St. Augustine Record: Klan robes going to Smithsonian

By PETER WILLOTT, peter.willott@staugustine.com
Sandra Parks and Richard Rousseau hold Klu Klux Klan robes that they are donating to the Smithsonian Museum. Parks' robe belonged to her late husband civil rights activist Stetson Kennedy. Rousseau's robe belonged to his great grandfather who was a member of the KKK in Nassau County.

By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com

Few Floridians fear the Ku Klux Klan any more — its heyday was 1915 to 1929 — but two artifacts from that organization’s ugly and violent past will leave St. Augustine next week as donations to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Sandra Parks, wife of the late civil rights author and Florida legend Stetson Kennedy, will carry two authentic Klan robes and hand them to curators of the future National Museum of African-American History.

St. Augustine is planning its own Civil Rights Museum, but Parks said these robes are significant.

“The level of exposure that (they) will have in the Smithsonian is much better than the exposure they would have here,” she said. “People will come to understand the brutality of what was a domestic terrorist organization.”

Parks said the more historically valuable of the two is a bright scarlet robe handed down to Richard M. Rousseau of St. Augustine, who said it had been owned and worn by his great-grandfather, Phineas Miller Nathaniel Wilds of Yulee, who farmed 600 acres on the St. Mary’s River.

Wilds served as an “Imperial Kludd,” or chaplain, of the Joe Wheeler No. 80 Order of the Klan of Fernandina, Fla. He lived in Nassau County all his life and died at 80 on Jan. 20, 1930, a year that saw Florida with 15,000 Klan members.

An Imperial Kludd’s ritual book was called a “kloran.” Wilds is buried in a small family cemetery on that land.

Rousseau said he was donating the robe on behalf of his family.

“When my great-grandfather died, the robe was given to a great-aunt, who kept it until the 1960s,” he said. “Then it was given to my first cousin, Margaret Sue Rousseau Barthel of Pensacola, who had it until 2000. Then it was given to me. Until my cousin gave me the robe, I had no idea of any family member being in the Klan.”

Kennedy’s all-black robe indicated that it was worn by a Knight of the Klavaliers, an organization directed by a man called the “Night Hawk,” who was in charge of security at “klonvocations,” or gatherings.

Outsiders called the group “The Flog Squad” for its assaults on unauthorized observers of its rites.

Parks said Kennedy had infiltrated the Klan before writing his 1946 book, “Unmasking The Klan,” and he wore a white robe at klonvocations.

“If he had ever worn the black one at a Klan meeting, he would have talked about it,” Parks said. “Stetson was among the group of Klansmen who were supposed to find whoever was leaking information to the FBI, and that was Stetson.”

One mystery: The black robe is made of satin, which meant it was made sometime after the 1940s.

It features a skull and crossbones with “KKK” stitched in white behind them. The black hoods have eye holes to keep the member’s identity secret.

“I don’t know where he got it,” Parks said.

Kennedy was never discovered by the Nighthawks. His identity was only revealed much later when his name was published in court transcripts, Parks said.

Parks and Kennedy were married for eight years, until his death this year.

“He only wore the black robe once, after he was asked to put it on by schoolchildren,” Parks said. “He didn’t like to wear it. The Klan was really abhorrent to him.”