Indiana at 200: KKK briefly held political power here
Andrea Neal
Jun 16, 2016
... The secretive brotherhood launched its Indiana recruitment efforts in Evansville in 1920. Within four years, Hoosier Klansmen numbered 250,000 and represented every corner of the state ...
This was not the same Klan that arose after the Civil War in opposition to Reconstruction ... The first Klan disappeared in the 1870s after President Ulysses Grant persuaded Congress to pass legislation outlawing it as a terrorist group.
The second Klan emerged in the South at the turn of the 20th century and rapidly expanded to Middle America. It proclaimed a message of patriotism, Prohibition enforcement and Christian values. It preached exclusion, too – of immigrants, blacks, Jews and especially Catholics ...
Despite its perceived influence, the Klan had little impact on laws passed in the 1925 session of the Indiana General Assembly. That March, Stephenson was charged with the brutal assault and subsequent death of an Indianapolis woman, Madge Oberholtzer, who had accompanied him on a trip to Chicago ...
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/andrea-neal/andrea-neal-kkk-briefly-held-political-power-here/article_e8dda2a5-24c4-521f-99a8-795b226b13cf.html