[Women's Club] Archive of a Cape Cod Women's Organization/ The Research Club of Provincetown: WOMEN’S ORGANIZATION WITH KLAN CONNECTIONS

- Notice of Intent to Dissolve, dated June 11, 1963. The letter is from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of the Secretary State House, Boston 33. There is an open tear in right upper corner, not effecting text:

"Whereas the Research Club of Provincetown an organization chartered on 4-27-1923 under the provisions of Chapter 180 of the General Laws, and located at in the town of Provincetown. Mass, has failed for at least two successive years to file in this office the certificate in proper form required by Section 26A of Chapter 180 of the General Laws, Tercentenary Edition: Now therefore, by authority of the said statue, I declare the charter of said organization to be void and of no further effect, and hereby revoke said charter and give notice that said incorporation is void and of no further effect. (signed in black pen by Kevin [?] H. White - Secretary of the Commonwealth).

-Monday Oct 21- Research Club - Manor Project in memory of Katherine J. Potter. Tanning beginning on all sides. Five 4.5 x 8," sheets stapled at upper middle edge. Dates 1963-1964 handwritten in what appears to be black crayon. 2 hole punches at top edge. Notes on front and back - fragile.

-Meeting notes on 5x7" single page. Handwritten in blue pen. Front side only. Upper right corner: Provincetown mass, April 16, 1956. "Research Club ____ ________ to Janet W. Lewis Secretary." Show some wear and start of tanning.

An interesting women's organization: "The Research Club was organized in 1910 by a group of women whose objective was to restore the old [Winthrop Street] burying ground, place historical markers, do ancestral research and preserve the old Cape Cod house in Provincetown."

As part of their work to place historical markers, the ladies began reading old letters and historical documents. They found this research so interesting that they began to write papers and present their research as part of the regular club meetings. Then they took on something far more ambitious: a museum of historical artifacts and documents.

The museum opened in the Lancy Mansion on May 27, 1924. It later profited from the generosity of Admiral MacMillan, Provincetown's No. 1 hometown hero, who donated dozens of mementoes — a number of them stuffed — from his Arctic expeditions. This odd showcase of taxidermy includes the head of a walrus from northern Greenland, one and a half polar bears from northern Greenland and an entire musk ox and white wolf from Ellesmere Island.

By the mid-1950s, the Research Club was no longer able to maintain the museum (Building Provincetown blog). They turned the property over to the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association in 1956. The association ran both institutions — the Pilgrim Monument and the Historical Museum."

Empowering certain white, upper class women, the group also had exclusionary policies that coincided with the fact that the membership overlapped with the local Ku Klux Klan chapter. Krahulik (Provincetown from Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort. p. 40).

This was a period in our nation's history when the Klan was growing in popularity across the country. The Ku Klux Klan had chapters on Cape Cod. Provincetown, Chatham, and Hyannis. (Coogan, Jim, WickedLocal.com: published July 6 2020 accessed November 15, 2020). Estimates were that over 100,000 people in Massachusetts were Klan members.

To qualify for membership, one had to be a native-born, white Protestant. (McGehee, Margaret. "Women of the Ku Klux Klan." The Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Emory University. Retrieved November 15, 2020).

Women joined in an effort to preserve their white Protestant rights as they felt violated by the intrusion of immigrant and African-American voters.

The women held to many of the same political and social ideas of the KKK but functioned as a separate branch of the national organization with their own actions and ideas. (Coogan, Jim).

While most women focused on the moral, civic, and educational agendas of the Klan, they also had considerable involvement in issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and religion. (Blee, Kathleen M. (1991). Women of the Klan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
The women of the WKKK fought for educational and social reforms like other Progressive reformers but with extreme racism and intolerance.

Interestingly, the target of the local Klan was not Black people; rather, the hate was directed at Catholics. Earlier that year in January, a cross was burned outside of St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church in Provincetown.

In June of 1926, a Saturday night Klan rally in West Yarmouth drew several thousand people who watched crosses being burned on Horace Baxter's field at Mill Hill. Undoubtedly, many of those who attended were there out of curiosity more than anything else. But the newspapers noted that some 200 new initiates were inducted into the hate group at that rally.

That year seemed to be the high point of Klan activity on the Cape. With the coming of hard economic times in the 1930s, people were more consumed with staving off poverty than running around in bed sheets on cold nights. The Klan became an embarrassing memory to most Cape Codders and was pretty much forgotten (Coogan).

A significant and informative primary record of a Cape Cod Women's Organization/club in the first half of the 20th century. A remarkable survival.