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 6—
Political Power  

   
 
 Early in 1924, as they looked toward the primary election in the spring and the general election in November, Indiana Republicans had reason to worry that their control of state politics might be in jeopardy. In a contest for the U.S. Senate just a little more than a year earlier, a Democrat had defeated the hoary dean of Indiana Republicanism, Albert J. Beveridge. Worse, the first-term Republican governor, Warren T. McCray, had been indicted for embezzlement and mail fraud; shortly, he would be convicted and resign his office. Under normal circumstances, such political setbacks might not have caused great concern. Calvin Coolidge was on his way to easy reelection, and in staunchly Republican Indiana almost any respectable GOP gubernatorial candidate could have expected to ride the president's coattails into office. But 1924 was not a normal year in Indiana politics. By that time, the Indiana Ku Klux Klan had reached its zenith and showed signs of becoming a powerful and, perhaps, destabilizing political force. It was generally believed that Beveridge had been defeated in 1922 in part because, unlike his opponent, he had fallen into disfavor with the Klan. 1 Added to this was the fact that Klan leaders already had become embroiled in election-year politics by announcing their intention to support Klansman Ed Jackson, then secretary of state, in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Whether individual Republican politicians applauded or objected to the Klan's presence in politics, none could ignore its importance, and in an un- 
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 certain political climate, many would be forced to seek its support.  

   
 
 The takeover of the state GOP by the Indiana Klan produced a shocking political victory. Jackson was elected governor along with almost an entire slate of Klan-endorsed candidates for other state offices. In local elections, the order's candidates won numerous contests and in some communities completely overturned entrenched political establishments. Like Beveridge earlier, politicians who alienated the Klan suffered near-complete failure. Only one openly anti-Klan candidate won a congressional seat in 1924. The other twelve successful contenders had either allied themselves with the Klan or modified their views to avoid the wrath of the Invisible Empire. Furthermore, the Klan's political influence was not confined to the Republican establishment. By this time the secret order had also made deep inroads into the Democratic party, forcing Democratic leaders to deal with an insurgency within their own ranks as they attempted to develop a strategy for defeating the Klan-dominated Republicans.  

   
 
 The ability of the Indiana Klan to influence the workings of both parties and elect pro-Klan candidates at all levels of government represented its greatest political achievement. In 1924, the Klan had been the central issue in Indiana politics and the Klansmen had emerged victorious. The populist energies that had ignited support for the Klan in individual communities also transformed state politics and in the process affirmed that the average white Protestant could exert a powerful influence in public life. At the same time, however, the Klan's victories at the polls did not produce any great changes in the government of Indiana. Klan-dominated officials at the state level enacted little significant legislation, since Klan leaders remained divided and were far more interested in personal gain than in passing any new laws. Klansmen elected to local office found that they could not easily make disappear the social conditions that had stimulated public ire. As candidates, Indiana's Klan politicians were amazingly successful, but as officeholders, they were failures.  

   
 
 The State Election of 1924  

   
 
 More than a year before he was elected governor, Ed Jackson already had positioned himself as the man to beat in the 
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 race for control of the statehouse. With the incumbent under criminal investigation and his eventual short-term successor, Lieutenant Governor Emmett F. Branch, showing no signs of launching his own campaign, Secretary of State Jackson appeared to have a clear field between himself and the nomination. Perhaps even more important, as far as many political observers were concerned, Jackson had established a close association with D. C. Stephenson, the person who presumably controlled the massive voting block represented by the Indiana Ku Klux Klan. As early as mid-1923, some journalists predicted that these combined circumstances would ensure Jackson's election. 2  

   
 
 Jackson's path to high office was also made easier by the boundless ambition of the dominant figure in the Indiana GOP, Senator James E. Watson. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1916, Watson wrestled control of the Republican state committee from former governor James P. Goodrich and former U.S. senator Harry S. New in 1922 and envisioned running on the national ticket as a candidate for vice-president of the United States in 1924.3 Toward this end, he quickly accepted the front-runner Jackson and his Klan supporters into his political camp. Watson placed the party organization at their disposal, apparently requiring only two things in return: first, that Jackson and Stephenson keep the persistent Goodrich-New faction at bay; and second, that they put together an Indiana delegation to the Republican National Convention that would stand committed to Watson's vice-presidential nomination.4  

