The year is 1923. The Ku Klux Klan is at the height of its power in
the US as membership swells into the millions and they expand beyond
their original southern borders. As they continue their campaigns of
terror against African Americans, their targets now also include
Catholics and Jews, southern and eastern Europeans, all in the name
of “white supremacy.” Incorporating messages of moral decency,
family values, and temperance, the Klan has slapped on a thin veneer
of respectability and become a “civic organization,” attracting
new members, law enforcement, and politicians to their particular
brand of white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant “Americanism.”
Pennsylvania
enthusiastically joined that wave. That was when the Grand Dragon of
Pennsylvania decided to display the Klan’s newfound power in a show
of force. He chose a small town outside of Pittsburgh named after
Andrew Carnegie, a small, unassuming borough full of Catholics and
Jews, the perfect place to teach immigrants a “lesson.” Some
thirty thousand members of the Klan gathered from as far as Kentucky
for “Karnegie Day.” After initiating new members, they armed
themselves with torches and guns to descend upon the town to show
them exactly what Americanism was all about.
The Day the Klan
Came to Town is a fictionalized retelling of the riot, focusing
on a Sicilian immigrant, Primo Salerno. He is not a leader; he’s a
man with a troubled past. He was pulled from the sulfur mines of
Sicily as a teen to fight in the First World War. Afterward, he
became the focus of a local fascist and was forced to emigrate to the
United States. He doesn’t want to fight but feels that he may have
no choice. The entire town needs him—and indeed everybody—to make
a stand.