5, 1922, they signed the articles of incorporation for the Tulsa Benevolent Association, which officially established the Ku Klux Klan as a legal organization in the state of Oklahoma. Hudson (chairman), John Rogers (secretary), C. Instead of backing away from the Klan, he, along with several important Tulsans, decided to make it official.Īll five of the white trustees of the Tulsa Benevolent Association (TBA) were pillars of the city: Wash E. Wash Hudson decided to do the unthinkable, despite the racial tension. With some blacks infuriated with him, Dick’s time in Tulsa was over, while the Klan gained momentum. But there are few traces of his existence afterwards. Damie, Dick’s adoptive mother, claims Sheriff McCollough told her that officers took him to friends of Sarah Page’s in Kansas City – to keep him safe from a lynch mob.
We cleaned things up.”ĭick Roland disappeared. “The law had broken down completely,” Hudson recalled in a 1960 article in The Tulsa Tribune. Wash saw Tulsa as a lawless city, and relished the chance to lead the Klan as an opportunity to fight crime. Hudson’s father served as a Cyclops in the Tennessee Klan following the Civil War. Wash Hudson was the leader of Oklahoma’s Ku Klux Klan. Photo courtesy of Hidden History of Tulsa.Ī prominent Vanderbilt-trained attorney and a successful state politician, Hudson was in many respects the ideal lawyer for Roland. The young man in the photo is believed to be Dick Roland, whose alleged overture to a white teen-age girl is said to have sparked violence leading to the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot.
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