84 years later, town's stand against KKK recalled

By KATHY MELLOTT

LILLY — Saturday, April 5, 1924, was a cool spring day much like today.

It also was a day that challenged the courage of many residents of this small Mainline town – and slowed the advancement of the Ku Klux Klan.

Plans are in the works by local historians to dedicate a memorial later this month to the mostly Catholic residents who stood up to turn fire hoses on the 400 armed Klansmen who marched through their town.

The interlopers burned crosses on a hill overlooking Lilly in hopes of advancing Protestant supremacy.

Details of the memorial dedication ceremony will be announced within weeks, said Lilly resident Jim Salony, who has spearheaded the project.

“The Klan was a growing force in this area. And – unlike the Klan in the South, where they were against blacks – here they were against immigrants,” said Salony, a retired college professor and local historian.

A secondary reason for the Klansmen to try to intimidate the locals may be because Lilly was a stronghold for the United Mine Workers.

The April 5 confrontation was viewed as a turning point in Klan organizing, which had penetrated Johnstown and Altoona and was headed north.

“Lilly’s resistance to the Klan’s demonstration proved to be the beginning of the end of the Klan’s advance into northeastern United States,” Salony said. “After that, we started to see a decline.”

In that Lilly encounter, three men died of gunshot wounds and at least 20 men were injured.

One of the dead men was Philip Conrad, a 25-year-old innocent bystander who had planned to keep score at a basketball playoff game between girls from Lilly and Renovo.

He went out into the street after the power went off in the gymnasium where the game was to be played. The loss of power was all part of the mind games the Klansmen were using to scare the Lilly people, historians recall.

Conrad was the uncle of Hugh Conrad, a local man who lived his life with whispered stories about the Klan riot. In 1989, he started tracking down the elderly people who were witnesses and has spent 18 years compiling information.

“My Dad would never talk to me about it. But I knew what happened and, as he got older, he began talking,” Conrad said.

His father, Hugh Conrad Sr., was 17 when his brother Philip was gunned down.

“This was planned months ahead of time,” Conrad said Friday. “It really was because of religion. Lilly was 90 percent Catholic.”

The hate doctrine of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1800s, with opposition to blacks and Jews, moved into more northern states starting about 1915.

And in the north, the hatred turned toward the mostly Irish and Italian immigrants and their religion, Conrad said.

By the mid-1920s, skirmishes erupted in Lilly and cross burnings hit nearby Cresson and Portage.

“The whole idea was to intimidate the people,” Salony said. “The Klan at the time was not secretive. They had community picnics. The people were very prosperous. It wasn’t the poor involved.”

Klan supporters and members lived in the Lilly area and it was not uncommon for copies of the Klan newspaper, “Keystone American,” to be sold in town, Conrad said.

Cloyd Paul, one of the local men killed, was said to have helped provide the trees for the Klan crosses.

Most of the Klansmen arrived from Johnstown on a reserved train called the “KKK Special.” Others arrived on a second general passenger train.

Conrad said many got off the trains with robes donned, put their hoods in place and began marching through town to Piper’s Field, a predesignated spot now filled with homes.

After going through their two-hour ceremony, which included the cross burning and dynamite explosions, they headed back to the train station – surrounded by hundreds of residents on the streets.

They reached the end of Cleveland Street near the station. Frank Miesko, one of those gunned down, was “lead man” on the fire hose directed toward the Klansmen.

The hooded men pulled out their guns and their flurry of gunfire was met by gunfire from Lilly residents, Conrad said.

The Klansmen boarded the train and many threw their guns from windows as they headed back to Johnstown.

Sam Evans, a South Fork Klansman, and William Monahan, a Catholic from Lilly, were charged with murder. Charges were dropped when no one would testify against them.

Less than two months after the riot, 28 Klansmen and 16 townspeople were convicted of unlawful assembly and related charges and sentenced to two years in jail. Most spent about a year behind bars, records show.



Violent confrontation

• The Ku Klux Klan riot occurred at 7:15 p.m. April 5, 1924, in Lilly, then a mining town of 2,300 people.

• 400 heavily armed Klansmen arrived on two trains and donned hoods and robes. They marched four abreast from the train station one-third of a mile to Piper’s Field.

• Two timber crosses already set up by local supporters were set afire.

• Two hours later, as they returned to the train station, locals turned fire hoses on the Klansmen.

• Three people were shot and killed, including one with ties to the Klan; 20 were injured. Two men were charged with murder, but charges were dropped when no one would testify against them.

• Most of the 28 Klansmen and 16 townspeople convicted of unlawful assembly were sentenced to two years in prison.

• Lilly’s resistance was the beginning of the end of Klan expansion into the Northern states.

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