In my family they still tell the story of the day the Ku Klux Klan came to Greenwich.
In the 1920's my grandfather Antonio T. Lauricella, known as "A. T.", was a young man in his thirties with a growing family. He had emigrated from Italy as a boy. He lived in one of the more modest homes on Milbank Avenue, although he most certainly did not think of it that way. He owned a fruit and vegetable store on Greenwich Avenue, but he was about to switch careers and become a real estate agent and landlord. He had a long and successful life before him, but he would occasionally think back on the day he joined the other men of St. Mary Church to stand up to bigotry.
In the 1920s the KKK was in ascendancy again. In 1915 the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan was formed in Georgia and spread to other states including Connecticut. Its appeal was to white Protestants who felt endangered by immigrants and its rhetoric was virulently anti-catholic.
The Catholicism of the 1920s was more traditional than it is today. It was forty years before Vatican II and the ecumenical movement led by Pope John XXIII issued the declaration Dignitatis Humanae which recognized freedom of religion and began the rapprochement between the Roman Catholic Church and other religions. When I attended St. Mary School in the 1950s the black habited Sisters of Mercy taught us that we would be excommunicated if we stepped into a protestant church.
In the 1920's St. Mary Parish was very large and encompassed most of Greenwich running from the shore to the backcountry. The heart and soul of the parish were the working class Irish and Italian families who lived in and around downtown Greenwich.
I can only imagine what happened when word reached the men of St. Mary's that the KKK was planning to burn a cross on the lawn of the Masonic Temple. In those days the Masonic lodge was located in back of Town Hall, today's Senior Center, across from the then new Town Hall Annex, where the Wells Fargo Bank is today. The KKK was going to burn a cross a few blocks from St. Mary Church and just around the corner from where my grandfather lived. Many of those men who gathered at St. Mary that day were immigrants from Italy and Ireland and proud Americans.
The story I heard is that the men of St. Mary's marched down Greenwich Avenue and confronted the hooded clansmen as they were prepared to burn the cross. They greatly outnumbered the few klansmen and forcibly removed their hoods exposing their identities. They recognized the locals as men they knew, neighbors and tradesmen. I am told that the unhooded klansmen became ashamed and the Klan never again reared its head in Greenwich.
I have never seen anything written about this incident. It appears in none of the local histories I have read. The only confirmation I ever received was when I told the story to a member of the local Masonic Lodge and he confirmed it was recorded in the lodge histories.
I thought about this recently when the Klan showed up in Milford in July, 2013 to toss leaflets about. This was only the most recent appearance of the Klan in Connecticut. In the 1980s the third incarnation of the Klan, organized in protest to the Civil Rights Movement, staged well-publicized demonstrations in other parts of the state.
I only hope that we will face intolerance and bigotry today with the same resolve as the men of St. Mary.
Happy Columbus Day!
