Klan Leader Welcomed At University of North Carolina

Hiram Wesley Evans, 1922

Today's #CRT History Snapshot: #OTD in 1937 over 1,000 white students and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gathered to attend a speech openly advocating for white supremacy by the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Dr. Hiram Evans. Evans had been the Imperial Wizard of the Klan for 15 years and overseen both its greatest growth to 6 million members in 1924 to its near collapse by 1932, but in the south, he and the Klan still hung on but with less than 100,000 members. Evans speech this night was not much different than any he had ever given but increasingly the Klan also advocated for an American Nazi party. UNC has had a long and deeply connected past with the Klan as the student newspaper supported Evans but also Saunders Hall, a campus building, after William Saunders, the leader of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan remained until 2015.

Sources:

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/nov/17

https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/22-the-new-era/hiram-evans-on-the-the-klans-fight-for-americanism-1926/