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Unmasking the Klan
A Ku Klux Klan chapter in New York City? No one would have thought it possible—till the Post hit the newsstands unmasking the Klan.
It was a big scoop—and included an interview with the New York State “Grand Dragon.” We let him pull back the mask with his own words.
The KKK klavern was based in the Rockaways. I was born and raised in Far Rockaway, not that I needed extra incentive to pursue the story.
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Ku Klux Klan Uncovered Here
By RICHARD SCHWARTZ
A Ku Klux Klan chapter has been operating secretly in the city for almost three years.
It is the first time in a half-century that the "white, Christian, patriotic organization" has established a base in New York City.
The klavern (chapter) is based in the Rockaways and has at least 50 members.
Investigations by The Post and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith uncovered the chapter. Its existence was confirmed yesterday by Earl Schoonmaker Jr., the Grand Dragon of the Independent Northern Klans, the state's largest KKK order.
Secrecy Explained
Schoonmaker said the existence of klaverns is kept secret because members hold "high-paying jobs and posts in government" and "if these people were known they would invariably lose their jobs."
City police say they had not been aware of the existence of the chapter until told about it by the ADL, and know of no illegal activities connected with the group.
"If there are any illegal activities, we'll take action," said Detective James Finnegan, who keeps an eye on racist groups for the department. He pointed out that there is nothing illegal about Klan membership.
The ADL says that a climate of lawlessness and racial violence during the 1950s and early 1960s contributed to 43 deaths in the south and nearly 1000 instances of racial violence, reprisal and intimidations.
The local chapter includes jobless construction and other blue-collar workers and a number of military veterans, most of them raised in and living in the Rockaways.
Many of them are recruited by word-of-mouth at drinking places by chapter members, some of whom wear T-shirts that say "Be a Man, Join the Klan."
Silent at First
Michael Donohue, of Far Rockaway, an ex-felon who described himself as one of the organizers of the chapter, at first refused to talk when confronted by The Post yesterday. Told that Schoonmaker had confirmed the group's existence, he agreed to talk briefly.
Donohue, 27, an unemployed ironworker, said racial tensions in the area led to formation of the group. "Black and white—that's the issue," he said. "We think blacks have their place in America, but we don't think we should be forced to live with them. If we don't want to associate with them we shouldn't have to . . . in school, jobs, or any place else."
He says the Rockaways have become a racial tinderbox because it is a "dumping ground" for low-income housing projects, where blacks have driven out whites.
He said the klavern has been working through civic and governmental channels to halt the decay in the neighborhood.
"We're not just needed in Far Rockaway," he said. "We're needed all over."
The Queens chapter uses a post office box in Rockaway Park for its mailing address but has attracted members from Far Rockaway, Edgemere and other parts of the narrow peninsula.
The ADL says the klavern was founded by Donohue and Walter Hydge, a former Rockaway resident now in Nassau County Correctional Facility. Hydge has been declared incompetent to stand trial for a burglary a year ago and is to appear this week before Mineola District Court Judge Edward Baker to be committed to a state hospital.
Donohue, identified by the ADL investigation as the "Exalted Cyclops," or top official of the chapter, described himself as "just a guy in the group who tried to get others to join."
He said the group meets "in many places," in the Rockaways and in nearby Long Beach, L.I.
Hoods & Robes
At the current meetings, held one Monday a month, the members wear hoods and robes. After the meetings, the group re-assembles at a series of bars in the "Irishtown" section of Rockaway Park.
Nearly all of the members of the chapter are Irish Catholics, traditional targets of Klan activities. Schoonmaker said the state membership of the Klan is about 49 per cent Catholic and called the "WASP thing" the Klan's "old ways."
When his Klan activities were revealed three years ago, Schoonmaker was fired from his job as a teacher at the state-run Facility at Napanin Orange County, about 80 miles from the city.
He called Donohue "a good man" who "works lawfully."
Asked about Donohue's criminal record, Schoonmaker said: "I can't hold a criminal record against a person if a man has served his time to society.
"If society is going to condemn everyone who comes out of prison, I don't see too many condemnations in the press of Eldridge Cleaver."
Attacked Black
Donohue's criminal record includes a 1973 jail term at Rikers Island for assaulting a black man. A 1969 attempted murder charge was dismissed.
He says the assault conviction resulted from a fight with a black man who attacked him in retaliation for a beating at the hands of other whites.
He admits that some of the chapter members have weapons, but says "everything we have is legal."
Schoonmaker said the Klan is a "positive outfit" which happens to be "white Christian" and is not anti-black or anti-Semitic. "Today they're pushing `Roots' but we're proud of where we come from, too."
