Burning Down the House

This chapter examines the Ku Klux Klan’s influence in the state and its focus on black migrants. Organized in the 1920s, as part of the second Klan, California’s Invisible Empire sought to purge what members saw as un-American elements. By the 1940s the state’s Klan had an explicit focus on black homeowners; cross burnings and arson became commonplace, and a coalition of activists pushed local and state authority for protection that rarely materialized. The 1945 murder of the family of O’Day Short, an engineer at the Kaiser Steel mill in Fontana, marked the beginning of a terrifying wave of violence specifically aimed at families like the Shorts who had dared to cross the color line