Ku Klux Klan

====Resistance and decline====
[[File:D. C. Stephenson Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan in Indiana, c 1922.jpg|thumb|upright|[[D. C. Stephenson]], Grand Dragon of the [[Indiana Klan]]. His conviction in 1925 for the murder of [[Madge Oberholtzer]], a white schoolteacher, led to the decline of the Indiana Klan.]]

Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as [[Reinhold Niebuhr]] in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan, gaining national attention. The Jewish [[Anti-Defamation League]] was formed in the early 20th century in response to attacks on [[American Jews|Jewish Americans]], including the lynching of [[Leo Frank]] in Atlanta, and to the Klan's campaign to [[Compulsory public education in the United States|prohibit private schools]] (which was chiefly aimed at Catholic parochial schools). Opposing groups worked to penetrate the Klan's secrecy. After one civic group in Indiana began to publish Klan membership lists, there was a rapid decline in the number of Klan members. The [[NAACP|National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) launched public education campaigns in order to inform people about Klan activities and lobbied in Congress against Klan abuses. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership in most areas began to decline rapidly.{{sfn|Jackson|1967}} Specific events contributed to the Klan's decline as well. In Indiana, the scandal surrounding the 1925 murder trial of Grand Dragon [[D. C. Stephenson]] destroyed the image of the KKK as upholders of law and order. By 1926 the Klan was "crippled and discredited".<ref name="Library">{{cite web|url=http://www.in.gov/library/2848.htm|title=Ku Klux Klan in Indiana|publisher=Indiana State Library|date=November 2000|access-date=September 27, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090918163319/http://www.in.gov/library/2848.htm|archive-date=September 18, 2009|url-status=live}}</ref> D. C. Stephenson was the grand dragon of Indiana and 22 northern states. In 1923 he had led the states under his control in order to break away from the national KKK organization. At his 1925 trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder for his part in the rape, and subsequent death, of [[Madge Oberholtzer]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.indianahistory.org/library/manuscripts/collection_guides/m0264.html |title=D. C. Stephenson manuscript collection |publisher=Indiana Historical Society |access-date=February 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100208221521/http://www.indianahistory.org/library/manuscripts/collection_guides/m0264.html |archive-date=February 8, 2010 }}</ref> After Stephenson's conviction, the Klan declined dramatically in Indiana.

The historian Leonard Moore says that a failure in leadership caused the Klan's collapse:

<blockquote>Stephenson and the other salesmen and office seekers who maneuvered for control of Indiana's Invisible Empire lacked both the ability and the desire to use the political system to carry out the Klan's stated goals. They were uninterested in, or perhaps even unaware of, grass roots concerns within the movement. For them, the Klan had been nothing more than a means for gaining wealth and power. These marginal men had risen to the top of the hooded order because, until it became a political force, the Klan had never required strong, dedicated leadership. More established and experienced politicians who endorsed the Klan, or who pursued some of the interests of their Klan constituents, also accomplished little. Factionalism created one barrier, but many politicians had supported the Klan simply out of expedience. When charges of crime and corruption began to taint the movement, those concerned about their political futures had even less reason to work on the Klan's behalf.{{sfn|Moore|1991|p=186}}</blockquote>

