Suffolk Closeup: Organized hate in Suffolk County

“Eye-opening” declared one person on the “Chat” box on Zoom about Christopher Verga’s presentation entitled “The Battle for Long Island Souls and Minds: Resistance Against the Long Island Klan.” Wrote another: “I knew about the presence of the KKK but not to this extent.” There were many similar exclamations.

“I never saw a ‘Chat’ blow up with so many positive comments,” said Jill Santiago, executive director of the Suffolk-based Center for Social Justice and Human Understanding, which sponsored the presentation.

More than 150 people linked into the nearly two-hour talk, which was infused with the showing of documents and archival photos. Many were students from classes at Suffolk County Community College.

The presentation was about racism and bigotry and their history as part of the culture of Suffolk County.

This “had its roots with colonial Long Island,” said Mr. Verga, who teaches Long Island history at Suffolk Community. In the 17th to the late 18th century, Long Island’s “population was comprised of 18% slave-holding families,” he said. Long Island, he noted, had the largest slave population in the north of the United States.

After the Civil War, “one in seven Long Islanders were members of the Ku Klux Klan,” Mr. Verga continued. Besides the KKK’s virulent hatred of African-Americans and Jews, it was also anti-Catholic, believing Catholics “prayed to someone in Rome.”

The KKK on Long Island was heavily financed by real estate companies that were particularly upset by Irish Catholic immigrants moving onto the island and, they believed, lowering real estate values by their presence. Mr. Verga showed KKK literature with the names of real estate company donors prominently listed.

In government in Suffolk, the KKK was a huge factor, including on the federal level. “James Zegel, the U.S. Treasury Department agent in charge of its Prohibition Enforcement Office in Bay Shore, was the Grand Exalted Cyclops” of the Islip KKK “klaven” or chapter. Candidates for local public office would declare: “I’m a member of the Klan, so vote for me.” 

“Good news — there is going to be resistance, pushback,” Professor Verga went on.

Catholic churches in Suffolk were active in the resistance. Mr. Verga told of an anti-KKK rally in 1923 that drew 40,000 people outside St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Bay Shore protesting KKK members running for public office, including, that year, for Islip Town supervisor.

There were individuals who fought the bias, such as Thomas Romano, who built the Ronek Park housing development in North Amityville that drew African-Americans. Advertisements for it said: “Dedicated to the Proposition That All Men Are Created Equal.”

In the 1930s, the German American Bund — the Nazi organization in the U.S. — took over a large tract of land in Yaphank that featured Camp Siegfried and its parade and rallying grounds for Nazis. There was an enclave of bungalows, with its main street named Adolph Hitler Strasse.

Mr. Verga spoke of national civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., coming to demonstrations on Long Island. He showed photos of Dr. King here and also, in 1999, his son, Martin Luther King III, leading a march in Wyandanch to raise awareness of racial and economic inequities in suburbs, and also dedicating a health clinic there named for his father. He noted that marching along with Mr. King was Rich Schaffer, then and now Babylon Town supervisor and, since 2000, also Suffolk County Democratic chairman.

As to the “fastest growing” minority group in Suffolk, Latinos, Mr. Verga related hate directed at them, including the murder in 2008 of Marcelo Lucero outside the Patchogue LIRR station. Mr. Lucero, 37, was surrounded by seven teenagers who had vowed to go out and “find some Mexicans.” An immigrant from Ecuador, he was beaten, stabbed in the chest and left to die. Those who did it were convicted of hate crimes.

The Center for Social Justice and Human Understanding is located at Suffolk Community College’s main Ammerman Campus in Selden. Its executive director, Ms. Santiago, noted that “we house the largest collection of Holocaust artifacts in the region, as well as a collection of artifacts that document the transatlantic slave trade … Our mission is to educate our community on historical events, and to promote issues of social justice and respect for human dignity through educational programming.”

Guided tours are available by calling 631-451-4117.

The highly knowledgeable Professor Verga is on the board of the center.