It was pointed out in the discussion of the last of these posts that swastikas in Denver as a symbol of racial purity in the 1920s and 1930s would not have been out of place. Which made me think of one of the more sordid periods in Denver history.

After D.W. Griffith’s pro-Klan feature movie Birth of a Nation — the first feature-length film in the history of cinema, and a, inexplicable perennial favorite of top 100 movie lists — Klan activity exploded. And Colorado had the largest Klan presence west of the Mississippi. According to this excellent article in the Colorado Springs Independent:

After the general election of 1924, the governor, Clarence Morley, was a Klansman. Benjamin Stapleton, the mayor of Denver, consulted the Klan when making appointments. U.S. Senator Rice Means was elected with open Klan support. The state House of Representatives had a Klan majority. Klansmen marched and burned crosses in small towns throughout the state, from Great Plains through the mountains to the Western Slope. A city council, or the mayor’s office, or the police and sheriff’s departments, or the county government — many fell under the Klan’s control.

This is Governor Morley, surrounded by his associates:

Original here, so you can zoom to your heart’s content.

Also from the same article:

The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was a national movement that gained its greatest political success in Colorado — perhaps because Colorado, in a perversely progressive way, was the only Klan realm with a women’s auxiliary. It was national organization of white Protestants who supported “100% Americanism” and opposed lawlessness — especially the rampant violation of Prohibition.

Here’s a beautiful shot of the ladies auxiliary:

Original here. I love the expression on the face of the woman furthest to the right.

Also from the article:

About that same time, Dr. Clarence Holmes, president of the Denver NAACP chapter, started a drive to integrate Denver’s theaters. The Klan burned a cross in front of his office and sent a threatening note, but he persisted.

This is a picture of the burned cross outside Dr. Holmes’ office:

Original here.

The Klan in Colorado were far from being a secret organization; they operated completely in the open. This picture is titled “Klan member at ‘Klan Day’ at the races at Overland Park.”

Original here.

This one’s my favorite for its pure corniness, though. It’s a photomontage called “Kastle Kountry Klub,” though no indication is given as to why.

Original here.

Been awhile since I posted one of these, but I’m back to trolling through them. And, come to discover, the digital image collection has a great new feature which you can use to zoom in on pictures. Just click here and use the control panel above the image to navigate.

What are you looking for? This from the summary:

Aerial view of the warehouse district in downtown Denver, Colorado. Shows a complex of buildings owned by the Weicker Transfer and Storage Company. Painted signs on the side of the building include a swastika symbol. Other businesses in the area include “Davis & Shaw Furniture Co., ” “Daniels and Fisher Warehouse, No. 2, ” and “Ady and Crowe Mercantile Co.” A train approaches a bridge, and automobiles drive on an overpass. Boxcars sit on railroad tracks near warehouses.

Given that the picture was taken between 1930 and 1940, it seems unlikely the swastika’s usage was innocuous. It seems oddly apropos, though, given the last image I posted. (And here’s the new link for that image, so you can zoom in on it as well.)

There’s actually quite a few swastikas around the digital image collection.

This warehouse truck, for instance:

And this street sign on 15th Street in downtown Denver:

Both of those were taken between 1900 and 1920, though, so there’s no telling what the context was.

From the description:

Bird’s eye view from center of Native American Lakota Sioux camp to the northeast, across the council circle, after the fight at Wound Knee creek, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota; shows scattered frozen bodies in the snow, tepee poles; one with a soldier standing under them, a broken down wagon and U. S. soldiers with horse in distance.

This is the 120th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre. For those who don’t know the story, after several decades of open extermination campaigns directed by the US military, this was the final stroke. The Seventh Cavalry, who’d been a little embarrassed under Custer about fourteen years prior, got drunk one night, and invented a pretext to gun down hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children, effectively ending the so-called Indian Wars.

As with the Sand Creek Massacre, and most other massacres prior, this one was met with some hand-wringing, but mostly, well, more calls for extermination. In fact, calls for extermination were the norm. Take this editorial, penned by no less a figure than L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, who wrote in response to the assassination of Sitting Bull only a few days prior to the Wounded Knee Massacre:

Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.

He was an Indian with a white man’s spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.

Extermination was open policy, as William Tecumseh Sherman’s letters during his time administering the Indian Wars make clear. In one letter to President Ulysses S. Grant, he writes, “we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.” In another letter he writes, “The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year. They all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.” Nor was he just writing, he was giving orders to the likes of General Philip Sheridan to cut down as many women and children, as well as men, as he could.

Extermination was a policy that was, by the way, largely successful. By the end of the 19th century, a population that is estimated to have been somewhere from 15 to 25 million had been reduced to 237,000.

Nor was that the end of it. Extermination policy shifted, found new ways to adapt, and shed itself of its openly genocidal trappings, but has, as scholars like Ward Churchill remind us, hardly disappeared.

From the description:

Interior of Holy Cross Episcopal Church at the Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota, shows standing army corp men and a Native American Sioux man with wounded Sioux from Wounded Knee on the hay covered floor of the church still decorated with Christmas garlands.

Two days until the 120th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

From the description:

Benjamin J. Hodges, a Mexican Black man, poses in Dodge City (Ford County) Kansas, with a sawed off shotgun and a pistol in a holster belt.

