In May of 1927, a 21-year-old Fred Trump was arrested in the melee surrounding a Klan rally in Jamaica, Queens. A New York Times article from the incident describes the scene as “1,000 Klansmen and 100 policemen [staging] a free-for-all.” For his part, Donald Trump vehemently denied that his father was ever arrested at a Klan rally, and he urged New York Times reporter Jason Horowitz to drop the subject in an interview, stating, “It shouldn’t be written because it never happened, number one. And number two, there was nobody charged.”
Trump did get one thing right: his father was never charged. Out of the seven people arrested, Trump’s father was the only one who got off completely free. According to a clipping from the now defunct Daily Star, four of those arrested were expected to go to court, and two were paroled. One, Fred Trump, was not held on charges. However, this doesn’t negate his standing as a member of the Klan. According to newspaper clip obtained by VICE, all the people arrested were wearing Klan attire, which VICE contends likely would have included Fred Trump.
Decades after the Klan rally, Fred Trump became a real estate mogul
The years following Fred Trump’s arrest were very fruitful for the budding real estate mogul. He became a wealthy real estate developer who housed thousands of families in New York while fielding consistent accusations of racism. Some of the complaints were informal, and some were blasted out through the power of song. The “informal” accusations came to a head when Woody Guthrie accused Trump of drawing a “color line” in a neighborhood near Coney Island. The formal accusations reached a peak in the 1970s, when the US Department of Justice brought a claim against Trump and his son, Donald, for racist housing practices.
Fred Trump developed the Beach Haven public housing complex as part of the postwar affordable housing boom
In the years following World War II, hundreds of thousands of servicemen returned to New York City, and affordable public housing became a major priority for local government. The Federal Housing Authority stepped in to issue loans and subsidies for developers willing to construct blocks of housing. Guess who jumped at the opportunity? Fred Trump. Trump ended up making much of his fortune by constructing public housing and collecting rent on the properties.
