Like other first year students corralled in Wesleyan College's auditorium in Macon, Georgia, Dana Amihere didn't know what to make of the spectacle unfolding on stage.
It was fall 2006 and the freshman had been awakened in the dead of night. A group of sophomores stood on stage yelling, screaming and cheering as part of a hazing ritual that seemed part pep rally, part seance, she said. But one feature struck Amihere, an African American, about the young women on stage tormenting the first year students: They wore purple, hooded robes.
“They looked just like Klan robes,” she said. “It was kind of like bells and whistles going off.”
Amihere had no idea at the time how close she was to the truth.
For more than a century, the nation's oldest college chartered for women has had historical links to the Ku Klux Klan that have never been formally acknowledged. Its class names in 1909, 1913 and 1917 were the Ku Klux Klan. The 1913 yearbook is named the "Ku Klux."
A sketch of a masked night rider on horseback galloping under crescent moon graces the title page. The 1910 yearbook contains a prominent sketch of a female figure in white hood and robe holding a burning cross.
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