   
 
 With the firm support of the party organization and the Indiana Klan, Jackson ran a confident, low-key primary campaign. In his speeches around the state he recited an uncontroversial political gospel of government efficiency; better public schools, and lower taxes. While newspapers identified him as the candidate of the Klan, Jackson steered clear of the issue as much as possible, denying any connection with the secret order. Meanwhile, Stephenson worked to deliver the Klan vote. From his Indianapolis headquarters, he sent more than 200,000 letters in support of Jackson and ordered individual Klan chapters to distribute bulletins providing information and official Klan voting slates. Stephenson called his operation a "military machine" and claimed absolute control over Klan voters organized on township, ward, precinct, and block levels state-  

 

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 wide. It is doubtful that Stephenson actually enjoyed such extensive political power or that many chapters bothered to form such elaborate political structures; indeed, neither were necessary to ensure a pro-Jackson consensus among Indiana Klansmen. On election day, Jackson won an easy victory, accumulating more than twice as many votes as his closest rival, Indianapolis mayor and anti-Klan candidate, Lew Shank. 5  

   
 
 After the election, Indiana newspapers rushed to assess the Klan's political influence. The Fiery Cross and other publications that supported the movement attempted to minimize its importance, hoping to deflect potential charges that the Klan was about to begin a reign of terror or corruption in Indiana state government. The pro-Klan Kokomo Daily Tribune attributed Jackson's victory in Howard County to the fact that he possessed the "high personal regard" and the trust and respect of the citizens. Jackson himself piously reported that he owed no allegiance to any "voting bloc" and that he opposed "radicalism.'' Most newspapers, however, interpreted Jackson's victory as proof that the Klan was the dominant political force in the state. In one postelection editorial, the anti-Klan Indianapolis Times wrote: "The only answer to the results of the primary is the power of the Ku Klux Klan. While some may not like the idea, there is no longer a particle of doubt that at the present time the Klan is the most powerful influence in Indiana politics. Its influence extends not only to the point of persuading voters to cast their ballots for candidates approved by the Klan, but also to the point of influencing thousands to vote for candidates who are opposed by the Klan. . . . In other words, the Klan was the only big issue in the primary."6  

   
 
 In addition to clearly demonstrating the Klan's broad political base, Jackson's victory brought to a head the heated conflict between D. C. Stephenson and the Klan's national leadership. While Stephenson technically had been removed as Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan before the spring primary, neither he nor Walter Bossert and Hiram Evans had been interested in a showdown over who really controlled the state movement. The week after Jackson's victory, however, Stephenson was ready to make his move to separate the Indiana Klan from the national organization. At a press conference on May 10, he called for an immediate meeting of representa-  

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 tives from every chapter in the state: "I command you in the name of mutual love of our country to assemble in the city of Indianapolis in Cable Tabernacle at one p.m. on the twelfth day of May, 1924, for the purpose of overcoming and driving from our ranks the treacherous and despotic individuals who threaten, if not checked, to excite the indignation of the whole country." 7  

   
 
 The hastily called convention was a failure, and Stephenson's attempt to rid the Indiana Klan of its "Southern influence" quickly ended. Newspaper accounts of the meeting varied. The Indianapolis Star gave it the most credence, reporting that Klansmen from all but a few Indiana counties had attended to denounce Bossert and elect Stephenson as their Grand Dragon. Indianapolis's Times and News were more skeptical. The News related Stephenson's election but commented that "politicians" seemed doubtful that the rank-and-file membership had gone along with the "insurgent Klan." Articles in the Times showed that Stephenson himself did not regard the convention as conclusive. Three days after his supposed election, Stephenson again declared that ''Bossert rule must go" and called for another meeting of Indiana Klansmen (which never took place) to establish their right to self-determination. The regular Klan leadership naturally discounted Stephenson's revolt. obody can keep a jackass from braying," declared Joe Huffington, the former Stephenson ally, who still headed the Evansville klavern. One week after Stephenson's convention, Bossert and Evans called a Klan meeting of their own, The News reported that 1,500 Klansmen from both factions attended and that the insurgent movement had been "crushed." As a last resort, Stephenson attempted to exert control of the all-important Marion County (Indianapolis) klavern, but this, too, failed. Marion County Klan leaders demonstrated their continued loyalty to the national organization by sponsoring a Klan victory celebration later in May. Bossert, not Stephenson, was asked to preside. Only a month after he began his revolt, Stephenson announced that he was no longer associated with any Klan organization.8  

