That revelation came in 2020 amid a debate over the future of the
city's towering Confederate monument.
'Make Things Right': Florida activists grapple with
revelations about Klan leader and erasure of Black history
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Liz Vinson Read the full piece here
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Friend,
On the third floor of a quiet history museum in Pensacola, Florida,
stands a relic from the past that may disturb visitors: a figure
dressed in a Ku Klux Klan uniform - a white, visibly worn robe
with a tall, pointed cap and a hood that drapes around the face.
Also on display at the Pensacola Museum of History at the University
of West Florida (UWF) are patches that adorned Klan members'
uniforms and a copy of a Klan handbook known as the Kloran. Behind the
figure is a cross, nearly destroyed by fire - a relic of the
Klan's infamous calling card.
The uniform is only one part of a large cache of memorabilia and
documents associated with a man named T.T. Wentworth - a
prominent local politician in the early 20th century, an entrepreneur,
a philanthropist and a once-highly regarded preservationist known as
"Mr. History" in this Gulf Coast city.
In the 1920s, Wentworth had another title - that of
"exalted cyclops," designating him the leader of the local
"klavern" of the Klan.
That revelation came in 2020 amid a debate over the future of the
city's towering Confederate monument. Along with a
historian's examination of Klan documents that lay hidden within
Wentworth's personal collection for decades, the discovery has
ignited an effort to reckon with the city's history -
particularly the history of its vibrant Black community.
The leader of a now-defunct historical foundation that once heralded
Wentworth's version of the past - which ignored the
contributions of Black people to society - has embarked on an
educational campaign to tell the truth about Black history and to
provide scholarships for aspiring Black college students.
The city's racial reckoning gained steam after Jamin Wells
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, an associate professor of history at UWF, spent a year digging into
Wentworth's collection, which came into the possession of the
UFW Historic Trust in 2019. They included a membership ledger,
correspondence, photographs and a variety of other documents. The
documents provided a rare look at the inner workings of the Klan in
the 1920s, a period of Klan resurgence, when the group claimed several
million members nationwide and marched
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25,000-strong in full regalia down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington,
D.C.
In his report
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, Wells wrote, "'Mr. History' didn't tell the
whole story. The most glaring omission relates to African American
history. With a few notable exceptions, Wentworth did not collect
material related to African American history nor did he meaningfully
include the African American experience in his histories of
Pensacola."
The explicit omissions obscure the contributions of Black people to
the region's economic development and have had a significant
impact "on community identity, politics and policy," Wells
wrote.
"Some may wonder, 'Why does this story
matter?'' Wells said in an interview with the Southern
Poverty Law Center. "Some may say, 'Who cares, it was 100
years ago, and he's dead, so what's the point?' But
our community's defining storyteller left enormous gaps and
holes in the history he wrote. And those gaps have profoundly shaped
what this city thinks it was and, by extension, what it might
become."
Read More
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Sincerely,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
Friend, will you make a gift to help the SPLC fight for
justice and equity in courts and combat white supremacy?
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