His grandfather marched in D.C. with the Klan in 1925 and later ran it
The grandson of James A. Colescott, a former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, wrestles with his family history.
August 30, 2025
In 1965, when he was 16 years old, Will James Shephard learned that his mother had just received a phone call from CBS News. David Lowe, a CBS executive producer, was working on a television presentation and hoped to speak with Shephard’s family. The topic? His family’s connection to the Ku Klux Klan. Shephard’s mother first joined when she was 14. His grandfather, James A. Colescott, had been a member since the 1920s and served as the organization’s third Imperial Wizard.
The revelation stunned Shephard, who in a recent interview said he never supported the idea that he had Klan members in his family.
One hundred years ago this month, the Ku Klux Klan held a massive march in Washington. Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans led more than 30,000 Klansman from across the country down Pennsylvania Avenue. Every state had an entourage, and Shephard’s grandfather led the Indiana and Midwestern states delegations.
Shephard said that for years, he tried to block out his past because of his grandfather’s Klan connection. But Shephard, who was a toddler when Colescott died, said he sees Colescott as his grandfather first.
“I thought, ‘I’m from the South. Everybody’s got a Klan member in their family somewhere in the closet,’” Shephard said. “And I realized it wasn’t that simple. He was definitely at that march.”
The procession was made up of “the sturdy, strong, sinewed industrial workers from Pennsylvania, the rural folk from Virginia, and the smaller communities of the East,” according to an Aug. 9, 1925, Washington Post article. “It was a great intermingling of what the Klansmen call Americans.”
“These guys were serious people. They were leaders, ministers, police officers,” Shephard said. The rally would end up being the second-era Klan’s last hurrah of the 1920s, as the public’s attitude toward the Klan began to change. The Klan’s membership in 1925 reached a high of 8,904,871, but by 1930 had plummeted to 34,694 members, according to a Post story that year. Shephard, who was born in Miami in 1948, has little in common with Klansmen of his grandfather’s era: He is gay, uses medical marijuana and supports progressive politicians. “The Klan in any of its iterations is antithetical to the idea of all men being created equal under the eyes of God,” Shephard said.
The first Klan vanished with the end of Reconstruction then was reborn in 1915. On Feb. 18 of that year, D.W. Griffith’s motion picture “The Birth of a Nation” was released. The film depicted the Klan as a heroic force. On Nov. 25, 1915, Methodist preacher William Joseph Simmons led at least 15 other men atop Stone Mountain in Georgia. That night, a towering cross was ignited, symbolizing the Klan’s rebirth. Simmons became the second-era Klan’s first Imperial Wizard.
Local chapters, or Klaverns, emerged across the country, but internal strife was rampant. In 1922, Evans pressured Simmons to step down. Evans became the next Imperial Wizard.
Colescott, Shephard’s grandfather, was born on Jan. 11, 1897. He joined the Klan in 1923 and served as a lieutenant in the Indiana chapter. He later served as Ohio’s Grand Dragon in 1932, Shephard said.
In 1937, Evans asked Colescott to become his chief of staff. This, Shephard said, was in preparation for Colescott to take over the Klan in 1939, when he was sworn in as Imperial Wizard.
Shephard said that among Colescott’s first edicts were bans on violence, antisemitism and anti-Catholicism.
“Anyone who flogs, lynches, or intimidates ought to be in the penitentiary,” Colescott told reporters in 1939, according to “The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi,” a history of the Klan in that state.
According to a 1967 report by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Colescott appeared before the committee on Jan. 26, 1942. The committee, called the Special Committee on Un-American Activities at the time, had received testimony on Klan activities since 1938 and included the Klan in a broad investigation into “Nazi, Fascist, and antiracial” organizations. Colescott requested the committee conduct an investigation of the Klan, a request the committee approved. “The Klan has nothing to hide; our whole program is based on our unselfish service to our country,” Colescott said in February 1942. “I ask the committee to get all the facts about the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and make its findings public.”
Colescott testified that the Klan had “no fight with any minority group.” “I have informed all Klan members that if they know of anyone that has any desire to overthrow the government, don’t bother reporting it to me,” Colescott said in his testimony. “Go straight to the FBI.”
Colescott’s leadership lasted until April 1944, when the IRS placed a $685,305 lien against the Klan for back taxes. Colescott called a “Klonvocation” of all Klan leaders in Atlanta, where members voted to dissolve the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan before the IRS could take charge of the organization. The Klan would be revived two years later at Stone Mountain, functioning as self-governing units with no national affiliation. Shephard has chronicled his discovery on his blog, The Last Wizard, and said that while thinking about telling his story, he told two Black nurses about his Klan family history. “Both of them said ‘Honey, you need to write those stories down while you can,’” Shephard said. “I continue to ask myself, how can I love him while knowing he had been the Klan’s leader?” Shephard said.
Shephard said that once he began blogging, he dug into his grandfather’s Klan history, based on conversations with his mother and grandmother.
“I started asking a lot of questions,” Shephard said. “What kind of guy was this man who led the Klan?” Shephard said that the Klan history never led to a division within his family, but it was also never openly discussed. He called his grandfather an “incredibly wonderful man” but said he didn’t overlook his history. “My mother never got over leaving that Klan world,” Shephard said. “She turned over the job of parenting to granddaddy. So my granddaddy, the wizard, was my surrogate father until he died.”
Shephard said that before Colescott died, he made sure that his grandson had a trust fund. Colescott gave Shephard’s mother one last instruction: Once he died, she was to destroy the official Great Seal of the second Klan — created by Simmons in 1915 — so it could not fall into the hands of the third-era Klan. She complied.
Colescott died on Jan. 11, 1950, when Shephard was 18 months old. Shephard remembers the man who raised him. “The way he cared for his family, including me as a child, inspired good character in me,” Shephard said. “He was many things to many people. This man used to be the most powerful white supremacist in America, but he was still my granddaddy.”