No one imagined a youth’s request would bring the Ku Klux Klan storming into the Clark County Courthouse. Pleading through the newspaper, a boy crippled by polio asked for 45 people to each donate a dollar for braces so he might walk. The front-page story ran March 9, 1921, in the Vancouver Columbian. It mentioned Janet Worden, the county nurse, would collect any contributions.
Two days later, a dark-colored sedan parked near the county courthouse at 11th and Grant streets. Three men climbed out and gathered around the car garbed in ankle-length white robes. Each tugged a pointy, white hood over his head and strode toward the courthouse stairs.
The three belonged to Columbia Klan No. 1, Clark County’s extension of the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan recently active in the Northwest. D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” lionized the Klan as the savior of the white South. The 1915 movie filled cinemas around the country — including the Heilig Theatre in Portland — despite protests. The three-hour film ignited the Klan’s membership growth. Members swore oaths of loyalty, brotherhood and secrecy, and to defend chivalry, women’s chastity, family values and the superiority of a 100 percent white Protestant America. Clark County’s members met at the Moose Lodge at 410½ Main St. (now an empty lot).
The three men climbed a few stairs, knocked open the courthouse doors bursting into the building’s main area. Stunned by the intrusion, employees gawked. Passing by the astonished workers, the three exploded into the sheriff’s office and loudly confronted Deputy Frank Cornelius, demanding he direct them to Nurse Worden’s office.
