Ku Klux Klan on a Ferris Wheel in Canon City, Colorado. April 26, 1928. People might be surprised to learn that Colorado was one of the main Klan states in the early 20th century. The KKK of the 1920’s wasn’t just anti-black but also nativist against white Catholic immigrants who many feared or disliked. There had been an earlier (sometimes violent) row over Catholic parochial schools in the 1880’s but the slow waves of “Catholic Americans” moving out of the Northeast really touched things off.
There were KKK attacks everywhere, especially on Sicilians who were sometimes not seen as white. One of the largest single lynchings in American history was of 19 Sicilian prisoners who were suspected of having murdered an Irish police chief in 1891 New Orleans. This sentiment would not really recede until World War II which forced many whites of different ethnicities and regions together.