Ku Klux Klan Riot

Lilly was targeted for a massive Ku Klux Klan demonstration because local coal mines had hired Catholic immigrants and fired Klan members. Four hundred hooded Klansmen arrived by train early on this April evening and paraded to Piper's Hill where they burned two crosses and exploded multiple dynamite charges to intimidate the locals. <br><br> But the townspeople were not cowed! During the parade back to the trains, the Klansmen were jeered, pelted, roughed-up and hosed down. Gunfire broke out and lasted for several minutes. The Klansmen then fled in disarray to the trains, leaving Lilly residents Philip Conrad, Cloyd Paul and Frank Miesko to die from gunshot wounds. <br><br> Lilly's resistance to the Klan's demonstrations proved to be the beginning of the end of the Klan's advance in the north-eastern United States.