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To: docmcb
And you are aware, I trust, that the Klan has been strongest in places like Kansas, rather than the South, since the 1920's? Back up your charge or apologize.

Whoa there, Sunshine. I live in Kansas and I am not aware of any Klan activity, any Klan chapter, any Klan sympathy at all in the state. I'll ask you to back up your charges or apologize.

57 posted on 11/14/2002 3:43:27 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur
Do a Google search for "Ku Klux Klan" and Kansas and you'll get 8000+ hits. The following is from the Kansas State Historical Society and corresponds to what I believe is the truth. The KKK of the 1920's and after was as much or more focused on anti-Jewish and anti-Roman Catholic prejudice as it was anti-black. I'm not saying the Klan is strong TODAY in Kansas; I don't think it's strong anywhere, thank God.

"The Klan first infiltrated Kansas in mid-1921. It claimed to be a reform group promoting Christianity and white supremacy and arguing for limits on foreign immigration. Hostile toward a long list of "undesirable" persons, the Klan's main efforts focused against Catholics. Klansmen kidnaped and assaulted the Catholic mayor of Liberty after he refused them use of a hall he owned. Although many people agreed with the Klan's creed - as many as 200,000 Kansans may have been Klan members - most disliked its tactics. One journalist described the situation:

"Neighborhood after neighborhood, which had been peaceful and friendly . . . split into hostile groups by the Klan's arrival. Although actual violence was rare . . . communities lived in a state of uneasiness amounting to terror; and the Klans did not scruple to threaten even when they were too cowardly to execute." - World's Work, August 1923

Not all Kansans supported the Klan, of course. One University of Kansas student wrote a satirical song, Daddy Stole Our Last Clean Sheet and Joined the Ku Klux Klan, that sold nationally. Newspaper publisher and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist William Allen White called the Klan "an organization of cowards" and mounted an anti-Klan gubernatorial campaign in 1924. Another who openly fought the organization was Henry Allen, also a journalist and Kansas Governor at the time of the Klan's infiltration. To White and Allen the Klan was not comprised of anonymous strangers but of fellow newspaper men, Methodists, and Masonic Lodge brothers.

Concerned that the Klan would disrupt government and cause civil unrest, Governor Allen embarked on a public campaign against the group. When the Klan threatened to parade hooded horsemen through Arkansas City on July 4, 1922, Allen declared it illegal to wear masks on Kansas streets. Although admitting he didn't like the Catholic church either, Allen declared the Klan's tactics "un-American." By reviling the Klan publicly, Allen hoped to create a division within its ranks pitting the moderate majority against the violent minority.

After months of investigating the Klan's activities at Allen's behest, the State Attorney General filed a petition with the Kansas Supreme Court charging that the Klan was a foreign corporation which required a Kansas charter to engage in business.

Under attack by the Attorney General, the Kansas Klan was already near death at the time the case reached the Supreme Court. Allen's efforts had helped create a schism between the terrorist wing and the peaceful but narrowminded majority, and Klan membership had begun to decline. Internal battles also developed over mismanagement of the group's finances. On January 25, 1925, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled for the Attorney General and Kansas became the first state to legally oust the Klan.

Glad to provide a little sunshine for you!

58 posted on 11/14/2002 6:28:46 AM PST by docmcb
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To: Non-Sequitur
I just came across the following in an article by John McWhirter in the current issue of CITY JOURNAL. It's about the Klan in Indianapolis.

"Virulent racism was a fact of life for the newcomers. Despite the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869, black suffrage didn’t become a reality in Indiana until the 1880s; blacks couldn’t join the state militia until the late 1930s. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was Indiana’s largest and most powerful social organization, with 40 percent of the native-born white adult male population belonging to it. Indianapolis’s mayor was a Klansman, and the Klan controlled the legislature and the governor’s office—the Democratic party was essentially the Klan at the polls. In 1924, 6,500 Klansmen paraded through downtown Indianapolis to a cheering crowd of 75,000 onlookers after Klan election victories. For good reason, black Indianapolis became home to an anti-lynching league. One of the last recorded lynchings north of the Mason-Dixon line occurred in nearby Marion in 1930."

87 posted on 11/17/2002 7:33:28 PM PST by docmcb
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