   
 
 Stephenson's inability to assume control of the state organization represented an important turn in the course of the Indiana Klan, but it did not significantly affect the former Grand Dragon's standing as a political boss. This can be explained, in part, by the Klan's secret nature, the wildly conflicting reports and the general confu-  

 

 
 
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 sion as to who actually controlled the state movement, and the reluctance of politicians to attack anyone who might be regarded as a leader by members of the massive organization. But the main reason for Stephenson's continued power was that he had already embedded his hooks deeply into Ed Jackson. In 1923, when Stephenson was still the unquestioned leader of the Indiana Klan, he had given thousands of dollars in secret, illegal contributions to Jackson. Also, in the fall of that year, the two men attempted to bribe the embattled governor, Warren McCray, offering him $10,000 and immunity from prosecution if he would appoint a Klansman as Marion County prosecutor. 9 These and, in all likelihood, other indiscretions had welded Stephenson's political career to Jackson's, and his nomination, therefore, ensured Stephenson an influential position.  

   
 
 Empowered by his hold over the popular gubernatorial nominee, and perhaps determined to show that he had not been undone by his break with the Klan, Stephenson played an extremely active role at the Republican state convention two weeks after the primary. Journalists covering the convention paid special attention to the large number of Klansmen among the delegates and to the former Grand Dragon who circulated on the convention floor, lobbying for what became known as the "Klan slate" of nominees for state offices. When all but one name on Stephenson's slate were chosen to accompany that of Jackson on the November ballot, most observers concluded that Stephenson was the dominant figure in state Republican politics, that he had nearly become, as he liked to boast, "the law" in Indiana.10  

   
 
 This assessment, however, greatly exaggerated Stephenson's strength and distorted the role of the Klan in Indiana's Republican party. It is not clear, for example, that Stephenson's power could be attributed to his control of Klan delegates; after all, his attempt to take over the state movement had failed just one week earlier. Further clouding the situation was the fact that Walter Bossert and his lieutenants also supported Jackson. They attended the convention and circulated their own slate, which differed from Stephenson's by only a few names.11  

   
 
 Stephenson's slate prevailed primarily because he was better connected than Bossert to the party establishment. Bossert had allied himself with the anti-Watson wing headed by James Goodrich and  

 

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 Harry New. The alliance was a natural one, not only because the Goodrich-New group needed a link with the obviously popular Klan, but also because Bossert himself, even more than his allies, had been a long-standing political opponent of Watson. Before the convention began, however, it became obvious that the Goodrich-New-Bossert faction could not overturn Watson's control of the party organization; the group had tested its strength immediately after the election but failed to unseat the chairman of the Republican state committee, Clyde Walb. On the other hand, Stephenson, through his close association with Ed Jackson, operated safely beneath Jim Watson's political umbrella. Stephenson had worked in district meetings to protect Walb from the Goodrich-New-Bossert assault. As a party leader at the state convention, Stephenson had helped give Watson what he wanted—a delegation to the Republican National Convention that was resolved to support Watson's quest to become Calvin Coolidge's running mate. 12 Therefore, Watson allowed Stephenson to act as a power broker for minor state offices, and delegates to the state convention, aware of Stephenson's link with the party establishment, adopted his slate.  

