Virgil Effinger
Encyclopedia
Virgil H. "Bert" Effinger (1873 – 15 December 1955) was a renegade member of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

 who became the leader of the Black Legion
Black Legion (political movement)
The Black Legion was an organization that splintered from the Ku Klux Klan and operated in the United States in the 1930s. The organization was founded by William Shepard in east central Ohio...

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. He advocated a fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 revolution in the US with himself as dictator.

Early life

Born in Newark, Ohio
Newark, Ohio
In addition, the remains of a road leading south from the Octagon have been documented and explored. It was first surveyed in the 19th century, when its walls were more apparent. Called the Great Hopewell Road, it may extend to the Hopewell complex at Chillicothe, Ohio...

, Effinger served with the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

 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.

Black Legion

Effinger took control of the Black Legion, a group within the local Klan, in 1931 and saw in it the basis for a network of militia cells. He soon advocated a revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...

 with the Legion seizing power in Washington D.C. and installing him as dictator. Effinger underlined his intetions when he described his movement as "a guerilla army designed to fight the Republican and Democratic parties". Such was his fanaticism that he even rewrote American history by claiming that the Legion dated back to the Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies...

.

Under Effinger's leadership the Legion grew during the early 1930s and was linked to a handful of racist murders as well as arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...

 and bomb attacks on communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 bookshops. The murder of Catholic Charles Poole by Legion member Major Dayton Dean and some followers in 1936 proved the Legion's undoing as the police pursued Poole's killers as he was white
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

 and not involved in labor organizations, with the crimes against non-whites and labor activists often ignored by right-wing small-town police at the time.

Later years

Effinger escaped capture and attempted to organise a successor movement, the Patriotic Legion of America in 1938, this time admitting Catholics. However the new group proved a failure and Effinger disappeared into obscurity. He died in a psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...

 in Toledo, Ohio
Toledo, Ohio
Toledo is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Lucas County. Toledo is in northwest Ohio, on the western end of Lake Erie, and borders the State of Michigan...

in 1955, denying any involvement in the Black Legion until his dying day.
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