The Klan of the '20s was a little different than what you might think of now. They didn't just hate Black people (though, obviously, anti-Blackness was a central driver), they also went hard after immigrants, Jews, and Catholics too. The Klan's slogan at the time? "America First." The Immigration Act of 1924, which established the US Border Patrol and basically set the stage for all of this country's immigration policy for the 20th Century, was viewed as a huge victory for the Klan.
The Klan in the '20s felt inescapable.
That was especially true at the local level, where the Klan infiltrated all walks of life. In Indiana by the mid-'20s, two-thirds of the statehouse were Republican Klansmen. The governor was Klan. And in any given town, the Klan was everywhere. The mayor, the councilmen, the cops, the prosecutors, the judges—Klan Klan Klan Klan Klan.
Of course, part of what made the Klan so insidious was you never quite knew who was a Klansmen—they wore the hoods for a reason. But also you knew. You knew not to cross them, not to question them, not to make trouble. That is, if you knew what was good for you.
Of course, thankfully, not everyone knows what's good for them.
That day after the election, in that Hampton Inn, I spent a few hours reading about George Dale, the publisher of the Muncie Post-Democrat, in Muncie, Indiana.
George Dale hated the Ku Klux Klan.
Now hating the Klan in Muncie, Indiana was not a safe thing thing to do. The Klan ruled Muncie and Delaware County the way it ruled most places in Indiana. The entire police department and the fire department were all Klan. The county judges? Klan. The whole town, essentially, was run by the Klan.
We know this in part because George Dale printed their names in his newspaper, part of his unrelenting, unceasing, and unflinching attack on the Muncie Klan.
It nearly got him killed, when hooded men broke into his house and tried to shoot him. Dale said that he wrestled the gun away and killed one of them instead.
And hating the Klan sent him to jail repeatedly, rounded up by the Klan cops and put in front of a Klan judge with a Klan-packed jury. It was reported at the time that he was sent to the Muncie jail so often that inmates would applaud when he'd return.