Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id857139179
the Klan in the ’20s was everywhere. There were millions of Klan members across the country. People joined it like they were joining a golf club or the Elks Lodge. There was a women’s auxiliary. There was the Ku Klux Kiddies, for children. Klan rallies were held across the country; thousands would turn up at fairgrounds for the marching bands and cross burnings. In 1925, the Klan even held a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC.
id857139115
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.
id857139125
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.
id857139032
George Dale, the publisher of the Muncie Post-Democrat, in Muncie, Indiana.
George Dale hated the Ku Klux Klan.
id857139040
George Dale printed their names in his newspaper, part of his unrelenting, unceasing, and unflinching attack on the Muncie Klan.
id857139045
It was reported at the time that he was sent to the Muncie jail so often that inmates would applaud when he’d return.
id857139094
Fascism always fails.
It is destructive and it is awful and not everyone lives to see the other side, but it always, always fails. It takes work. It takes fighting back. It takes throwing punches. It takes doing whatever it takes to beat it back, to protect those that are most vulnerable from its many attacks.
id857139096
Two years after he wrote that letter, George Dale became Mayor of Muncie. His first act was to fire all the cops. Over the weeks and months that followed, he stripped the Klan from Muncie.