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Peering through 'Windows in Time' Ku Klux Klan members parade through Ashland in the early 1920s. Photo courtesy of the Southern Oregon Historical Society, image No. 6973 Friday Jan 27, 2017 at 5:14 PM Jan 27, 2017 at 5:14 PM John Darling for the Mail Tribune A ballot measure supporting the Southern Oregon Historical Society was overwhelmingly defeated in the November election, but as SOHS transitions from paid staff to an all-volunteer operation, it will keep up the main activities it has brought the public for 60 years, says SOHS President Douglas McGeary. A long list of volunteer speakers have stepped up to present the "Windows in Time" talks and visual presentations at the Ashland and Medford libraries through this year. The talks start at noon the first Wednesday of the month in Medford and the second Wednesday of each month in Ashland. The talks help keep SOHS visible and inform the public about regional history, he says. Coming up in February is Ashland historian Jeff LaLande with “Bigotry Unmasked: the Rise of the 1920s KKK in Southern Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.” The notorious Klan was organized in the South after the Civil War to make sure recently freed slaves “got the fear of God put into them” and didn’t get interested in politics — and it was “definitely a racist organization,” says LaLande. But in the 1920s, the Klan re-energized in opposition to the Irish, who were Catholic, and who, it was thought, “did not owe allegiance to the U.S. Constitution but to the pope, so they couldn’t be good Americans.” Using the railroad, the KKK organized chapters in cities all over Oregon, including Ashland, Medford, Roseburg, Eugene, Albany, Corvallis, Tillamook and LaGrande, he notes. No lynchings were reported in Oregon, he adds, but there were a couple of near lynchings in the Rogue Valley where “they threatened people to mend their ways or 'get out of Dodge.' In two cases they were lifted off the ground (at the end of a rope), but survived, which was a very terrifying experience.” In January's "Windows in Time" talks, historian-author Bill Miller spoke on “Writing the Great War: Southern Oregon Stories & Letters from WWI,” which put a human face on America’s year-and-a-half of battle through letters from soldiers and sailors that were printed in local newspapers. With archaic and generally unseen film rolling behind him, Miller told the stories of locals, including Dorothy Connor of Jacksonville, who was on the Lusitania, which was sunk by a German sub, but who lived to help set up a soldier hospital in France. A local man, Newell Barber, got in the flying corps and wrote home how he loved it and felt safer in the air than on the highway. But Barber was killed when his aircraft went down behind the lines in heavy combat. His poignant letter home noted, “I’m doing my duty. I’m not a slacker, and I’m not afraid.” Miller’s talk even described Barber's father finally getting the dreaded “death letter” at the Medford post office and falling on the floor in tears. The first Medford airport, south of town, was named for the fallen flyer. The words Miller found most often in the historical letters were, “don’t worry about me.” A note of humor came as he described how an Eagle Point mother hadn’t heard from her son in a year, so she wrote to his friend in the Army, asking if he knew anything. The friend said he was with her son in Hawaii, and he would scold him and make him write, which soon happened — and the long-desired letter contained a litany of excuses, with the words “don’t worry.” McGeary says committees are being formed to reorganize the society into an all-volunteer unit, while continuing with programs, its giant historical collections, and the operation of historic Hanley Farm. “We were relying on passage of the ballot measure in November to fund it as in years past,” he notes, “but since that’s not going to happen, it has to be a different way with no paid staff. … We have the state heritage commission advising us, and by mid-winter, we’ll come up with a plan that is credible and people can see we are making it viable.” McGeary says SOHS wanted to put the ballot measure up “when there wasn’t a national election, so it could be more targeted, but we couldn’t wait any longer. We lost big. The citizenry wasn’t convinced. I don’t think they understood. I’m not sure everyone voting knew what history means to us.” — John Darling is an Ashland freelance writer. Reach him at [email protected].