The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian extremist, white supremacist, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction in the devastated South. Various historians have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist group. The group contains several organizations structured as a secret society, which have frequently resorted to terrorism, violence and acts of intimidation to impose their criteria and oppress their victims, most notably African Americans, Jews, and Catholics. There have been three distinct iterations with various other targets relative to time and place.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 1924. Incumbent Republican President Calvin Coolidge won election to a full term. Coolidge was the second vice president, after Theodore Roosevelt, to ascend to the presidency and then win a full term.
David Curtis "Steve" Stephenson was an American Ku Klux Klan leader, convicted rapist and murderer. In 1923 he was appointed Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan and head of Klan recruiting for seven other states. Later that year, he led those groups to independence from the national KKK organization. Amassing wealth and political power in Indiana politics, he was one of the most prominent national Klan leaders. He had close relationships with numerous Indiana politicians, especially Governor Edward L. Jackson.
The 1924 Democratic National Convention, held at the Madison Square Garden in New York City from June 24 to July 9, 1924, was the longest continuously running convention in United States political history. It took a record 103 ballots to nominate a presidential candidate. It was the first major party national convention that saw the name of a woman, Lena Springs, placed in nomination for vice president. John W. Davis, a dark horse, eventually won the presidential nomination on the 103rd ballot, a compromise candidate following a protracted convention fight between distant front-runners William Gibbs McAdoo and Al Smith.
Edward L. Jackson was an American attorney, judge and politician, elected the 32nd governor of the U.S. state of Indiana from January 12, 1925, to January 14, 1929. He had also been elected as Secretary of State of Indiana.
This is a partial list of notable historical figures in U.S. national politics who were members of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan, or was supported at the polls by Klan members.
Hiram Wesley Evans was an American dentist and political activist who served as the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, an American white supremacist group, from 1922 to his resignation in 1939.
Daisy Douglas Barr was Imperial Empress (leader) of the Indiana Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK) in the early 1920s and an active member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). People were associated with both the KKK and the WCTU because the Ku Klux Klan was a very strong supporter and defender of temperance and National Prohibition. Professionally, she was a Quaker minister in two prominent churches, First Friends Church of New Castle, Indiana, and Friends Memorial Church in Muncie, Indiana. She served as the vice-chair of the Republican Committee in Indiana as well as president of the Indiana War Mother's organization. She was killed in a car wreck and her funeral was held in a Friends meeting.
Samuel Moffett Ralston was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as the 28th governor of the U.S. state of Indiana and a United States senator from Indiana.
Warren Terry McCray was the 30th governor of the U.S. state of Indiana from 1921 to 1924.
The Indiana Republican Party is the affiliate of the United States Republican Party in the state of Indiana. The chairman of the Indiana Republican State Committee is Randy Head.
George Richard Durgan was an American politician who served one term as a U.S. Representative from Indiana from 1933 to 1935.
Harry Emerson Rowbottom was an American businessman and Republican politician. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Indiana in 1924 and served three terms from 1925 to 1931. He was defeated for re-election in 1930 and subsequently convicted of accepting bribes, abruptly terminating his political career.
The Indiana Klan was the state of Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society in the United States that organized in 1915 to promote ideas of racial superiority and affect public affairs on issues of Prohibition, education, political corruption, and morality. Like the rest of the KKK, it was strongly white supremacist against African Americans, Chinese Americans, and also Catholics and Jews, whose faiths were commonly associated with Irish, Italian, Balkan, and Slavic immigrants and their descendants. In Indiana, the Klan did not tend to practice overt violence but used intimidation in certain cases, whereas nationally the organization practiced illegal acts against minority ethnic and religious groups.
Walter Frederick Bossert was Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan for Indiana and 17 other states, from 1924 to 1926.
Although the Ku Klux Klan is most often associated with white supremacy, the revived Klan of the 1920s was also anti-Catholic. In U.S. states such as Maine, which had a very small black population but a burgeoning number of Acadian, French-Canadian and Irish immigrants, the Klan manifested primarily as a Protestant nativist movement directed against the Catholic minority as well as African-Americans. For a period in the mid-1920s, the Klan captured elements of the Maine Republican Party, even helping to elect a governor, Ralph Owen Brewster.
The 1926 Oregon gubernatorial election took place on November 2, 1926 to elect the governor of the U.S. state of Oregon. The election matched incumbent Democrat Walter M. Pierce against Republican Isaac L. Patterson and Independent candidate H. H. Stallard, who ran on an anti-Prohibition platform. Patterson won by a wide margin.
Julius Curtis Travis was an American lawyer, politician, sports journalist, businessman, and judge who served as a justice of the Indiana Supreme Court from January 3, 1921 to January 3, 1933.
The 1920 Indiana gubernatorial election was held on November 2, 1920. Republican nominee Warren T. McCray defeated Democratic nominee Carleton B. McCulloch with 54.63% of the vote.
Arthur Luther Gilliom was an American lawyer and politician who served as the twenty-fifth Indiana Attorney General from January 1, 1925 to January 1, 1929.
