A hopeful historical story

Republicans may seem unstoppable, and the MAGA movement has energized a racist, nativist, nationalist mob. But you know what else seemed unstoppable? The Ku Klux Klan. A hundred years ago, the KKK was marching by the thousands in parades across the country, and had installed multiple members in governorships. It was, for a while, the MAGAs of yesteryear. It fundamentally eradicated and forced to go underground, although of course its sympathizers were still lurking in our society, usually afraid to speak out loud.

One of the reasons it faded was because some people were not afraid to speak against the Klan, even when the establishment used their power to harass good people. Good people like George Dale.

George Dale, the founding editor of The Muncie Post-Democrat, had published his first attack on the Klan in 1922. Dale charged that Delaware County Circuit Court Judge Clarence Dearth was a Klansman who stacked juries with those of his ilk and gave light sentences to Klansmen convicted in his court.

Dearth subsequently found Dale in contempt of court and the editor spent his life savings defending his First Amendment right to print factual information, a story picked up by the national press.

Republican and Democratic newspapers across the country lauded Dale for his heroism, and readers nationwide contributed to his legal defense fund.

By 1927, The Post-Democrat’s circulation had swelled to 18,000—more than seven times its 1923 readership. By 1928, Klan membership statewide had dwindled to 7,000 from an estimated 300,000 at its peak.

He stood up for what was right, and he used ridicule to do it.

Klan ideology in the ’20s also differed from its focus during the Civil Rights Movement in the ’50s and ’60s. While never friendly to African Americans, the “second wave” of the Klan was mostly interested in halting immigration, undermining perceived Catholic and Jewish influence in American politics and schools, enforcing Prohibition, and protecting the “purity of American womanhood.” A new religious movement, Protestant fundamentalism, also fueled the Klan’s rise, with ideologues hijacking religion to stir up nativism. It’s no coincidence that 1925 was the year both of Stephenson’s trial in Indiana and the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee.

George Dale and others went to work documenting the hypocrisy of the Klan’s basic principles — from “100% Americanism” to a ludicrous KKK resolution passed in Muncie proclaiming that Jesus Christ was a white Protestant native-born American and not a Jew.

This was Indiana, after all, the state that had unsuccessfully tried to decree that pi had a value of precisely 3.0, back in 1897. They failed again when they tried to decree that Jesus Christ was a white Protestant American. (note: this excerpt is heavily larded with sarcasm.)

Muncie Klan N o. 4 Friday night by a unanimous vote, passed a resolution endorsing Jesus Christ, the resolution appearing in full the next day in a local newspaper. The question of the divinity of the Redeemer had been previously submitted to a committee consisting of Rev. Walter Gibson, Deacon Court Asher and Elder Willie Moy, the Chinese goblin, who reported unanimously in favor of the fundamentalists. When the resolution was presented one kluxer introduced an amendment to the effect that Jesus was not a Jew, but a native born, white Protestant American. The resolution went through unanimously but the contaminated, hireling, Papist press refused to print that part of it. Copies of the resolution were sent to the theological gentlemen in New York who have lately been staging a wordy conflict between faith and science. Its perusal will no doubt be a great aid in settling the argument.

And yes, let us not forget that 1925 was also the year of the Scopes monkey trial, which besmirched the reputation of another state, Tennessee, that is now also a stronghold of MAGA foolishness.

These know-nothing racist fools have infested this country long enough. Be like George Dale, and beat them back.