Guest author writes about the Ku Klux Klan in Pocahontas
...plus, introductions to new writers for the IWC
Helen Beneke of Pocahontas writes today’s column to tell readers of a film about the Ku Klux Klan, and her family connection to the story.
Helen Beneke worked as an educator for more than four decades. She was an elementary school teacher, special education consultant, college instructor, and student teacher supervisor. She and her husband, Don raised their family in Pocahontas, where she still resides. Even in retirement, Helen stays busy with volunteer work, including local Rotary club president, Trainer for Rotary District 5970, Hometown Pride Committee, and the Rialto Theater. She serves on two state boards: the Iowa Community Theater Association and the Learning Disability Association of Iowa. Her favorite part-time position after retirement was working on various educational projects within Iowa Public Television. Helen is a member of two international special education organizations and has presented at several conventions worldwide, with Trinidad and Tobago, Croatia, and Hong Kong being the most intriguing. She reflected that a Rotary service project in Nicaragua was the most rewarding.
Ku Klux Klan Hoods, by Helen Beneke
An adventuresome 15-year-old was dispatched to complete a mundane task: clean out the second-floor closets of a building that his father had recently purchased. It had been a bank building until the business went under during the Great Depression, and then it was used by the U.S. Postal Department before being purchased by Don Beneke, Sr., who intended to use the downtown building for his law firm. The obedient son (my husband) trudged upstairs for this tedious job only to be surprised by his find: a large box was tucked in a far corner of one closet. Opening it, Don Jr.’s adventure began. He first pulled out what he thought were bed linens: sheets and pillowcases. But he noticed two holes in each of the cases. He showed them to his father, who explained that there had been an active Ku Klux Klan group in Pocahontas County.
In 1993, Don Jr. asked a local cabinet maker to make two cases: one large rectangle glass case to display the six KKK hoods and a tall cube glass case to house the hood of the Pocahontas County KKK leader. During the late ‘90s and into this century, Don Jr. provided programs for county-wide libraries and clubs throughout the county. Beneke reported, “Invariably, during my presentations, an old timer would report having watched cross-burning in yards of Catholic families.”
“The Cross”
When Christians see this reference, their thoughts often go to Easter. But during the 1920s, in Pocahontas County (located in northwest Iowa), the Christians had another connotation for “The Cross.” Some were prominent; others were run-of-the-mill county residents, but they banded together, cut eye holes in their pillowcases, and wrapped sheets around themselves, turning their bed linens into makeshift Ku Klux Kan wraps. They built large wood crosses and burned them in their neighbor’s yard. Yes, the KKK was an active group who attempted to drive the Catholics out of the county rather than to welcome and enjoy their community folk.
Dr. Mike White, the grandson of one of the targeted families, developed a screenplay about this situation. White’s grandmother and grandfather opened a successful café in Laurens, Iowa, before being tormented and driven away by the Ku Klux Klan. Although these events occurred over 100 years ago, the story comes to life as White and co-director Shelby Hagerdon developed the movie, “The Cross.” Dr. White, a professor at Wayne State College, Wayne, NE, created a particular summer project class at WSC, and his students worked with the professional crew. Filming took place throughout Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.
White said he was affected emotionally and physically while working on this film. “There were few times when making the film I thought, am I picking at the bones of something better forgotten?” White said. “It was a painful thing until I got into it and knew there was a lot to be learned, and it was something that matters.”
He explained, “It is very difficult to describe what it felt like when that cross burned. When we sat there, and we lit the cross and to see all these people dressed as Klansmen, it was a terrifying thing. Even for the crew, there was a real quiet kind of painful hush over all of it. I think watching that and realizing my family went through that was tough.” He took two years to develop this film.
Note: Dr. White’s quotes originally appeared in Wayne Daily News, Wayne, Nebraska (waynedailynews.com)
You’re invited to view this film at the Pocahontas Art Deco Rialto Theater through November 3. Movie times are nightly at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. To secure this movie for your local theater, contact Dr. White at mwhitewtma@aol.com.
Imagine an active Ku Klux Klan group in northwest Iowa. Go figure!
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What I love about the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, and the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat, is we are amplifying voices throughout the state. Helen Beneke is a great example of talent, and compassionate leadership we have in Iowa.
I was doing some freelance work in western and northwest Iowa early last year. I visited Bancroft, which has a magnificent Catholic church; also had a parish school and a convent that has been converted into a bed-and-breakfast called "Sisters Inn."
Then I went to Sac City. Great old town with good bones, cool old houses and the Chatauqua Park HIstoric District. But I found one Catholic church that looked like it was about 1950s vintage.
I asked, because I'd just been to Bancroft, why was there no old Catholic Church. A city council member and local historian said, "Well, I don't know if you know this, but the Ku Klux Klan was active in Sac County." I guess during the Depression, when farms were failing, people banded together at farm sales to make sure they didn't go to Catholic buyers.
Also I recall when I was in sixth grade, our Catholic parish and school in Waterloo was celebrating the "golden jubilee," or 50th anniiversary of the ordination, of our pastor, Monsignor E.J. O'Hagan. This was in 1968; he was ordained in 1918. He told us that at the first parish he was assigned to at Worthington near Dubuque, "the Klan was burning." And at a recent exhibit we had at the Grout Museum in Waterloo called "Temperance and Turmoil," It was noted that some elements of the temperance movement were anti-Catholic - and that some of the bootleggers were Catholic.
I'm reminded of this when some present-day Catholics ally with fundamentalist evangelicals on social issues -- or when folks from the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas picketed my parish and others of various denominations in 2005. If you think we're all of like mind, it ain't necessarily so.