Gendering White Supremacy: Edna Cummins’s Defamation Suit Against the Newberg, Oregon, Ku Klux Klan in 1924
by Kimberly Jensen
In December 1924, Edna Cummins, a White, divorced, single mother and former Klanswoman living in Yamhill County, won a civil suit for defamation of character against members of Newberg, Oregon’s, Ku Klux Klan. She had sought protection from the Klan during her divorce, charging her husband with domestic violence. When the Klan failed to protect her and threatened her with harm, she used the courts to regain her reputation and safety. In this research article, historian Kimberly Jensen examines Cummins’s case and reveals how it “illustrates the durability of gendered White supremacist ideas and actions beyond the Klan in Oregon and the nation,” and how during that time “White Protestant supremacy remained a powerful, systemic force in Oregon, a force with which we continue to contend today.”
