About 200 people packed the top floor of Powell's City of Books on Aug. 29, for a standing-room-only talk on Oregon's Klan history.

Retired Portland journalist Steve Law signed copies of "Peddlers of Hate: How the Ku Klux Klan Seized Power in 1920s Oregon" for dozens of attendees afterward, the Northwest Examiner reported. The book is published by OSU Press.

The South Tabor resident opened his presentation with a personal connection. From his home, Law can see Mt. Tabor, where Klansmen burned crosses in front of a reported crowd of 2,000 people a century ago.

That proximity helped push him from a 2022 five-part newspaper series in the Portland Tribune to a full book documenting the Klan's rise and fall.

At its peak, the Oregon Klan claimed roughly 50,000 members statewide. That gave the state more Klan members per capita than any state except Indiana, according to a Willamette Week review of the book. Portland's chapter was the sixth largest in the nation.

The Klan won a majority of Oregon House seats in 1922, installed Kaspar "Kap" Kubli as speaker and backed Democrat Walter Pierce for governor. Pierce ousted Republican incumbent Ben Olcott, who had denounced the group.

Portland Mayor George Baker created a 100-member vigilante police force in 1921 that carried badges and guns. The Klan's Portland leader, Frederick L. Gifford, vetted and approved dozens of those vigilantes, earning the title of the city's "invisible super chief of police" within the organization.

Law also highlighted Oregonians who fought back. Beatrice Morrow Cannady was a newspaper editor and the first Black woman to practice law in Oregon. She lobbied Portland City Council to block the screening of "Birth of a Nation" in 1915 and exposed Klan activities in her newspaper, The Advocate, according to a Portland Monthly review.

Fewer than a dozen Oregon newspapers openly challenged the Klan, Law told the Powell's crowd. He named the Capital Journal in Salem, the Portland Telegram, Medford Mail-Tribune and Oregon Labor Press.

Still, Law said, press courage alone did not end the Klan's grip.

"I'm saddened to say, despite all of these heroic critics who risked their lives and livelihoods, that was not what killed the Klan; it was their own internal contradictions: greed, rivalry, corruption," he told the audience.

Law drew explicit parallels to the present, telling the crowd that modern hate groups no longer wear robes but operate under different guises. He named Lon Mabon, who spearheaded a series of anti-gay ballot measures in Oregon, as one political figure who acted in the Klan's image without the costume.

The author is now working with Taylor Stewart, founder of the Portland-based Oregon Remembrance Project, on plans to bring public informational displays about the state's Klan history to Eastern Oregon in 2027. Closer to home, Law spearheaded an effort with Friends of Mt. Tabor Park to install an informational display at the park. A Portland Parks Bureau employee blocked the project over concerns that a small image of a burning cross might be triggering. No public funds were involved.

Law has won more than 50 journalism awards, including the Bruce Baer Award twice, according to Oregon ArtsWatch. He is also collaborating with fellow journalists on a forthcoming book about Oregon's political history, under contract with the Oregon State Capitol Foundation.