Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey

The Ku Klux Klan has had a history in the U.S. state of New Jersey since the early part of the 1920s. The Klan was active in the areas of Trenton and Camden and had a presence in several of the state's northern counties in the 1920s. It had the most members in Monmouth County, and operated a resort in Wall Township.

The first local chapter of the KKK in New Jersey was organized in 1921, after units had started in New York and Pennsylvania. Arthur Hornbui Bell was the state's first Grand Dragon, and continued serving in that post until the Ku Klux Klan was disbanded in 1944.

As early as 1922, the New Jersey Klan protested Paterson, New Jersey's honored burial of the Roman Catholic priest William N. McNulty, which closed schools during his funeral. They argued it was a breach of the U.S. legal doctrine of separation of church and state. Mayor Frank J. Van Noort ordered the honors for the respected dean of a major church.

In 1922 George W. Apgar was the King Kleagle, with state headquarters based just outside Newark.

In 1923, the Klan provided funding to the Pillar of Fire Church to found Alma White College in Zarephath, New Jersey. It became "the second institution in the north avowedly run by the Ku Klux Klan to further its aims and principles." Alma White said that the Klan philosophy "will sweep through the intellectual student classes as through the masses of the people." At that time, the Pillar of Fire was publishing the pro-KKK monthly periodical The Good Citizen.

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