Figure 1.--This photograph was part of a magazine article about the Silver Legion, the formal name of the Silver Shirts. The caption read, "The Silver Legion is the official name of William Dudley Pelley's organization. Its knickname is derived from the silver shirts, with an 'L', for Liberation, which members wear. Each local cell is called a Council of Safety. Here Leader Roundtree is reading to one group the weekly instructions from Chief Pelley. Writes Mr. Roundtree: 'The killing of Jews seems to be the understanding of many people toward us. .... As a matter of fact there is nowhere in our instructions the killing of Jews is advanced.'" We do not have the name and date of the magazine, but it was probaly 'Look' or the 'Saturday Evening Post' during the late-1930s. Notice how the men outnumber the women.

The Silver Legion was organized into nine districts and at its peak had chapters in 22 states, Pelley was the leader and essentially preached to the members in his periodic missives. They were particularly popular on the west coast, in Califirnia and Washington. Each chapter was obligated to buils a Silver Lodge, a simple cabin for meetings. Local groups which composed the various chapters were named "Councils of Safety" and were to consist of about 10 members. Here we see a Council meeting sometime in the late-1930s (figure 1). An important part of the program was to read Pelley's weekly newletter which is what the Leader is doingb in this image. They met in member homes. Here we see some children, but not in uniform. They apparently were the children of the family who sat in on the meetings and not actual Silver SDhirts. My guess is that the children would have found the meetings rather boring and this is suggested by the image. Here we think the children were posed for publicity, giving the meeting a healthful family look. We suspect that their parents insisted the pose for the picture. There would have been much more interesting stuff available on the radio. But the family radio was probably in the living room as well.