Black Legion (political Movement)
The Black Legion was an organization that splintered from the Ku Klux Klan and operated in the United States in the 1930s. The organization was founded by William Shepard in east central Ohio. The group's total membership, estimated between 20,000 and 30,000, was centered in Detroit, Michigan, though the Legion was also highly active in Ohio and one of its self-described leaders, Virgil "Bert" Effinger, lived and worked in Lima, Ohio.
The Associated Press described the organization on May 31, 1936, as
- a group of loosely federated night-riding bands operating in several States without central discipline or common purpose beyond the enforcement by lash and pistol of individual leaders' notions of "Americanism."
The death of WPA worker Charles Poole, kidnapped and murdered in southwest Detroit, caused authorities to finally arrest and successfully try and convict a group of twelve men, thereby ending its reign of terror.
Read more about Black Legion (political Movement): Organization and Structure, Ritual Murder, In Media
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or legion:
“(The black stream, catching on a sunken rock,
Flung backward on itself in one white wave,
And the white water rode the black forever.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I am sometimes told that “Women aint fit to vote. Why, don’t you know that a woman had seven devils in her: and do you suppose a woman is fit to rule the nation?” Seven devils aint no account; a man had a legion in him.”
—Sojourner Truth (c. 1797–1883)