Black Legion (political movement)
- Black Legion (political movement)
The Black Legion was an additional organization within the Ku Klux Klan and operated in the United States in the 1930s. The organization was founded by William Shepard in east central Ohio. [http://www.nathanielturner.com/blacklegion2.htm] The group's total membership was estimated between 20,000 and 30,000, centered in Detroit, Michigan, though the Legion was also highly active in Ohio, and one of its self-described leaders, Virgil "Bert" Effinger, lived and worked in Lima, Ohio. The Associate Press described the organization on May 31, 1936, "as a group of loosely federated night-riding bands operating in several States without central discipline or common purpose beyond the enforcement by lash and pistol of individual leaders' notions of "Americanism." The death of Charles Poole, kidnapped and murdered in southwest Detroit, caused authorities to finally arrest and successfully try and convict a group of twelve men, thereby ending the reign of the Black Legion.
The Black Legion was organized along military lines and had five brigades, 16 regiments, 64 batallions, and 256 companies. Although its members boasted that there were one million legionaires in Michigan, it probably had only between 20,000 and 30,000 members in the state in the 1930s, one third of whom lived in Detroit.
"Black Legion" was also the name of a 1937 Humphrey Bogart film, featuring a fictionalized version of the group.
Members wore black uniforms with skull and crossbones insignia and were allegedly responsible for numerous murders of alleged communists and socialists, notably Earl Little, Malcolm X's father.
The Orson Welles radio show The Shadow had a villainous group called The White Legion combined the clothes worn by the KKK and the Black Legion.
External links
* [http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/blackleg.htm FBI FOIA page on the Black Legion]
* [http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=151&category=events The Murder that Brought Down the Black Legion]
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