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Char Aznable has declared The Legion of White Decency (Stephen King) is to be renamed to Maine Legion of White Decency for the following reason(s): No other organization on this wiki or IRL has the same name as this one. Please discuss it on the talk page for this article. "I told you I am not Casval, I am Char Aznable."✓
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The Legion of White Decency was the Northerners' version of the Ku Klux Klan, you see. They marched in the same white sheets, they burned the same crosses, they wrote the same hate-notes to Black folks they felt were getting above their station or taking jobs that were meant for White men. In churches where the preachers talked about Black equality, they sometimes planted charges of dynamite. Most of the history books talk more about the KKK than they do about the Legion of White Decency, and a lot of people don't even know there was such a thing. I think it might be because most of the histories have been written by Northerners and they're ashamed.
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~ Will Hanlon describing the Legion to his son Mike.
The Maine Legion of White Decency are minor antagonists in Stephen King's 1986 horror novel It and are some of the secondary antagonists (alongside Ingrid Kersh and Francis Shaw) of season 1 of the HBO Max supernatural horror TV series IT: Welcome to Derry.
It was a racist cult/mob consisting of white supremacists who are responsible for burning the nightclub known as the Black Spot in 1930, which resulted in the deaths of many Black people, most notably Black soldiers. In Welcome to Derry, they were led by former police chief Clint Bowers in 1962, who sought to kill Hank Grogan for getting him fired from his job after he escaped imprisonment.
While much of their history are unknown, the Maine Legion of White Decency were a cult of racist white supremacists who are notorious for burning down the Black Spot, a popular African-American army nightclub that mainly served Black soldiers from a nearby army base. Dick Hallorann, who worked as an army cook in the club’s kitchen, was a notable survivor of the fire who used his gift of the Shining to help other Black people in the club escape to safety, including William Hanlon, the father of Mike Hanlon. After Dick safely escaped, he caught a member of the cult dressed in rags running away before IT, in the form of a giant bird, swooped down from the sky and grabbed him.
IT: Welcome to Derry[]
The Maine Legion of White Decency’s history is greatly expanded upon in the TV series. Following the massacre at the theater in Derry, Maine, Police Chief Clint Bowers initially willingly let its projectionist Hank Grogan go free in spite of his own racist prejudices. This led to members of the cult threatening him electorally, which drove Clint to wrongly implicate Grogan for the massacre by extorting Lilly Bainbridge into serving as a witness at the threat of institutionalization. Bowers manages to have Hank arrested and transferred to Shawshank State Prison, but Hank manages to escape in the process with “help” from Ingrid Kersh.
Bowers was immediately fired and demoted in the aftermath of Hank's escape, thus stripping him of the authority to have Grogan arrested again. However, after he received an anonymous tip from Ingrid that Grogan is hiding in the Black Spot, Bowers leads the Legion of White Decency to the nightclub to capture and possibly lynch Grogan as revenge. While wearing masks to conceal their identities, he and the mob attempted to intimidate the patrons by holding them a gunpoint so as to force them into handing Grogan over to them under threat of death. This led to a tense standoff: though Hank offered to give himself up, the military patrons pulled their firearms out in defense, forcing Clint Bowers to stand down and leave with the mob.
However, this was a deceitful feint on Clint's part, as the Legion immediately chained and locked up the doors to ensure none of the patrons could escape. The Legion then proceeded to throw Molotov cocktails at the Black Spot while gunning down any survivors escaping through the windows. Amidst the chaos, Rich Santos sacrificed himself to save his friend and love interest, Marge Truman, by locking her in a refrigerator to protect her from the flames. This was done at the cost of his own life, and the boy subsequently died from suffocation due to inhaling the fumes from the flames. Believing Hank Grogan would die in the fire, the mob eventually dispersed and left.
Forty patrons died in the attack at the Black Spot, with seventeen airmen amongst the victims. Most of the dying were fed on by Pennywise during the massacre. Only a few were able to survive, with Marge and Grogan amongst them. Aside from Stanley Kersh, most of the Legion were able to escape accountability for the racist massacre: the radio broadcast reported that both the police and the fire department had covered up the chaos as an accidental electrical fire, with the club’s patrons being wrongly blamed for the incident and the white supremacists being characterized as concerned citizens aiding the survivors. Making the mob action entirely escapes justices without traces and presumably remain at large.
Gallery[]
The Legion of White Decency threatening the patrons at the Black Spot.
Trivia[]
Due to being a white supremacist organization, the Maine Legion of White Decency are an equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan, a real-life white supremacist group.
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