Ku Klux Klan raid of La Paloma nightclub

Last updated
Ku Klux Klan raid of La Paloma nightclub
LocationUnincorporated Dade County, Florida
DateNovember 15, 1937
TargetLa Paloma nightclub patrons and workers
Perpetrators200 Ku Klux Klan night riders
MotiveClosing of La Paloma nightclub
Convictions0
Charges0

On November 15, 1937 the Ku Klux Klan raid of La Paloma nightclub occurred in an unincorporated area of Dade County, Florida. An estimated 200 Ku Klux Klan members stormed the popular LGBT-serving nightclub, patrons were ordered to leave and the nightclub was shut down for the evening. [1]

Contents

Background

Tourist economy and backlash

Miami had recently begun to shift to cater to tourists. Local businesses intended to draw tourist money by offering Miami as a more modern alternative to Havana. To cater to tourists, many local businesses expected a relaxed approach from the vice police to gambling, and more acceptance of foreigners. Some grew frustrated with Miami's new tourism-based economy and began an anti-vice crusade. These included construction workers affected by business failings in the area. This crusade began during Prohibition and led to the revitalization of the Ku Klux Klan in the Miami area. [2]

Local tensions with La Paloma

La Paloma nightclub's performance offerings included early drag queens known as "female impersonators" singing and telling jokes, women stripping. It was generally understood to cater specifically to LGBT patrons. Many locals called it indecent. Club owner Al Youst had already been arrested six times, but to many residents it seemed that the arrests would not shut the club down. [2]

Raid

Ceremony

On the night of November 15, 1937 hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan gathered at Miami's Moore Park to induct 125 new members. [3] They burned a cross before they assaulted the La Paloma nightclub. [1]

Storming the club

For the first time in ten years the Ku Klux Klan conducted a "night ride" in the Miami area. Around 200 "night riders" (members responsible for burnings and floggings) walked directly into the nightclub. [4] Klan members began smashing furniture, roughing up workers, threatening to burn the building down, all while ordering everyone out of the club. [5] One Klan member explained during the attack that "the visit came because neighborhood residents were afraid of Youst and did not want to appear against him in a court complaint." [3]

Aftermath

Police raid and reopening

Soon after the Ku Klux Klan raid, Dade County Sheriff David Coleman called the club a "menace" and vowed to keep it legally closed. Coleman ordered the nightclub to stop operations after the Ku Klux Klan raid and then ordered a police raid there two weeks later. [2]

La Paloma reopened again within weeks, though. [6] The club's manager would claim the club offered “spicier entertainment than ever”. A new skit performed at the club featured performers satirizing the Klan raid and donning white hoods. [1]

Miami LGBT community

A stronger sense of unity came to Miami's LGBT community, and La Paloma nightclub became a symbol of LGBT resistance in the city. [1]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ku Klux Klan</span> American white supremacist terrorist hate group

The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. The Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets are African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, and abortion providers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stonewall Inn</span> Gay tavern and monument in New York City

The Stonewall Inn, often shortened to Stonewall, is a gay bar and recreational tavern in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which is widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.

Daniel Carver is an American white supremacist and former Grand Dragon of the "Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" based in Georgia. Carver was suspended from wearing Klan robes and from attending Klan rallies after a 1986 conviction for "terroristic threats".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Joseph Simmons</span> Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (1880–1945)

William Joseph Simmons was an American preacher and fraternal organizer who founded and led the second Ku Klux Klan from Thanksgiving evening 1915 until being ousted in 1922 by Hiram Wesley Evans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James A. Colescott</span> American Ku Klux Klan member

James Arnold Colescott was an American white supremacist who was Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Under financial pressure from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for back taxes, he disbanded the second wave of the original Ku Klux Klan in 1944.

This is a partial list of notable historical figures in U.S. national politics who were members of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan, or was supported at the polls by Klan members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eurith D. Rivers</span> American politician: Governor of Georgia (1895–1967)

Eurith Dickinson Rivers, commonly known as E. D. Rivers and informally as "Ed" Rivers, was an American politician from Lanier County, Georgia. A Democrat, he was the 68th Governor of Georgia, serving from 1937 to 1941.

Thomas Robb is an American white supremacist, Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and Christian Identity pastor. He is the National Director of the Knights Party, also known as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, taking control of the organization since the year 1989.

Ku Klux Klan auxiliaries are organized groups that supplement, but do not directly integrate with the Ku Klux Klan. These auxiliaries include: Women of the Ku Klux Klan, The Jr. Ku Klux Klan, The Tri-K Girls, the American Crusaders, The Royal Riders of the Red Robe, The Ku Klux balla, and the Klan's Colored Man auxiliary.