And this from The Federation of Black Cowboys:

Surviving photographs of Ben Hodges show him as a well-armed, rough and tough outlaw. But Ben’s greatest weapon of all was his way with words and his sharp wit. Just like his contemporary Wyatt Earp, Ben Hodges made a living playing, cheating and hustling cards. He was born to a Black father and a Mexican mother. When he arrived in Dodge City he claimed to be the descendent of an aristocratic Spanish family. He was known in the courts for fraudulent activity and rustling cattle, but his personal flare and convincing words consistently got him acquitted. He died in 1929 and was buried in the Maple Grove Cemetery. When asked why an outlaw was buried among Dodge City’s best residents, they replied that they wanted to keep Ben Hodges in a place where they could keep an eye on him.

From the description:

Bob Ford’s bar in the town of Creede, Colorado, in Mineral County, is a canvas tent with a ladder leaning next to it and a wood crate near it. A log cabin is under construction in the background. The steep, rocky hills that surround the town are covered with trees.

I’ve been meaning to go see this site, but I’ve yet to do it. Bob Ford, of course, assassinated Jesse James, shooting him in the back of the head while James straightened a picture on his wall, to collect the $10,000 bounty put on James by Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden.

The “old bar” shown is a tent saloon Ford opened after his dancehall saloon, Ford’s Exchange, was burned to the ground six days after opening. Three days after that, Edward O’Kelley walked into the tent, said, “Hello, Bob,” and let Ford have both barrels from a double-barrel shotgun, killing him on the spot.

There’s a rumor out there that Denver crime boss and confidence man Soapy Smith actually convinced O’Kelley to shoot Ford, telling him that he’d become a hero for avenging Jesse James. I still haven’t read Jeff Smith’s Alias Soapy Smith, but that’s one of the many Soapy Smith rumors I’m hoping to get cleared up.

Update: Jeff Smith, author of Alias Soapy Smith, doesn’t think the tent is Bob Ford’s bar. This from the comments:

I have several photographs of Bob Ford’s tent taken immediately after he was killed. It appears larger and in a different location than the tent shown in the photo from the Denver Public Library. See the bar front on the side of the tent. There is a sign on it. I believe By “Bob Ford’s bar” they meant the front bar, not the tent.

From the description:

Men pose at a Faro table in Montezuma, Summit County, Colorado. The interior saloon scene includes slot machines, spittoons, a sign over the cash register: “The Senate T. J. Looney,” a burro, a dog, and kerosene lamps.

I pulled this one up by searching for the word “Faro”, which was the gambler’s game of choice in Denver in the nineteenth century. This is the only image that came up. One of the problems with the photographic record of Denver is that pictures of the good stuff don’t exist in nearly the numbers one would like. Sadly, that includes the inside of saloons. This is one of the rarities.

And that’s a shame, because Denver’s got some hellish saloons in its history. My favorite two of the nineteenth century were known fondly as “The Bucket of Blood” and “The Slaughterhouse”, and I’ve yet to chase down a photograph of either one.

From the description:

View of Hop Alley (between Wazee and Blake Streets) in Denver, Colorado. Men who include a Chinese man and a police officer stand near the brick buildings. A sign reads: “1417 Wing Gut Clothing Co.” and has Chinese characters.

Hop Alley was Denver’s Chinese section of town, and got its name from the alley’s 17-odd opium dens. Supposedly there were also any number of secret tunnels and walkways into downtown’s more respectable joints.

Hop Alley was also the location of one of Denver’s race riots. In 1880, a fight broke out between a couple of white and Chinese pool players in John Asmussen’s Saloon. Though no one was hurt, word spread that the Chinese had killed a white man. A white mob formed and stormed Hop Alley, chanting, “Stamp out the yellow plague.” There were tens of thousands of dollars in damage to Chinese property, numerous beatings, and one lynching.

A few whites acquitted themselves well. As you’d expect, they were the prostitutes, gamblers, and saloon-keepers of Market Street, who provided refuge, clean sheets, and opium to Chinese folks hiding from the mob. A number of Madam Lizzie Preston’s girls even fought the mob off with champagne bottles.

From the description:

A crowd stands on Market Street near City Hall, part of the “City Hall War,” a dispute over Fire and Police Board appointments, in Denver, Colorado. Horse-drawn wagons are on the street.

The description does the City Hall War no kind of justice. It was, in part, “a dispute over Fire and Police Board appointments,” but, as I’ve read, it was also an attempt by Colorado Governor Davis Waite to clean up the corruption and vice endemic to the city of Denver. At the time the city was known worldwide for its hop dens, whorehouses, gambling joints, and bunko artists.

As such, Waite ordered the Colorado Militia into action to forcibly remove several corrupt Denver city officials from city hall. And, for his part, the Denver mayor deputized a couple of hundred local killers, gamblers, pimps, and dealers to defend the city against government troops. One of them was none other than Denver crime boss, Soapy Smith.

Of course, now you can’t smoke a cigarette in the bars. And most of downtown has been turned into a theme park for the well-heeled. But I guess that’s progress.

So, anyway . . .

Taken from the The Denver Public Library’s Digital Image Collection.

The summary reads:

Heilman, recaptured after the 1947 escape from the State Penitentiary in Canon City, Colorado, has a rifle aimed at his blood spattered, half shaved head. His hand, wounded by gunshot, is wrapped in bloody rags; he sits holding it. The guard holding the gun wears mittens. A trash can and dresser flank the convict. Heilman was convicted of kidnapping Deputy District Attorney Fred Pferdesteller in Denver, 4/24/45.