   
 
 Neither Stephenson nor Bossert took over the Indiana GOP in 1924, and to whatever degree Klan leaders succeeded in injecting themselves into the party's upper echelon, regular Republican leaders remained dominant. The real influence of the Klan within the Republican organization on the state level could be traced not to the power of Klan leaders, but to the enormous Klan vote and the eagerness of Republican leaders and candidates to exploit it. Ed Jackson proved to be the most successful in this regard, and his easy victory over an openly anti-Klan candidate in the primary election demonstrated to the rest of the party the political power inherent in the massive Klan movement. To ensure that the Klan's identification with their party continued, GOP leaders were more than ready to accept Klan leaders into their ranks—even if it was unclear that any of them actually controlled the rank-and-file membership. The dominant figure in the party, James Watson, demonstrated how Klan leaders could be manipulated for political gain. Watson not only controlled Stephenson but he also made agreements with Bossert and Evans.13 As Indiana Republicans began to anticipate the contest with Democrats in November, one of Watson's more candid  

 

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 statements seemed to epitomize how the party had come to view the Klan. "All I want to do," declared Indiana's senior senator, "is elect Ed Jackson for governor, not because he belongs to anything, but because he belongs to the Republican party. . . . The fact that Mr. Jackson is a Klansman, or is charged with being a Klansman will not in the slightest deter me from using every ounce of power I possess in his support." 14  

   
 
 Indiana Democrats, too, wanted their candidates elected, and elements within that party entered the primary season determined to garner their share of Klan votes. One gubernatorial candidate, Olin R. Holt of Kokomo, campaigned openly for Klan support. A known pro-Klan candidate had no chance of winning the Democratic nomination, but Holt showed surprising popularity in some districts.15 The party leadership decided on a neutral strategy for the primary: Klan votes were necessary, but so were those of the traditionally Democratic Catholic constituency. As a result, the party's leading candidate, Carleton B. McCulloch, refused to comment on the Klan during the campaign.16  

   
 
 The state Democratic machine, headed for more than twenty years by former Indianapolis mayor Thomas Taggart, hoped to gain several advantages through this neutral strategy in 1924. First, and most important, it would keep McCulloch out of the cross fire between the party's pro- and anti-Klan elements. Second, it would deemphasize the Klan as an issue, allowing the eventual Democratic nominee to attack the Republicans at their weakest point—corruption in both Indianapolis and Washington, D.C., during the McCray and Harding administrations. Refusal to antagonize the Klan would also aid the dark-horse presidential aspirations of Indiana senator Samuel M. Ralston. As both Ralston and Taggart recognized, the Klan would be a central issue at the Democratic National Convention in June, one that had the potential to divide the party. Since Ralston, through his defeat of Albert Beveridge in 1922, had demonstrated that he could satisfy both pro- and anti-Klan voters in a state where the Klan was particularly strong, he and Taggart reasoned that the Indiana senator might be an acceptable compromise candidate in a deadlocked convention. Throughout the spring political season, Ralston urged Indiana Democrats to avoid the Klan issue as much as possible.17  

 

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 The results of the primary election, however, made such a position difficult to maintain. McCulloch had come in first in the Democratic race for governor, but he had not gained a majority of the votes. The second-place finisher was Lafayette mayor George H. Durgan, who had run on the single issue of opposing the Klan. To secure the nomination at the Democratic state convention in early June, McCulloch was forced to concede to the demonstrated strength of the party's anti-Klan wing. In mid-May, much to the delight of the Indiana Catholic and Record, McCulloch formally announced his opposition to the Klan. Fortified by McCulloch's conversion, anti-Klan Democrats prevailed at the state convention. Over the objections of the party's vocal Klan supporters, and despite the wishes of some Democrats who thought it wise to remain neutral, the convention delegates approved an anti-Klan plank in the party platform. In the debate over how the article would be worded, anti-Klan Democrats conceded that the Klan need not be mentioned by name; but there was no doubt about the plank's intent. Observing that "the Republican party of our state has, for the time being, retired from the political arena, having been delivered into the hands of an organization which has no place in politics," the platform resolved, "We condemn the efforts of our opponents to make religion, race, color or accidental place of birth a political issue." 18  

   
 
