The Dallas Journal, Volume 51, 2006 Page: 46
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A Glimpse Into Dallas County Elections - 1922
prospective reforms, it may be said that the
effectuation of the first would not render the Ku
Klux Klan materially less objectionable.
Parading in mask is the most harmless of its
activities; is probably the only harmless one. In
making that promise it "reserves the right" to
parade unmasked, without, however, giving
assurance that it will exercise that right. Since
that right has not and will not be challenged nor
abridged, the reservation of it is an act of
effrontery. The klan expresses the hope that its
members will be allowed to reveal their identity,
and thus afford the public a means of
ascertaining whether they are worthy exemplars
of the superior patriotism and righteousness
which they profess from behind their masks.
The realization of that hope is contingent on the
favor of the imperial authority. Assuming that
the permission is granted, the most that could be
said is that it would lessen the klan's power for
harm without rendering the obligations imposed
on its members less objectionable and without
rendering its activities less mischievous. If it
should undergo no other reform than this that is
promised, it would still remain a dangerous
organization, a menace to the integrity of the
county's institutions and a disturber of the peace
of the community.
The klan "deplores the recent illegal and
outrageous whippings of Dallas people at the
hands of lawbreakers." That may reasonably be
accepted as a denial that the klan as an
organization, has directed or authorized the
commission of those crimes. It can not be
accepted as a denial, nor- to credit the authors
of this address with all the candor shown by
them - was it apparently intended to be a denial
that those Crimes were committed by individual
members of the klan who were inspired by its
spirit and emboldened by the promise of
concealment and protection it gives to those
who take its oath of fealty. The klan has never
paraded here or elsewhere that it has not
flaunted banners in the face of the law,
threatening malefactors with its vengeance, and
it owes the tolerance which it enjoys largely tothe belief that it punishes and banishes those
who allude the law's penalties. That undeniable
fact amply exposes the hypocrisy of its
pretended reverence for the law and its
institutions.
One of the charges brought against the klan by
Mayor Aldredge was that of"fanning the flames
of prejudice," religious and racial. This charge
is not answered: it is evaded. Some denial
seems to have been intended by the offer to
submit its ritual and ceremonial to the
examination of a body made up in part of
Jewish, Protestant and Catholic clerics. But
since the judgment is to be whether its ritual and
ceremonial are "un-American," the verdict
would not respond to the charge Mayor
Aldredge brought against it. The klan says it is
not making a fight on race, creed or sect. It may
not be, in the sense of seeking to deprive men of
any civil right guaranteed to them by the
Constitution. But it fosters and battens on
religious and racial prejudices, and in doing so
generates a spirit which will not lack the
hardihood, once it is conscious of the power, to
make the kind of war which the klan now thinks
it prudent to disavow. For the profit of its alien
proprietors, the Ku Klux Klan is preying on
passions which only need its continued
incitement to make them destructive of the
rights which the Constitution guarantees to
Catholic, Jew and foreign-born.
Of that capital crime against Americanism, the
indisputable facts accuse the klan irrefutable. It
is not a religious order; much less a sectarian
one. Its exclusion of Jew, Catholic and foreign-
born, therefore, implies that their patriotism is
compromised by their religious faiths and the
accident of birth. It has offered its ritual and
ceremonial presumably in refutation of this
indictment of its Americanism. There is other
and more pertinent evidence. There is its
propaganda. There is its masked, but not the
less authentic, publication, which reeks with
slander of Jews, Catholics and foreign-born.46 Dallas Journal 2006
Dallas Journal 2006
46
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Dallas Genealogical Society. The Dallas Journal, Volume 51, 2006, periodical, October 2006; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth186865/m1/50/?rotate=90: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Genealogical Society.