Virgil Effinger

Virgil Herbert "Bert" Effinger (August 7, 1873 – October 15, 1955) was an American Ku Klux Klan renegade member who became the self-proclaimed leader of the Black Legion in the United States, active mostly in Ohio and Michigan. The secret, white vigilante group was made up of native-born Protestant men, many from the South, who felt threatened by immigration and contemporary industrial society during the struggles of the Great Depression. One-third of the members in Michigan lived in Detroit. Effinger advocated a fascist revolution in the US with himself as dictator.

The Black Legion was rumored in the mid-1930s in the Detroit area to be responsible for numerous murders and attacks on persons and property. It was exposed by prosecution in Wayne County, Michigan for the 1936 kidnapping and murder of Charles Poole, a French-Canadian Catholic organizer for the federal Works Progress Administration organizer. Eleven members were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In related prosecutions after additional investigation, dozens of other members of the Black Legion were convicted of other crimes, and all received prison sentences. Group membership withered under the spotlight and scandals. In 1938 Effinger tried to found a new group but was unsuccessful. He died nearly two decades later in a psychiatric hospital, having always denied membership in the Legion.