MONTVALE, N.J.—This week 80 years ago, a group of Ku Klux Klan members bound for a meeting in Passaic County’s Midvale accidentally found themselves in the similar-sounding borough of Montvale.
“The Ku Klux Klan, attempting to ‘invade’ Passaic County and dictate to the Midvale voters whom they should name to their local school board, did not count on the back roads of Bergen County,” wrote the Morning Call of Paterson on Feb. 14, 1940. “They ended up 25 miles away in the wrong town, else Monday night’s meeting would have been larger.”
It seems the geography-challenged klansmen were part of a motorcade coming from Westchester County, New York, and Patchogue, Long Island. They were going to Midvale—part of Wanaque—to discourage voters there from appointing three Catholic men to the school board.
In Montvale, the klansmen encountered one Thomas McGirr, 51, of Magnolia Avenue (now Kinderkamack Road).
“We’re looking for the Junior Order Hall,” one of the men told McGirr.
“There isn’t any Junior Order Hall in Montvale,” McGirr replied. “Are you sure you’re in the right town?”
From the auto’s back seat came a voice: “Where’s the Klan meeting?”
“I guess you are in the wrong town,” McGirr said. “This is Montvale. We don’t stand for any Klan meetings here. This is a respectable town.”
Meanwhile, in Midvale, about 40 people made it to the meeting, where speeches touted the patriotism of the Klan and spoke in favor of a three-man Protestant slate for school board. (Those three men, it should be noted, repudiated Klan support and denied any connection to the group.)
“The New York klansmen in Montvale did not explain why they should be interested in a New Jersey school board election,” the Morning Call added, “especially in a municipality they could not find, much less name.”