[[File:Kkk1928.jpg|thumb|left|Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1928.|alt=]]
In Alabama, KKK [[vigilantes]] launched a wave of physical terror in 1927. They targeted both Black and white people for violations of racial norms and for perceived moral lapses.{{sfn|Rogers|Ward|Atkins|Flynt|1994|pp=432–433}} This led to a strong backlash, beginning in the media. [[Grover C. Hall]] Sr., editor of the ''[[Montgomery Advertiser]]'' from 1926, wrote a series of editorials and articles that attacked the Klan. (Today the paper says it "waged war on the resurgent [KKK]".)<ref name=history>[http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/99999999/CUSTOMERSERVICE01/91026023/History-Montgomery-Advertiser "History of the Montgomery Advertiser"]. ''Montgomery Advertiser'': a Gannett Company. Retrieved November 8, 2013. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120825232802/http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/99999999/CUSTOMERSERVICE01/91026023/History-Montgomery-Advertiser |date=August 25, 2012 }}</ref> Hall won a [[Pulitzer Prize]] for the crusade, the 1928 [[Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing|Editorial Writing Pulitzer]], citing "his editorials against gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance".{{sfn|Rogers|Ward|Atkins|Flynt|1994|p=433}}<ref>[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Editorial-Writing "Editorial Writing"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131031075115/http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Editorial-Writing |date=October 31, 2013 }}. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 8, 2013.</ref> Other newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan, referring to the organization as violent and "un-American". Sheriffs cracked down on activities. In the [[1928 United States presidential election|1928 presidential election]], the state voters overcame their initial opposition to the Catholic candidate [[Al Smith]] and voted the Democratic Party line as usual.

Although in decline, a measure of the Klan's influence was still evident when it staged its march along [[Pennsylvania Avenue]] in [[Washington, D.C.]], in 1928. By 1930, Klan membership in Alabama dropped to less than 6,000. Small independent units continued to be active in the industrial city of [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]].

KKK units were active through the 1930s in parts of Georgia, with a group of "night riders" in [[Atlanta]] enforcing their moral views by flogging people who violated them, whites as well as Black people. In March 1940, they were implicated in the beating murders of a young white couple taken from their car on a lovers lane, and flogged a white barber to death for drinking, both in East Point, a suburb of Atlanta. More than 20 others were "brutally flogged". As the police began to investigate, they found the records of the KKK had disappeared from their East Point office. The cases were reported by the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]''<ref name="records">[http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1940/03/24/page/19/article/klans-records-vanish-in-face-of-terror-quiz "Klan's Records Vanish in Terror Quiz/Floggers Linked to Killings in Lovers Lane"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204085445/http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1940/03/24/page/19/article/klans-records-vanish-in-face-of-terror-quiz/ |date=February 4, 2017}}, ''Chicago Tribune'', March 24, 1940; accessed February 3, 2017</ref> and the NAACP in its ''[[The Crisis|Crisis]]'' magazine,<ref name="crisis">{{cite magazine |date=October 1940 |title=Sixth Lynching |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7FoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA324 |magazine=[[The Crisis]] |publisher=[[NAACP|National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] |volume=47 |issue=10 |pages=323–324 |access-date=February 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215093611/https://books.google.com/books?id=7FoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA324 |archive-date=February 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> as well as local papers.

In 1940, three lynchings of Black men by whites (no KKK affiliation is known) took place in the South: [[Elbert Williams]] was the first NAACP member known to be killed for civil rights activities: he was murdered in [[Brownsville, Tennessee]], for working to register Black people to vote, and several other activists were run out of town; [[Jesse Thornton]] was lynched in [[Luverne, Alabama]], for a minor social infraction; and 16-year-old [[Lynching of Austin Callaway|Austin Callaway]], a suspect in the assault of a white woman, was taken from jail in the middle of the night and killed by six white men in [[LaGrange, Georgia]].<ref name="crisis" /> In January 2017, the police chief and mayor of LaGrange apologized for their offices' failures to protect Callaway, at a reconciliation service marking his death.<ref name="cnn">{{cite news |url=http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/ |title='Justice failed Austin Callaway': Town attempts to atone for 1940 lynching |first=Emanuella |last=Grinberg |publisher=[[CNN]] |date=January 27, 2017 |access-date=February 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202065324/http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/ |archive-date=February 2, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/nightly-news-full-broadcast-january-27th-864596547728|title=Nightly News Full Broadcast (January 27th)|publisher=[[NBC News]]|access-date=February 3, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202064213/http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/nightly-news-full-broadcast-january-27th-864596547728|archive-date=February 2, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref>