[A promotional handbill for a scarce Klan pamphlet issued following a Queens Memorial Day riot]

Binghamton, N. Y. Marquis D. L. VanOver, [1927]. A promotional handbill for a “book” called Mind Robbers, which although not found online, in the trade or institutionally, was likely the subject of a short 1927 newspaper article, “Klan Sheet Flays Police.” The article describes a “scurrilous [10-page] pamphlet” distributed by New York Klan Kleagle, Marquis D. L. Van Over (1896-1965), in which the police were described as “swine let loose from the barnyard of Romanism” (The Brooklyn Daily Times, Wed., July 13, 1927, p. 22). The pamphlet was distributed to Klan witnesses who were part of an investigation into the 1927 Memorial Day riot in Jamaica, Queens when a large Klan contingent was attacked by onlookers and the police. Van Over was injured in the melee and required hospital care. According to the Klan - and the handbill’s text - the attack was ordered by a Catholic newspaper editor [Joseph Scanlon, editor of “The Tablet”]. Six months later Van Over gave a speech in Brooklyn in opposition to the Presidential campaign of Catholic Governor Al Smith ("K.K.K. Leader to Speak on Gov. Smith's Chances," Brooklyn Eagle, Fri, Jan 13, 1928, p. 24).

Marquis De Lafayette Van Over was born in 1895 in Missouri. He earned a doctorate in the natural sciences, which he applied to his Klan worldview penning a 1923 article that appeared on the front page of The Fiery Cross titled, "Man is the Result of All That Has Gone Before: the Klan an Expression of Natural Evolution," (The Fiery Cross, July 6, 1923, pp. 1, 23). In the following year he gave a speech at a large Alabama Klan gathering and by 1927 was Kleagle of the New York state Klan. In the 1930s he moved to New Jersey where he was vice-president of the Di-Electric Corporation and president of the Globe Radio and Television Company. In 1937 he pled guilty to deserting his wife and three children and moved to Texas where he remarried in 1941. He spent most of the rest of his life as the head of the U.S.-based People-to-People program in Guatemala and died in 1965.

The handbill, which is printed on one side of an 8 ½” x 5 ½” sheet, includes a half tone photograph of Van Over and describes the book thusly: "You can answer your enemies after you have read this book. No matter what question he asks you you can find an answer for it in 'Mind Robbers'." A Binghamton P.O. Box is provided for orders. Some very light wear, else near fine. Item #14057

Price: $95.00