The Black Legion targeted men for membership. The unsuspecting recruit was approached by other members, usually friends, and asked to attend an innocent event, like a baseball game or to go hunting, with them. Once the recruit and the members arrived at the designated location, other Black Legion members showed up and a terrifying initial ritual commenced. The recruit was forced to kneel, surrounded by Black Legion members, a loaded gun was held to his head, and he was forced to swear a loyalty oath under penalty of death. At its conclusion, he was given a bullet to remind him what would happen to him or his loved ones if he didn’t follow Black Legion commands.
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Thomas Heinrich was one of these recruits. In 1935, he met with Lenawee County Prosecutor LaVon Kuney and told him about a planned meeting in a field near Ogden Station on Aug. 19. Heinrich had been forced under duress to undergo the Black Legion’s initiation ritual earlier, and he, like many farmers in the region who found themselves involved against their wishes and wanted out, complained to law enforcement, usually to no avail. Not so with Prosecutor Kuney, who immediately arranged for Michigan State Police from the Blissfield post to provide surveillance (Stanton, “Terror in the City of Champions,” 2016).
The MSP trailed cars leaving this meeting and pulled over a car from Detroit, in which they found guns, a dagger, hooded gowns, and a notebook with a treasure trove of information. They arrested three Black Legion members, a couple of whom were later convicted of murder or other crimes. The Telegram covered these events Aug. 20-23, and the hearing before Justice Franklin J. Russell on Aug. 28. The Black Legion members were represented after their arrest by Harry Z. Marx, the attorney for the Black Legion’s political arm in Michigan (the Wolverine Republican League), and others including Bert Effinger, the regional leader of the Black Legion. They came to Adrian to appeal to Lenawee County to release the prisoners, claiming the weapons were all in fun, just part of a harmless ceremonial ritual, that their objective was to protect the U.S. Constitution, but Kuney refused.
Unfortunately, on Aug. 28, Justice Russell dropped all charges on a technicality and released the three Black Legion members (Adrian Daily Telegram and Times archives).
That’s not where the story ends, not by a long shot. FBI records show that the information and evidence gathered from the Ogden Station incident played a major part in bringing down the entire Black Legion organization and resulted in prison sentences for other crimes for the members arrested here. The Telegram, showing remarkable courage, continued to print AP articles about the Black Legion.
Thomas Heinrich and LaVon Kuney were heroes who, at great risk to their and their families’ safety and lives, did the right thing for democracy. There’s more to their stories, part of which is that some family members still live right here in Lenawee, but I’ll leave the telling of all that to them.
Here’s the thing. The white Christian nationalist movement, while it’s been expanded to include Catholics as friendlies and to target women and men who don’t fit their Dominionist role models and LGBTQ people and those who support reproductive rights as enemies, still has its roots and goals in the old Lost Cause and Klan movements. There are still those who proclaim “America First” or “America is a Christian nation,” riling up an army of fake Christian patriots who use the same talking points and have the same goals as the Klan and the Black Legion of the past, whether it’s coming from the Federalist Society, John Birch Society libertarians, the courts or church pulpits.
Remember the claims of Klan advocate and Adrian resident B.F. Searight in Part 1 of this series (LTE, Adrian Daily Telegram, Feb. 4, 1924).
Could it happen here?
— Pam Taylor is a retired Lenawee County teacher and an environmental activist. She can be reached at ptaylor001@msn.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: When fascism came to Lenawee: Local heroes