Virgil Effinger

Virgil H. "Bert" Effinger (1873 – 15 December 1955) was a renegade member of the Ku Klux Klan who became the self-proclaimed leader of the Black Legion in the United States, active mostly in Ohio and Michigan. The white secret vigilante group was made up of native-born Protestant men, many from the South, who were threatened by immigration and contemporary industrial society during the struggles of the Great Depression. One-third of the members in Michigan lived in Detroit. Effinger advocated a fascist revolution in the US with himself as dictator.

The Black Legion was rumored in the mid-1930s in the Detroit area to be responsible for numerous murders and attacks on persons and property; it was exposed by prosecution in Wayne County, Michigan for the 1936 kidnapping and murder of Charles Poole, a Catholic Works Progress Administration organizer. Eleven members were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Another 37 men of the Black Legion were convicted of related crimes, receiving prison sentences. The group was brought to an end. In 1938 Effinger tried to found a new group but was unsuccessful. He died nearly two decades later in a psychiatric hospital, having always denied membership in the Legion.

Born in Newark, Ohio, Effinger served with the United States Army during the Spanish–American War. Settling in Lima, Ohio after his military service, Effinger worked as a salesman in the town. A strong racist, anti-Semite and anti-Catholic, he joined the Ku Klux Klan and attained the rank of Grand Titan within the movement.

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