Hoosier Who in the KKK

Today's Graphical History Tour takes us back to Indiana in 1926, when a Senate investigation exposed the extensive influence of the Ku Klux Klan — the MAGA movement of its day — in that state's Republican Party.

“These were the people who held their communities together. They were not the criminal element, they were not the psychopaths, sickos and all that. These were average white people that took an oath to forever support white supremacy.” — Timothy Egan:  A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

"Knosternation in Indiana" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 7, 1926

In the fall of 1926, Senator James Reed (D-MO) was in Chicago conducting hearings into the exorbitant sums of money that had poured into Senate campaigns in Pennsylvania and Illinois, and Indiana politics got tangled up in the allegations made in those hearings. Klan influence in the state's GOP was already well known; it was the influence of Klan money that made it an issue for Reed's investigation.

"Feet of Clay" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Oct. 9, 1926

Thomas Adams, editor and publisher of the Vincennes Commercial, printed allegations by former Grand Dragon of the KKK David Curtis Stephenson, who was serving time for rape and murder, of political graft and intrigue. Just two years earlier, Stephenson had bragged that his Klan controlled 85% of the delegates at the Indiana Republican convention (we mentioned that here). Now, Stephenson was upset at not having received a pardon or commutation of his prison sentence from Republican Governor Ed Jackson.

In a letter Adams smuggled out of the Indiana state penitentiary in Michigan City, Stephenson claimed that "a prominent Indiana politician" owed him $825,000 as part of a deal for a campaign contribution. He also named 40 other Indiana politicians, including three mayors, as owing him favors.

"Editors Keep Out" by Bob White in Indianapolis Times, Oct. 6, 1926

Governor Jackson refused demands from Adams, the Indianapolis Times, other members of the Indiana Republican Editorial Association, as well as from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago American, to interview D.C. Stephenson in prison. Instead of quashing the story, however, it was spread across the top of several Indiana newspapers' front pages (yet subordinate to the World Series in others). 

The Times did not have a regular editorial cartoonist on staff in those days, and ran only light humor cartoons on its editorial page; but it found room on its front page for Bob White's cartoon of Stephenson above.

"Dirty Linen" by Grover Page in Courier Journal, Louisville KY, Oct. 18, 1926

By the way, there was nothing unusual about an openly partisan media organization like the Indiana Republican Editorial Association. Many cities had a Republican newspaper and a Democratic newspaper, and everyone knew which was which.

The Republican Party Central Committee of Knox County, Indiana, responded to Mr. Adams's role in this scandal to drum the publisher out of their membership:

"Thomas H. Adams is not a Republican; that his newspaper, the Vincennes Commercial, is not the Republican Party organ for Knox County; and when he speaks, whether personally or through his newspaper, he is not speaking for the Republicans of Knox County. ... It is apparent that the actions and conduct of Mr. Adams for the last six months is a deliberate attempt to defeat the Republican state ticket and the local ticket in this county. His pretended cleanup is not in good faith."

"Indiana's White Elephant" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Star, Oct. 12, 1926

Tom Foley's cartoon calls out specific Indiana Republicans by name: Gov. Jackson, Indianapolis Mayor Duvall, Senators James Eli Watson & Arthur R. Robinson.

Allegations against Senator Watson included that there had been a deal between him and national Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans for Watson, a member of a panel questioning the election of Senator-elect Earl Mayfield (D-TX), to vote in Mayfield's favor in return for Klan support of Watson's 1926 reelection campaign and a possible presidential bid in 1928.

When the Graphical History Tour checked into Indiana's Republican Klansmen during the 1924 elections, here, your Humble Scribbler noted that I could not find any editorial cartoons by Indiana's own Chas Kuhn on the subject. Here again, in spite of the national attention drawn by Senator Reed's hearings (and the banner headlines above Kuhn's cartoons gracing the Indianapolis News's front page), Kuhn appears to have been more interested in Reed's other hearing into mob activity in Chicago.

"Spiked" by Chas Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Oct. 23, 1926

The only cartoon Kuhn drew for the Indianapolis News in October about Senator Reed's investigation into the Indianapolis GOP was this one regarding the state's senior Senator.

Senator Jim Watson was recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident on his reelection campaign trail, so Senator Reed and a stenographer came from Chicago to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis to hear Watson's statement. Watson and Robinson (the latter at an Indianapolis courtroom) categorically denied any connection to Evans; Watson admitted only to receiving two visits from Klan lawyer William Zumbrunn during the Mayfield hearings conveying the Klan's objection to some of the witnesses before Watson's committee. 

Otherwise, Watson testified, "I met with Dr. Evans several times, and I assume all senators, or practically all, met him at various times, because he was about and was talking to many of them." 

"The Situation at Present" by Karl Kae Knecht in Evansville Courier, Oct. 14, 1926

Elsewhere in Indiana, the Evansville Courier's long-time cartoonist Karl Kae Knecht was less convinced that the scandal had been put to rest. One of the figures holding up the poster blaming the "League o' Nations an' foreign debt thing" is Clyde Walb, Chairman of the Indiana Republican Party. The other might be U.S. Secretary of Labor James Davis, a native Hoosier who came home to campaign for the GOP ticket in October; but I can't completely rule out Oren Davis, the Republican candidate for Marion County Sheriff.

"Where Knighthood Was in Klover" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 22, 1926

In time, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series by the Indianapolis Times would bring down Governor Jackson — but not the state Republican party — while internal feuding would tear the Indiana Klan down as well.