My mother, who would have been 100 years old this June, was born and brought up in Westbrook. Her father was a doctor there. His office was in the house and the house was on Main Street, close to the middle of town.

My mother told stories of seeing the Ku Klux Klan marching down Main Street dressed in white robes and pointed hoods. There were virtually no blacks and very few, if any, Jews in Westbrook. So why would a KKK group be formed in Westbrook, nearly as far from the South as you can get in this country?

The answer is that they were anti-Catholic. Most of the paper mill workers were French Canadian Catholics, and the Klan thought of them as immigrants and therefore threatening.

Little has changed in Maine, it seems. The KKK still is alive and active in Freeport, Topsham, Augusta and Gardiner and likely other towns and cities in the state. Their focus has changed from anti-Catholic to anti-Muslim (or anti all people who do not look and act as they do).

Because the KKK now has friends in the Trump administration, they feel they have a license to speak out, though not courageously enough to parade in white gowns on the streets of our towns, not yet at least. They operate in secret, not brave enough to march without robes or to face people directly. Pamphlets, too, are a spineless way to bully people.

The KKK knows that most people abhor their views; therefore, they stay in the shadows, peeking out unseen to intimidate those whom they don’t like. It is up to the rest of us to ferret out these furtive individuals and confront them. A coward confronted is a coward defeated.

Bart Chapin

Arrowsic