3 hrs, 5 kms

Actual date: Oct 15, 2015

Today I start my town-hopping trek to Johnstown . After months of visiting on average 1 or 2 towns a day, I'm finally going to be able to cram in multiple towns a day and juice my numbers a bit.

I don't really expect to find anything really interesting today. But I will... in my very first town. After a couple miles through beautiful fall foliage, I reach Lilly, where I'm greeted by a beautful Catholic church and a quirky shop that combines Halloween decor with statues of the Virgin Mary.

And then... this. There's a large plaque that reads "Ku Klux Klan Riots" with a bas relief sculpture of hooded Klansmen and two joined arms blocking their way. This definitely looks interesting. Why would the Klan be interested in this quiet little town.

It states that in 1924, at the height of Klan power, the KKK targeted this humble little mining town because some Klansmen had been replaced by Catholic workers, so 400-450 Klansmen took the train to Lilly where they proceeded to march down the street to go do their cross burning thing .

This predominantly Catholic town would not be cowed. They turned the hydrant hoses on the clan. Shooting broke out and 3 people were killed. The Klansmen fled, many droping their weapons along the way.

The plaque then reads "Lilly's resistance to the Klan's demonstration proved to be the beginning of the end of the Klan's advance in the Northeast United States".

I do a bit more research, and surprisingly this riot isn't even mentioned in Wikipedia. Other sources do detail the aftermath and how 15 people, some Klansmen and some of the villagers were arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. I don't find any other source that states that this resistance was "the beginning of the end" for the Klan though.

Immediately I start imagining an alternate history to this event. What if, after the riots, the Klan had come back en en mass and burned down the entire town? The Klan had millions of members at this time and was intrenched in many surrounding towns that were predominantly Protestant . And I'm sure millions more Protestants, although not Klan members, were highly suspicious of south and east European Catholic immigrants.

This could easily have spread and led to turf war between Protestants and Catholics all throughout the Northeast. And once that cycle of violence is started, it's very hard to stop. It goes on, poisoning future generations with hate... and each cycle of violence plants the seeds for future violence.

I think America just got really, really lucky. We had all the potential of becoming a divided, Balkanized society... but somehow we dodged the bullet.

I think of my travels through Northern Ireland... Bosnia... Iraq... Armenia and Azerbaijan... with all these zigzagging borders where different religious or ethnic "tribes" control certain areas and brainwash their children into believing that everyone from the other "tribe" is an evil enemy. Enormous amounts of resources are wasted on creating borders and buffer zones between tribal areas, crippling transportation and development of infrastructure . And as long as people harbor hatred and a desire for revenge towards these "enemy tribes", it's inevitable that there will be violence... over and over again.

Could it have happened here? It certainly could have. And this was the direction our country was headed, when the Klan was at its height of power. But their openly violent tactics turned the government and the bulk of the population against them, leading to their demise.

Eventually hatred of Catholics and East/Southern Europeans faded away... And it will be rare to find someone today who believes that a Catholic of Polish or Italian descent isn't a "true American".

This gives me hope for the future of this country: people are willing to change. Not just adapt to new technology and lifestyles, but also change their attitudes towards other people. This distinguishes this country from many other parts of the world, where tribal hatred gets passed on from generation to generation for hundreds--even thousands--of years.

Maybe the hatred that there is today towards certain religious and ethnic groups will fade as well in a couple generations.

Or maybe not. Well just have to see. It seems that there's more hatred now then there was a few decades ago--but that could be just because the internet has made it easier for hatemongers to share their sentiments for all the world to see.