September 29, 2023
When the Ku Klux Klan Came to Stanford
By Peter Lucas
California was once ripe for Klan activity. Their organizing at the university and in Palo Alto is part of the country’s long history of racial terrorism.
“Rumor is abroad on the Stanford campus to the effect that a unit of the Ku Klux Klan is in process of formation here. I desire to set that rumor at rest by confirming it.” So declared Robert Neel Burnett, a graduate student studying civil engineering at Stanford, in a letter published in The Daily Palo Alto in December 1923.
urnett had gathered about 40 students to start a Klan chapter at the university. The fledgling group faced an uphill battle, receiving opposition from the university’s president and mockery from the student body. But it didn’t halt their growth. “Years ago, Palo Alto, of all places, was teeming with Klandestine goings-on,” read a short testimony in the San Francisco Chronicle article. “In fact, seven Stanford professors reputedly were night-shirters.”
It was the first time the bucolic campus had seen such a commotion. Though the university, founded in 1885 by railroad tycoon Leland Stanford and his, wife Jane, was spearheaded by eugenicists, the Klan had until then spared the sprawling campus for other cities in the Bay Area, most notably Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco.