<i>The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy</i> Book by Alma Bridwell White

The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy is a 144-page book written by Bishop Alma Bridwell White in 1925 and illustrated by Reverend Branford Clarke. In the book she uses scripture to rationalize that the Ku Klux Klan is sanctioned by God "through divine illumination and prophetic vision". She also believed that the Apostles and the Good Samaritan were members of the Klan. The book was published by the Pillar of Fire Church, which she founded, at their press in Zarephath, New Jersey. The book sold over 45,000 copies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey</span>

The Ku Klux Klan has had a history in the U.S. state of New Jersey since the early part of the 1920s. The Klan was active in the areas of Trenton and Camden and it also had a presence in several of the state's northern counties in the 1920s. It had the most members in Monmouth County, and operated a resort in Wall Township.

Pedro Julio Serrano is an openly gay and HIV+ human rights activist and president of Puerto Rico Para Todes, a non-profit LGBTQ+ and social justice advocacy organization founded in 2003. He is a former advisor to former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and to former San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. He also served, for more than three years, as executive director of Programa Vida and Clínica Transalud of the Municipality of San Juan. He now works as Director of Public Affairs at Waves Ahead.

Ku Klux Klan activities in Inglewood, California, were highlighted by the 1922 arrest and trial of 36 men, most of them masked, for a night-time raid on a suspected bootlegger and his family. The raid led to the shooting death of one of the culprits, an Inglewood police officer. A jury returned a "not guilty" verdict for all defendants who completed the trial. It was this scandal, according to the Los Angeles Times, that eventually led to the outlawing of the Klan in California. The Klan had a chapter in Inglewood as late as October 1931.

The New York World's exposé of the Ku Klux Klan brought national media to the operations and actions of the Ku Klux Klan beginning on September 6, 1921. The newspaper published a series of twenty one consecutive daily articles, edited by Herbert Bayard Swope, that discussed numerous aspects of Ku Klux Klan including rituals, recruitment methods, propaganda, and hypocrisies in logic. At least eighteen other newspapers nationwide picked up the coverage, which led to national discourse on the activities of the group. These publications included the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Boston Globe, Pittsburgh Sun, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), New Orleans Times-Picayune, Galveston News, Houston Chronicle, Seattle Times, Milwaukee Journal, Minneapolis Journal, Oklahoma City Oklahoman, Toledo Blade, Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, Syracuse Herald, Columbus Enquirer-Sun and the Albany Knickerbocker Press. The New York Times ran ads for the article series to increase exposure, while other large papers like the Baltimore Sun quickly picked up the article series instead of advertising for The World. The Ku Klux Klan announced shortly afterward that it would take legal action against all the publications that ran the article series for libel, seeking total damages of over $10 million. Following the exposé, Klan membership significantly increased.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan</span> White supremacist and antisemitic hate group

The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a group styled after the original Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Formed around 2012, it aims to "restore America to a White, Christian nation founded on God's word".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBT culture in Miami</span>

Miami has one of the largest and most prominent LGBTQ communities in the United States. Miami has had a gay nightlife scene as early as the 1930s. Miami has a current status as a gay mecca that attracts more than 1 million LGBT visitors a year. The Miami area as a whole has been gay-friendly for decades and is one of the few places where the LGBTQ community has its own chamber of commerce, the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (MDGLCC). As of 2005, Miami was home to an estimated 15,277 self-identifying gay and bisexual individuals. The Miami metropolitan area had an estimated 183,346 self-identifying LGBT residents.

Eric Earl Porterfield is an American politician and a Republican former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, representing District 27, which includes parts of Mercer and Raleigh counties. First elected in 2018, Porterfield is the second blind person ever to serve in the West Virginia legislature. Alongside being known for being a physically disabled politician, Porterfield is also well known for his unwavering opposition to rights for LGBT people, who he has compared to terrorists. He is on video expressing what he would do should his daughter or son come out gay, saying he would "see if they knew how to swim" and implying he would drown them. In the June 2020 primary he was defeated in his bid for re-election, coming in last of Republican candidates running.

Kathryn Madlyn Ainsworth was an American Ku Klux Klan terrorist. She was killed by law enforcement in 1968 during her failed assassination attempt on a prominent Jewish Mississippian.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Capo, Julio (2017-11-28). "Why a Forgotten KKK Raid on a Gay Club in Miami Still Matters 80 Years Later". Time. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
  2. 1 2 3 Capo, Julio (2017). Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940. UNC Press Books. ISBN   9781469635217.
  3. 1 2 "Boys Will be Boys: The Miami Ku Klux Klan in 1937". South Beach Magazine. 2008-02-11. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
  4. ↑ "100, 75, 50 Years Ago". New York Times. 2012-11-16. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
  5. ↑ Shammas, Brittany (2019-03-12). "Five Moments in Miami's LGBTQ History, From 1937 to 2015". Miami New Times. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
  6. ↑ Martinez, Alejandra (2019-03-12). "New Exhibit Chronicles The History Of Miami's LGBTQ Community". WLRN. Retrieved 2019-07-16.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.