This event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Having virtually disappeared in the late nineteenth century, the Ku Klux Klan exploded onto the national in the early 1920s, with perhaps five million members at its peak. While the original Klan concentrated its animus against the newly freed slaves, this “second” KKK had an expanded list of social scapegoats that included immigrants, Jews, and Catholics. While the original Klan was based primarily in the South, the second Klan had its greatest numerical strength in the West and Midwest. In fact, Ohio may have had more KKK members than any other state in the Union, with an estimated 400,000 Klansmen and Klanswomen. In this presentation we will explore why the Klan was so strong in Ohio, what activities the Ohio Klan engaged in, and in what ways the folks targeted by the Klan fought back.

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William Trollinger is Professor of History in the History and Religious Studies Departments at the University of Dayton. Having earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his publications include God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and the Making of American Fundamentalism (2 nd ed., University of Tennessee Press, 2025) and “Hearing the Silence: The University of Dayton, the Ku Klux Klan, and Catholic Universities in the 1920s,” American Catholic Studies (Spring 2013). He is also co-author with Susan Trollinger of Righting America at the Creation Museum (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016) and “From Creationism to QAnon: The Culture War Conspiracism of Answers in Genesis,” Isis (Summer 2025).