Irish Communist T.J. O’Flaherty relished (rhetorical) combat with the Klan, who threatened his life more than once. Here, with as much scorn as he can produce, O’Flaherty looks at the waning power of the Klan in Indiana where in the mid-1920s, as in many states, the hooded order was a mass organization that dominated politics, deeply influencing both the Republican and Democratic parties, as well as making inroads into the U.M.W.A., the country’s largest and most powerful labor organization. Within several years the U.M.W.A. had decisively expelled the Klan, and Indiana’s king-maker ‘Grand Dragon,’ D.C. Stephenson was in prison from the abduction, torture, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer whom he met at Indiana governor Jackson’s inauguration party.

‘Dark Days for the Knights of the Night Shirt’ by Thomas J. O’Flaherty from The Daily Worker. Vol. 4 No. 57. July 16, 1927.

THE political atmosphere of Indiana, once the stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, is again livid with the lightning of scandal, charges, innuendoes, and threats of jail for men in high places in the state and city governments of the Hoosier stronghold that has contributed several leading lights to the G.O.P., several convicted political grafters to Atlanta penitentiary and scores of thousands to hang nightshirts on, inside the invisible empire of the K.K.K.

The lid is now being lifted off the political cesspool and the miasma that has been held down by strong pressure for several years is breaking through the barriers in great odoriferous gusts.

D.C. Stephenson, former grand dragon of the K.K.K. in the “realm of Indiana” a man from “god knows where” is sojourning in prison, convicted on the charge of causing the death of a young girl, after mistreating her. The former dragon did not exhibit much excitement after the deed was committed. He believed that the G.O.P. politicians who owed their election to the support of his organization would soothe the irate nerves of justice and drop enough dough in the scales to bring down the verdict in his favor.

But a ruined, raped and murdered girl is a hot potato even in the hardboiled klan-dominated state of Indiana and before Stephenson was many days older, the once powerful dictator found his erstwhile friends everywhere but where he needed them. Still there were whisperings that a pardon would be sneaked for him after a while, as soon as things quieted down. But Stephenson waited, and sulked and hoped, but the hoped-for deliverance did not materialize. Pitting his faith against the indifference shown by his former political friends he helped to nip a few budding anti-klan exposes and saw the suds of expectation dry on the greedy lips of Senator James A. Reed, of Missouri, who hawked his one-man slush fund committee to Indianapolis, seeking whom he might devour. Reed, democratic aspirant for the presidential nomination on the donkey ticket left the Hoosier capital without anything hanging from his belt except a latchkey and a corkscrew.

For saving the hides of his friends, Stephenson, the former grand dragon, all-round patriot, protector of pure womanhood and slayer of the demon rum, expected to return speedily to his old haunts, where amid wine and wassail and the cheering company of the fair sex, he could relieve the tension of protracted excursions among the social wilds where lived the untamed citizenry who did violence to the Nordic conscience by remaining outside the pillowed brotherhood of the K.K.K. But alas for Stephenson. When it came to making sacrifices, the Indiana politicians were not unwilling to offer up an appeasing subject to the gods but they were loathe to jeopardize one of their votes even though Stephenson might stay in jail until his klan uniform had turned into ashes. So Stephenson stayed and brooded.

Who is this man Stephenson and how did he acquire the power that made and unmade politicians in the state of Indiana?

He arrived in the state while the klan boom was on the upgrade and thousands of ex-socialists, insurance agents and ex-bartenders found a lucrative employment roping in members into the hooded order and doing a brisk business on the side selling shirts, pillowslips and other pieces of haberdashery that went to accoutre the richly caparisoned morons that peopled the K.K.K. Stephenson was a go-getter, had a deep booming voice and a smart appearance.

This crusader for 100 per cent Americanism hopped into the fight to save the nation from Negroes, Irish, Jews, and radicals and before long occupied a high position in the tar and feather society. He became a big mine owner and indirectly led a faction of the United Mine Workers of America at the 1924 convention in Indianapolis. The writer attended a klan meeting in that city during the convention and listened to a local kleagle read an order from this same Stephenson instructing his followers in the union to beware of strikes and to cooperate with the employers in increasing production. The object of this policy was to save the country from the non-Nordic elements that were poisoning its political and social blood-stream.

Tho this group of kluxers openly avowed their intention of capturing the U.M.W. of A. and were supported by the union officials of the Indiana district, John L. Lewis, the red-baiter did not have a word to say in criticism of the K.K.K. policy of boring from within. Those were the heydays of the K.K.K. in Indiana. Stephenson lived in a mansion and owned a palatial yacht on board which he and his friends reveled.

He ruled an organization that extended throughout the state and into neighboring states. His spy system kept tabs on the doings of politicians and those of them that are not like Caesar’s wife was supposed to be, lived in dread of Stephenson’s blackmail threats. An organization for the detection and apprehension of horse thieves–a lost art since horse flesh lost out to gasoline was turned into an armed K.K.K. force at the service of the grand dragon. When his downfall took place it was reported that he had the ambition to become president of the United States. However that may be, he did not become president and is not likely to.

This was the character whose word was law with the senators from the Hoosier state who made the welkins ring with their patriotic effusions in the oil-stained capital of the nation. When Senator Ralston, democrat, was gathered into the meatless arms of his fathers, Stephenson compelled Governor Jackson to appoint Arthur Robinson in his place. Senator James E. Watson, one of the wheel horses of the G.O.P. machine, was alleged to have a membership card in the klan. He denied the allegation. Now it may be told.

Weary unto irrepressible indignation over the scurvy treatment accorded him, Stephenson has decided to squeal. There are many vacant chairs in the prison chair factory he says. He wants to see them occupied during working hours by some of his former political friends. But those fellows have ears as keenly attuned to warning noises as the wild curlews on the hills of Scotland. The governor discovered that he had an appointment in Kansas City and others made themselves scarce in places where they used to hang out.

When Thomas Adams, the Indiana publisher tried to pry the lid off the klan cesspool a few years ago he was almost ruined. Enemies sniped at him from every corner and loop hole, and it looked for a while as if he could thank his stars if he escaped jail or an early grave for his pains. But Adams is now chuckling. Stephenson is going to spill the dirt and the hidden documents that Senator Reed tried to unearth when he held his session in Indiana are now about to be brought forth, laden with facts that “will rock the state and shock the nation.”

The bottom has fallen out of the Ku Klux Klan. The deluded petty bourgeois and proletarians who were led to believe that the Negro, the Jew and the non-Nordic alien were responsible for their misery have removed the rheum from their eyes and now see things more realistically. Perhaps they do not yet realize that the conditions that suggest a shortening of the belt can be laid at the door of the capitalist system which takes toll off the toil of alien and native, Jew and gentile, black and white with unstudied partiality. The charlatans that once fatted on their folly have now retired on a competence or have entered some other line of legitimate graft.

The misguided workers who joined the K.K.K. thinking that it offered a solution for their economic problems should now be in a receptive mood to listen to the program of Communism which alone points the way toward the goal which all workers desire to reach, namely, freedom from all kinds of slavery and economic security for all those who contribute to the social sustaining fund.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n157-new-magazine-jul-16-1927-DW-LOC.pdf