This is Bob Myers from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan history moment. It was called the Black Legion, a Midwestern offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. It demonstrated an even greater propensity for violence. During the 1930s, the Black Legion launched a wave of arson bombings, beatings and executions. Like the kkk, the Black Legion opposed African Americans, Catholics and Jews. It also fought against labor unions, which its members saw as a part of a Communist takeover of America. It was founded in the 1920s by William Shepard, a doctor from Bel air, Ohio. In 1931, the Legion established a Michigan chapter in Highland Park. Most Black Legion members were poorly educated Anglo Saxon males, many of whom had moved to Michigan from the Deep south to find factory work. In its nighttime initiation rites, members had to pledge loyalty to the organization and to keep its secrets under penalty of death. During the Legion's peak years, 1933 to 1936, its members burned down the homes of union tradesmen in Detroit. They bombed the hall of the Ukrainian Educational Society bookstore. A long list of murders included George Marchuk, the secretary of the auto Workers union in Lincoln park, who was found shot to death in a vacant lot, and John Beileck, an organizer for the American Federation of labor. In May 1936, a group of Black Legionnaires murdered Charles Poole, a young organizer for the Works Progress Administration who was a Catholic married to a Protestant woman. Legion members believed, wrongly, that Poole beat his wife. Public outrage led to an investigation by Wayne County Prosecutor Duncan McCrae. McCrae brought in black Legionnaires for questioning. Trigger man Dayton Dean confessed after learning that Poole had never beaten his wife, and he implicated many other Black Legionnaires. Dean also revealed a plot to murder Arthur Kingsley, publisher of a community newspaper in Highland park, and a scheme to inject typhoid germs into dairy products circulated through Jewish markets. McCrae won murder convictions for 11 Black Legion members, including Dayton Dean, who eventually died in prison. More trials sent 37 additional legionnaires to prison. The convictions left the Black Legion in disarray. The Legion's national commander, Virgil Effinger, tried and failed to form a new organization. Finally, the Black Legion's campaign of terror in Michigan came to an end. This Michigan history moment was brought to you by michiganhistorymagazine.org.