Person:Earl Harkness (1)

From the Ingham County Directory 1916 - 1921

Harkness, Earl (Nora) 9 ch farmer 0 90a 4h 9c R3 Leslie Vev 90 Ind tel.

Father: Reskcom M. HARKNESS b: 3 FEB 1836 in New York Mother: Eliza Jane WOODLAND b: 12 DEC 1852 in Leslie, Michigan

From Fred Comer, a descendant

Son of Rescomb M. Harkness and Eliza Jane Woodland.

... descended from one James Harkness... who lived in County Armagh, Ireland in the late 1700's. He begat sons and daughters, a number of whom migrated to America and settled in or near Kortright Center, Delaware County, New York about 1797.

... Earl Victor Harkness... was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Ingham County, Michigan during the early years of the 20th century. According to family members, his Klan experience was limited to smashing illegals stills during Prohibition.

From Michigan A History of the Wolverine State by Wilis F. Dunbar and George S. May

The Klan of the twenties was not the Klan of the Reconstruction Era but a new organization, founded in 1915 in Atlanta, Georgia, that adopted the name and the hooded garb of the earlier group. Antiblack sentiments would be part of the new Klan's dogma, as they had been of the first Klan, but it was the greater emphasis that the twentieth-century Klan's leaders gave to depicting it as a patriotic society, standing firm in defense of old-time morality and 100 percent Americanism, that was probably responsible for its success in spreading from the South to other parts of the country. By the early twenties... Michigan contributed at least another 70,000 Klan members, giving the Midwest in excess of a third of the organization's total membership.

1. ↑ Researcher Norma Harkness
   Fred Comer.