Silver Legion of America

The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an underground American fascist organization founded by William Dudley Pelley that was headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina and announced publicly on January 30, 1933.

History

A white-supremacist, anti-Semitic group modeled after Hitler's Brownshirts, the paramilitary Silver Legion wore a silver shirt with a tie along with a campaign hat and blue corduroy trousers with leggings. The uniform shirts bore a scarlet letter L over the heart: an emblem meant to symbolize Loyalty to the United States, Liberation from materialism, and the Silver Legion itself. The blocky slab serif L-emblem was in a typeface similar to the present-day Rockwell Extra Bold. The organizational flag was a plain silver field with such a red L in the canton at the upper left.

By 1934, the Silver Shirts had about 15,000 members. Circa 1935 with Nazi German funding and Hollywood funding, the Silver Shirts had begun construction of the Murphy Ranch, situated on a secluded 55 acre site in the Los Angeles hills, which was meant to serve as a fortified world headquarters after the expected Fascist global conquest.