 The reluctant but eventually firm rejection of the Klan by Indiana's Democratic party established an unambiguous theme for the November election. The Republicans had become deeply entwined with the Klan movement and would count on the electoral support of its membership. The Democrats would place their hopes with those who opposed the Klan. The parties' gubernatorial nominees, Ed Jackson and Carleton McCulloch, both dodged the central issue of the campaign as much as possible. Jackson continued to deny his association with the Klan, often claiming that the Democrats, not he, had introduced the issues of race and religion. He insisted that he intended to protect the rights of all citizens including blacks, Catholics, and Jews. Other Republican leaders urged black voters to stand behind the "party of Lincoln."19 For most of the campaign, McCulloch resorted to his original neutral strategy, making, in the words of one newspaper, "only passing reference" to his party's opposition to the Klan.20  

 

 
 
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 While the candidates pandered to each other's constituencies, Indiana newspapers made it clear that the election was essentially a referendum on the Klan. Many papers, particularly those that opposed the hooded order, gave limited attention to the Klan's role in the campaign. Other publications created enough commotion over the issue to ensure that only the most isolated, out-of-touch voter could fail to know by election time that Jackson was closely associated with the Klan. The state's leading anti-Klan newspaper, the Indianapolis Times, ran the boldest campaign against Jackson. As the election approached, the Times printed a copy of stolen Klan records that showed Jackson's name among Indianapolis members. It depicted the election as a choice between secrecy, suspicion, and hate on the one hand and democracy and peace on the other, and it compared the "Ku-kluxism of Ed Jackson" to Russian bolshevism. One unusually large Times headline, appearing a week before the election, implored Indiana voters simply to "STOP THE KLAN." 21  

   
 
 On election day, the majority of those voters decided instead that the hooded order deserved their support. Jackson won 53.4 percent of the vote to McCulloch's 46.6 percent.22  

   
 
 An Analysis of the Vote  

   
 
 Journalists and political observers who witnessed Jackson's victory generally believed that the Klan had made a shambles of traditional party loyalties. The editors of the Indiana Catholic and Record, the Indiana Jewish Chronicle, and the Indianapolis Freeman naturally were among the most disturbed by an apparently new political alignment that was based almost exclusively on race and religion. After the spring primary, the Freeman had declared that "the Republican party in Indiana exists today only in name," that it had been turned into "an agency for the promotion of religious and racial hate." By all accounts, blacks abandoned the Republican party in November, throwing their support to McCulloch.23 Jewish and Catholic leaders eagerly welcomed the new Democrats. The Catholic and Record commended Indianapolis blacks on their ''splendid courage and intelligence to rise above party and vote  

 

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 against the enemies of their race." It seemed obvious that the Democrats could use these new supporters, and more, to make up for the many white Protestants who had defected to the Republicans. "When you go into the factories and mills," a Republican party loyalist reported in 1924, "they are all for him [Jackson]. I was out in West Indianapolis recently, the Democratic stronghold, and it looked as though there was a Jackson picture in every window." 24  

   
 
 Regression analysis shows that the Klan indeed played a powerful role in the election of Ed Jackson and that many Klansmen who had voted Democratic in the previous gubernatorial election switched to the Republicans in 1924. As indicated in Table 6.1, Klansmen preferred Jackson to McCulloch by a wide margin. More specifically, an increase of 1 percent in Klan voters from a given county could be expected to increase the Jackson vote by 0.48 percent, while it would have, at best, no affect on the McCulloch vote. Expressed another way, the percentage of Klansmen who voted for Jackson was 48 points greater than that of non-Klansmen who voted for Jackson. A comparison of the Klan vote for governor in 1924 with that in 1920  

 
Table 6.1 Influence of Klansmen on Votes for Governor and President, 1920–1924* 
    b 
 SE 
 R2 
 
Gov. 1924 Rep. (Jackson) .48 
 .17 
 .23 
 
  Dem. (McCulloch) -.07 
 .06 
 .17 
 
Gov. 1920 Rep. (McCray) .10 
 .16 
 .38 
 
  Dem. (McCulloch) .08 
 .18 
 .26 
 
Pres. 1924 Rep. (Coolidge) .35 
 .15 
 .41 
 
  Dem. (Davis) .05 
 .18 
 .44 
 
  Prog. (La Follette) .10 
 .05 
 .19 
 
Coolidge minus Jackson -.12 
 .05 
 .28 
 
McCray minus Jackson -.45 
 .11 
 .36 
 
*Controlling for southern residence and percentage urban, Protestant, Catholic, and renters. 

