By Louis Fine/Murphy News Service

The upcoming-event posting on the Hennepin History Museum’s Facebook site in late January seemed innocent enough, even if it was about a new book displaying some of  Minnesota dirty laundry — the days when the Ku Klux Klan was active in these parts.

So when the museum’s page, detailing a March 8 event about Elizabeth Dorsey Hatle’s book, “Ku Klux Klan in Minnesota,” was shut down one Saturday by Facebook itself, all sorts of problems arose and less-than-happy feelings were in evidence.

Museum Director Cedar Phillips said Facebook’s reasoning for closing down the page was “a violation of community standards,” but she said no one at Facebook was available to explain what was going on.

Facebook’s community standards page, declares that hate speech is prohibited, but how Facebook reviews reported hate speech is unclear.

“We haven’t been able to reach any actual person at Facebook,” Phillips said, “… so we’re assuming it’s just a computer … we really don’t know.”

Facebook did not respond to Murphy News Service’s request for information about its policies.

Phillips said it took hours for the staff to recover “the bulk” of the museum’s main Facebook page but the event page for Hatle’s book had to be recreated.

“…They still have not let us re-publish the post-in-question,” Phillips said, “… now we have a new one up that says ‘Censored’,” the museum’s staff’s idea.

The museum also removed the words “Ku Klux Klan” from wherever it was in the previous post, and added a cover photo for the event that said “Censored” in big, bold, red text.

Author Hatle said she believes the censorship graphics and changes to the text were the museum’s attempt at being facetious about the whole situation.

“They’re referring now to the book event on March 8th at the Hennepin County Museum as a censored book event because Facebook censored it,” Hatle said, “but I think it’s tongue-in-cheek.”

Phillips agreed that the event page’s censorship theme was a commentary on how the staff felt about the way the museum was treated by Facebook.

“No one has been in contact with us to delete that from our record or to apologize for the taking down of our page,” Phillips said, “I mean, it is a private company, they can do that, but we do think it’s an issue of censorship.”

Hatle’s book discusses how Minnesota was once home to 51 chapters of the KKK, the influence the organization’s presence had on state politics, and what happened to Klansmen who continued life in the public sphere after the organization lost its foothold in the state.

Phillips said that despite the page shutdown, the incident has inspired further promotion of the book.

“Oh, we’re promoting it more than ever,” Phillips said, “It’s an important story to be told. For all the hassles it’s been great publicity. We’re getting more people excited to hear the story.”

The March 8 event will be held at the museum at 2 p.m , as part of its “Fireside Chat” series, which the museum’s press release said is “a biweekly lecture series featuring a wide range of speakers and topics relating to local history and culture.”

The museum is located at 2303 3rd Ave. S. in Minneapolis.

Reporter Louis Fine is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.