White Supremacy and Anti-Catholic Intimidation in the 1923 Ku Klux Klan Parade at Milo, Maine

Maine

Photograph

Clement Studio, Ku Klux Klan march in Milo, Maine, 1923, documents the public visibility of the 1920s Klan revival in a rural Northeastern town. The image records the first daylight Ku Klux Klan parade and the first Klan parade in New England, held during Milo’s centennial celebration on September 3, 1923. Its research value lies in its direct visual evidence of white supremacist performance, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant intimidation, and the spread of Klan organizing beyond the South during the interwar period.

Clement Studio. Ku Klux Klan march, Milo, Maine. Milo, Maine: Clement Studio, September 3, 1923. Black-and-white silver gelatin real photo postcard. 5.25 x 3.5 inches. The photograph shows hooded Klansmen in white robes marching through Milo, with several participants carrying American flags. The Metropolitan Museum of Art records a related Clement Studio image with the negative inscription: “First Parade in N.E. States of Ku Klux Klan. Milo. Maine Sept 3. 1923. Centennial Celebration.”

The photograph belongs to the period when the revived Klan used parades, recruitment, flags, robes, and public ceremony to normalize racial, religious, and nativist exclusion. In Maine, Klan activity particularly targeted Catholic and immigrant communities, including French Canadian and Irish populations, while also drawing on national anti-Black, anti-Jewish, and anti-immigrant ideology. Minor small stain along upper margin, not affecting image; very good. A stark local record of the Klan’s Northeastern expansion and its use of daylight public spectacle as intimidation.

Item #17734

Price: $425.00