Bill Trollinger, professor of history and religious studies at the University of Dayton, will present the address, Terrorizing Catholics, Jews, and Immigrants: The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Dayton at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 5 at UD’s Roger Glass Center for the Arts.

The director of the university’s Core Integrated Studies Program, Trollinger has written extensively on the Klan.

In the 1920s, an estimated 4 to 5 million Americans were members of the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan, Trollinger told The Observer.

“In contrast with the post-Civil War Klan, which was concentrated in the South, the 1920s KKK was a truly national organization, with particular strength in the Midwest and West,” he noted.

“This Klan targeted Catholics, Jews, and immigrants, along with, as always, African Americans and other people of color.”

Trollinger added that in the 1920s, Dayton was one of the leading KKK strongholds in the United States. Dayton’s Klan, he said, directed much of its hatred against the city’s Catholic population, including at the University of Dayton.

He’ll share stories of how UD students and its football team challenged the Klan, and how the school’s administration avoided confrontations and endured the Klan’s terrorism in the 1920s as did several other Catholic universities across the United States.

The Klan attacks of the 1920s have all but disappeared from UD’s institutional memory, Trollinger said.

Following Trollinger’s talk, Natalie Hudson, executive director of UD’s Human Rights Center, will moderate a roundtable discussion with civil rights leaders from across the state about the fight against hate in Ohio today.

Discussion participants will be Anti-Defamation League Regional Director Kelly Fishman from Cleveland, Cincinnati NAACP President Joe Mallory, and Father Satish Joseph of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Dayton.

The program is hosted by UD’s Alumni Chair in Humanities, Sam Dorf. Admission is free. The Roger Glass Center for the Arts is located at 29 Creative Way, Dayton.

For more information, contact the center at 937-229-5000 or Dorf at sdorf1@udayton.edu.

To read the complete September 2024 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.