SIDEBARS
Kluxers Do No Harm: Klan Chief
By RICHARD SCHWARTZ
The Grand Dragon of the state's largest Ku Klux Klan organization says the Klan is being hurt today by "the old image of how we hang black people."
Earl Schoonmaker, of upstate Pine Bush, consented to an interview yesterday after being told the existence of a three-year-old Klan chapter in the Rockaways was about to be made public.
"People have made up their minds what they expect to see from us and they see it no matter what we do," he said. The Klan today tries to "talk to people personally and show them that we're not trying to harm anybody," he added.
He said he didn't know how the people of New York would react to the existence of a Klan chapter in the city.
'Lion's Den'
"Just about any place you could go could be considered the lion's den," he said.
"We've met with resistance in some areas and in other areas we've met good success," said the 42-year-old former prison teacher who was fired from his job in 1975 for conducting Klan business in the Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch.
"People have a stereotype about us," Schoonmaker said. "They don't honestly know much about the Klan. They seem to have a boogey-man image about us.
"As for the robes and hoods, they're only used for certain occasions—not used in any way to scare, harass or intimidate anybody. It's part of our rituals and there's not some kind of blood-thirsty, sacrificial, altar-type setting.
However, officials of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League believe the group poses a danger in its role as breeders of lawlessness and as magnets for the worst elements.
In On Discovery
The ADL was involved in discovering the Queens activities, which had been shrouded in secrecy for nearly three years.
"It is not accidental that the Rockaway unit is a secretive organization because the New York public is hostile to the Klan and knows what it stands for," said Irwin Suall, director of the league's fact-finding unit.
"These guys are venomous haters," he said, referring to the Rockaway klavern. "This is true of the Klan generally, but we're making the claim specifically in relation to this group."
"The decline the Klan experienced in the late sixties and seventies has been reversed," Suall asserts. Their growth is a serious concern."
Klan a Response to Changing Area, Leader Says
By RICHARD SCHWARTZ and PATRICK SULLIVAN
Michael Donohue, key figure in the Ku Klux Klan in the Rockaways, shopped among extremist groups—including the American Nazi Party—before opting for the KKK.
The bearded, stocky Donohue said he first checked out such groups as the National Socialist White Peoples Party (the former American Nazi Party) and the National States Rights Party, the group to which Fred Cowan, the New Rochelle mass murderer, belonged.
“I went looking for an organization…but the Klan was it—they sounded the most sensible.”
The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, which has investigated his Klan activities, charges Donohue currently is associated with the Nazi group and the NSRP. He denies it.
Although he helped found the KKK branch in May 1974, Donohue received little sympathy from his neighbors until Dec. 4, 1975, when 70-year-old Mary Galligan’s mutilated body was found in her ransacked and burned apartment at 1450 Mott Av., Far Rockaway.
She was the last white woman in her building, and white people in the area think the killers were black. No one has been arrested in the case, however.
After the emotional funeral at St. Mary's Star of the Sea, membership in Donohue’s Klavern (chapter) grew to its present total of 50.
His group is thought to be the first KKK chapter formed in the city in 50 years.
For the 27-year-old Donohue, an unemployed iron worker who doesn’t want to leave the Rockaways and his home in Far Rockaway, that grisly murder is symbolic of the change in the blue collar Irish enclaves on the peninsula.
“The Rockaways have deteriorated—you have more low income housing in Rockaway than anywhere…and crime has gone tip…it seems like the dumping place for Queens,” Donohue said in an interview.
The growing minority population seems to have plagued Donohue, driving him from his birthplace in Edgemere—“it was middle class, now it’s all welfare”—and now closing in on Far Rockaway.
Donohue’s past includes a year in Rikers Island for assaulting a black man in 1973.
“My crimes were before I was ever involved in the Klan,” he said. “It was mostly for assaults and getting into fights, stuff like that …We don’t have an angel in every one of us.”
Although civic leaders claim racial strife has gone down in the area, the 5-8, 200-pound Donohue—who hangs out in Irish bars with a crowd known for heavy drinking and brawling —says blacks and whites are at each other’s throats “all over the Rockaways.”
“We don’t go looking for it, but we protect ourselves,” he said. “If one of our guys is going to get hurt, then we’re going to go looking for somebody who did it. We don’t get any satisfaction from the police.”
While Donohue's neighbors are deeply troubled by police statistics which show an increased crime rate, most do not, however, see him as the man to turn to.
“Mickey Donohue is strong on emotion, but not too strong on reason;” one resident said.