Some legionnaires, more inclined toward outright violence for the sake of violence, went further in their plots to rid America of those they called undesirables than fear-mongering and night riding. It was alleged, for instance, that Major General Lupp had explored ways to inject typhoid germs into milk and cheese delivered to specific undesirable neighborhoods in Detroit. The fact that Lupp was an inspector for the Detroit Department of Public Health lent some credence to this story, in the minds of many who heard it.
Labor and civil rights lawyer Maurice Sugar, who believed he was targeted for death by the legion, claimed that his investigations had uncovered a plot by the legion to release cyanide gas in synagogues during Hanukkah in 1935, although no official investigation supported the allegations. There was clear evidence, however, that Sugar’s 1935 campaigns for a seat on Detroit Recorder’s Court and on the city’s Common Council were targeted by legionnaires for a series of dirty tricks and outright sabotage.
Some politicians supported the legion’s efforts to preserve the American System against foreign influence and often spoke before the Wolverine Republican Club, whose members circulated petitions and conducted get-out-the-vote campaigns for their favorite candidates. Too often, however, the legion’s political activities tended to violent acts of retaliation against those candidates running against a legion favorite.
Running through the literature and rhetoric of the Black Legion was the fear of an international Communist takeover of the United States. Legionnaires were ordered by their superiors to be prepared to take over federal government buildings with arms at what they called “zero hour,” the date and time that communists would rise up throughout the United States and launch their attack on the country. In truth, however, the legion was led by unsophisticated men, “petty men,” as one researcher has noted, who were most interested in the “pettiness of personal reform.”
Thus, the legion saw as its enemies not only blacks, Jews, and Catholics, but also welfare workers and recipients and labor union organizers. Homer Martin, the first president of the United Automobile Workers union, believed beyond any question that legionnaires had infiltrated his union for the express purpose of providing inside information to the automobile manufacturers and that many black knights were members of the “Dawn Patrol,” the private security force that guarded many Detroit auto plants.
The legion also provided a job service for its members. Many joined the organization during the economically unsettled 1930s with the understanding that legionnaires would look out for their own in terms of jobs and promotions. It was alleged that the Packard and Hudson automobile plants were controlled by the legion and that members would enjoy in those shops ‘special privileges’ as a result. It is worth noting, in this regard, that later investigations of the legion revealed that none of its known members were unemployed and that many of them had positions in the public services.
By and large, the typical Black Legionnaire was a lower-class, Anglo-Saxon male, poorly educated with few industrial skills, and were Southerners transplanted to the Detroit area during the heyday of the city’s industrial growth during the 1920s. Why did they join? They believed that the American System was being undermined and their obligation was to counteract that trend
They were also frustrated by the uncertainty generated by the economic problems of the 1930s and they felt alienated in a large metropolitan area and within a huge industrial complex. In general, they were beset by the feeling that, although their ancestral roots in America stretched back to the nation’s earliest years, they were being left behind; they believed foreigners were competing for jobs they considered their own, that Jews and Catholics were supplanting Protestants among the nation’s influential political and economic leaders, and that racial integration was leading America to social anarchy.
In the Black Legion, members found a sense of security and a sense of superiority. For those of a more violent bent, the group quenched their thirst for adventure and, in some cases, personal injury and murder. Most especially, the legion provided easy answers to the complex questions that plagued Americans during the dark days of the Great Depression. As its oath of allegiance proclaimed, “the native-born white people of America are menaced on every hand from above and below. If America is in the melting pot, the white people of America are neither the aristocratic scum on top nor the dregs of society on the bottom which is composed of anarchists and Communists and all cults and creeds believing in social equality. … We regard as enemies to ourselves and our country all aliens, Negroes, Jews and cults and creeds believing in racial equality or owing allegiance to any foreign potentates. These we will fight without fear or favor as long as one foe of American liberty is left alive.”
The murder of Charles Poole broke open the secrecy surrounding the Black legion. This young man, an organizer for the Works Progress Administration, left behind a wife and children whose plight was highlighted in newspaper articles and photographs and raised public support for a trial and a thorough investigation.
Opposition to the Legion was spearheaded by the Detroit Conference for the Protection of Civil Rights, representatives of 311 churches, and labor union, farm and fraternal groups in Michigan. Wayne County Prosecutor Duncan McCrea pledged to bring Poole’s murders to the bar of justice, a pledge he kept despite accusations by some of those he prosecuted that he had joined the legion himself. Eleven of the 12 men he tried in the Poole murder case were convicted, nine by a jury on Sept. 29, 1936, and two in a bench trial.
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