Frederic Stanley Dunn

Frederic Stanley Dunn (August 3, 1872 – January 7, 1937) was an American scholar of classical studies on the faculty of the University of Oregon (UO), and a Ku Klux Klan leader. 

Early life and education 
Born in Eugene, Oregon, on August 3, 1872, Dunn was the son of Francis Berrian Dunn and Christiann Cecilia (née Christian) Dunn.  He attended Eugene High School and received A.B. degrees from UO (1893) and Harvard University (1894); he earned A.M. degrees from UO (1898) and Harvard (1903). 

In 1895, he married Anna Maude Matthews in Carlton, Oregon.  The couple had two children, Dorothy Gertrude, and Frederic Berrian. 

Career 
From 1895 to 1898, Dunn was a professor of Greek and Latin at Willamette University.  In the summer of 1898 he joined the faculty at the University of Oregon as an Assistant Professor of Latin.  He became a full professor, at age 26, in 1898 upon the death of the senior faculty member, Prof. John Wesley Johnson. 

He took a leave of absence in 1902 and 1903 to accept the Austin Teaching Fellowship at Harvard while completing his A.M. degree.  According to historians David Alan Johnson, Quintard Taylor and Marsha Weisiger, in their 2016 report to the University:

Community and military service 
Outside of academy, Dunn was active in the Masonic Order. 

Dunn served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army towards the end of World War I, but did not see combat service.  His military career began by drilling with  students on the University campus, and he eventually became an assistant chief of staff for the Oregon training camp.  In 1919, when he was 46 years old, he was ordered to Italy to serve with the Education Department of the Y.M.C.A.

Ku Klux Klan
Dunn was the leader, or "Exalted Cyclops", of Eugene Klan No.  3, a Ku Klux Klan group ("klavern").  In the early 1920s the Klan was particularly powerful in Oregon, with some 35,000 members out of a population of 780,000. 

The Klan was very active in Eugene, where it had some success in removing Catholics from public office and teaching positions.  In 1924, "on the day the National Democratic Party debated the anti-Klan plank during the national presidential campaign", Eugene residents witnessed more than 400 Klansmen and -women parading to Skinner Butte, where they burned a cross as part of an initiation ritual.  Dunn's membership was known at the University of Oregon, where the Klan also agitated, by 1922. 

Legacy 
Dunn retired in 1935, having headed the Classics department for most of his 37-year tenure.  He died on January 7, 1937.  The University named a dormitory in his honor, part of the Hamilton Complex built in 1961, "Dunn Hall". 

Demands by the Black Student Task Force in November 2015 led University President Michael Schill to commission three historians to report on racist beliefs and the Klan affiliation of Dunn, as well as the pro-slavery position of Matthew Deady, the first president of the university's board of regents, after whom Deady Hall was named.  In September 2016, following the report by Johnson, Taylor, and Weisiger on Dunn's history as a Klan leader, the University of Oregon removed Dunn's name from "Dunn Hall".  The Board of Trustees approved a resolution that began, Whereas, Mr. Frederick S. Dunn was the head of an organization that supported racism, persecution and violence against Oregonians because of the color of their skin and religious beliefs; Whereas, because of his egregious actions and his leadership within the Ku Klux Klan, the university recommends removal of his name from the building with which it is associated...In 2017, the University Board renamed the dormitory after DeNorval Unthank Jr., a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon and the first African-American to earn an architecture degree at the University. 

References

Notes

Category:1872 births
Category:1937 deaths
Category:American classical scholars
Category:University of Oregon faculty
Category:People from Eugene, Oregon
Category:Ku Klux Klan members
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:Willamette University faculty
Category:University of Oregon alumni
Category:American military personnel of World War I
Category:History of racism in Oregon