targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans. Continue reading

1939, Chemical Warfare Arsenal Planned

The development of long range bombers by the Russians in the mid 1930’s put the U.S. government War Department on alert to its defense weaknesses and caused a scramble to relocate key bases and arsenal stockpiles from vulnerable coastal positions to more secure inland positions. This put Marion into the light of possibility for the manufacture and storage of a planned Chemical Warfare Arsenal. The project was planned to cost $21,000,000 and occupy 80,000,000 acres of land for the purposes of building, testing and storing chemical warfare agents. Continue reading

Marion Lion’s Club Celebrates 50th Anniversary in 1973

Lions charter member HaytonMembers of the Marion Lions Club celebrated their 50th anniversary Saturday night with a dinner at the Marion Holiday Inn.

Clarior S. Johnson, of Joliet, a past director of Lions International, was the principal speaker on the program which included presentation of awards to the club by Larry Mehring of Red Bud, governor of District 1C, and a review of the club’s history by Attorney August L. Fowler. Continue reading