The Klan Comes to Tipton
The Klan Comes to Tipton Allen Safianow * “Klan Speaker Is Coming” proclaimed the headline of a brief article on the back page of the September 22,1922, Tipton Daily Tri- bune. Dr. Lester Brown, “a speaker of force . not radical in his views,” would deliver a free lecture from the public square band- stand, and all residents were invited. “Much has been heard of this order by our people,” the article noted, “but locally they have not come in contact with it.” The next evening Brown, who described himself as an ordained minister from Atlanta, Georgia, addressed an assemblage of townspeople the Tribune called “not large, but attentive” and distributed cards for interested persons to sign, with about one hundred reportedly responding. He portrayed the Klan as an American Christian organization, consisting of “native born, white Gentile, Protestant” citizens, that stood for charity, the Constitution, pure womanhood, the Bible, public schools, and racial purity. In con- junction with Brown’s address, copies of the Klan weekly, The Fiery Cross, were distributed throughout the town that weekend, con- taining articles that denied that the Klan was anti-Catholic, anti- Semitic, or “anti-negro,”yet raised fears about miscegenation, Catholic intrusion in American politics, and Jewish business practices.’ Within a relatively short period of time, the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan would attain a very visible pres- ence in Tipton, a small town located some thirty miles north of Indi- anapolis. In 1925 the Tipton County Klan would claim 1,622 members among the county’s 16,000 residents, making the Tipton Klan one of the strongest in Indiana, where the organization came to enjoy its greatest influence, claiming over 165,000 Hoosier members in 1925.’ Although considerable attention has been given to the Klan movement of the 1920s, the circumstances and meaning of the rise of the Invisible Empire continue to be disputed.
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