 

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 reveals that Jackson's candidacy enticed many Klansmen to cross party lines. In 1920, Klansmen had not yet gravitated significantly toward either the Democratic or the Republican candidate.  

   
 
 Klan membership also seems to have had a positive impact on the vote for two of the three presidential candidates in 1924. Not surprisingly, Indiana Klansmen strongly supported Calvin Coolidge over John Davis. Throughout the campaign the president had refused to make a formal condemnation of the Klan, whereas Davis eventually went on record against the order. The Klan also gave noticeable support to Robert La Follette, the Progressive candidate, a fact that is surprising in light of the candidate's vigorous anti-Klan position, established early in the campaign. La Follette captured only 7 percent of the vote in Indiana. Nevertheless, the percentage of Klansmen who voted for La Follette was 10 percent higher than that of non-Klansmen. To some members of the Klan, it seemed that La Follette's support for working-class political interests outweighed the importance of his stand against the Klan. 25  

   
 
 Table 6.1 also shows the relationship between Klan membership and two "anti-Klan" variables. Both Coolidge in 1924 and McCray (the Republican gubernatorial candidate) in 1920 gathered more votes than Jackson in 1924. Assuming that those who voted for Coolidge or McCray, but not for Jackson, were put off, at least to some extent, by Jackson's association with the Klan, the difference between the totals for Coolidge and McCray and that for Jackson can be viewed as a measure of "anti-Klan" sentiment. Not surprisingly, regression analysis indicates a strongly negative relationship between Klan membership and this anti-Klan political position.  

   
 
 While Jackson obviously derived some of his strength from Klansmen who had not supported his party in the previous election, it does not follow, as many suspected, that the entire party system in Indiana had been thrown into disarray. Apparently, one of the important aspects of Jackson's election was that while the Klan caused some disturbance and shifting loyalties in the political system, it did not fundamentally alter or realign party allegiances. The great majority of Hoosier voters supported the same party in 1924 that they had in 1920 when the Klan was not an issue. Table 6.2, which gives the results of a regression of voting totals for governor in 1924 with  

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Table 6.2 Party Alignment in Vote for Governor, 1920–1924 
  Republicans 1924 
 Democrats 1924 
 Not Voting 1924 
 Total 

 
 Republicans
1920  

 .81 
 .06 
 .11 
 .42 

 
 Democrats
1920  

 .07 
 .79 
 .14 
 .33 

 
 Not Voting
1920  

 .15 
 .09 
 .76 
 .25 
 
Total .40 
 .31 
 .29 

   
 
 those for governor in 1920, demonstrates the general continuity in party loyalty.  

   
 
 Technically a "contingency table," Table 6.2 is not difficult to interpret. The "Total" figures represent the percentage of voting-age adults who cast ballots for the Republican and Democratic candidates or who did not vote. The figures in the cells of the table represent percentages of those totals. We can see, therefore, that 81 percent of those who voted for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 1924 had also voted Republican in 1920, 79 percent of the Democratic voters in 1924 had also supported that party in 1920, and 76 percent of the nonvoters in 1924 had also been nonvoters in 1920. Both parties appeared to lose a similar percentage of its 1920 voters to the other party in 1924 (the Republicans losing 6 percent of its 1920 supporters to the Democrats and the Democrats losing 7 percent to the Republicans). Blacks surely accounted for a great deal of the Republican defection, while Klansmen would have been the most likely to shift from the Democratic to the Republican camp. 26 The Republicans appeared to gain the greatest advantage in 1924 by attracting more support from those who had not voted in 1920. Overall, the percentage of nonvoters increased by 4 percent. Fifteen percent of the Republicans' support in 1924, however, came from those who had not voted in 1920, while 1920 nonvoters ac-