Thomas County GaArchives News.....KU KLUX KLAN HAS POLITICAL AMBITIONS June 3 1922
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Winnette Stinson gnw@rose.net June 2, 2003, 9:10 pm

Microfilm in Thomasville Public Library


Daily Times Enterprise
June 3, 1922

 
KU KLUX KLAN HAS 
   POLITICAL  AMBITIONS
       
Atlanta, June 3, -   Following up its victory in Portland Ore., and in the 
flush of it's fight to defeat Senator Culbertson in Texas, the Ku Klux Klan 
whose national headquarters are in Atlanta, has laid plans to break  into the 
Georgia Legislature this year, plant as many members as possible, and later to 
set up a straight-out fight to control the state political administration with 
a ticket of its own. 
     The first break in its political efforts comes Sunday, when the formal 
announcement will be made of the candidacy of Joe O. Wood, now a member of the 
Atlanta city council, and member of the firm of Hutcheson, Wood, Morris and 
Joyner, for the Legislature from Fulton County.  Wood sometimes ago "bought" 
the Searchlight, the Ku Klux Klan organ from Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler, when state 
sentiment in the Clark-Tyler episode became so heated Mrs. Tyler was 
forced, "in the interest of the Klan," to get out of at least her open work in 
connection with the Klan.  Wood, now owner and editor of the Searchlight, is 
one of the prime geniuses of the Klan here and a sort of right-hand bower of 
the imperial ruler of the Klan. Carl Hutcheson, his law partner, also is a 
prominent agitator in the same connection and has been the particular fester in 
local politics and more lately in the city educational system. 
     It is understood that since the Klan came off particularly victorious in 
its Oregon political fight where the elections was pitched openly on a Klan and 
anti Klan ticket, the organization's center of imperial government has 
concluded that its spread of influence can best be served by first getting hold 
of the political and law-making machinery of its home state, therefore, the 
Wood candidacy for the Legislature in Fulton county,.  Wood, however, is said 
to be by no means the only Klan candidate for the Legislature this summer, but 
there are more than a dozen of the smaller counties in the state in which 
straight out Ku Klux Klan hand-picked candidates are being run for seats now 
held open by men who are avowedly opposed to the Klan, but in none of the 
campaigns is the fact to be known that they are running as Klan candidates. 
     As an incident in connection with this development, which leaked out here 
last night, it is learned that there was something of a political connection 
between the recent dynamiting incident in Columbus and the late charter fight 
in Atlanta, in effect, at least, in that at the very moment of the Columbus 
incident the Ku Klux Klan was working teeth and toe nail in Atlanta to defeat 
proposed city manager charter plan, which Atlanta has just voted on and 
defeated, and it is learned, too, that of all the jubilation over the defeat of 
that charter, none was greater than that of the Klan when the election results 
were announced. 
     The platform on which Joe Wood is running for the Legislature will 
conspicuously display his intention to fight for the abolition for "all semi-
penal and corrective institutions in the state not under the immediate 
jurisdiction and control of state officers." Covertly that is aimed at the 
House of the Good Shepherd, it is learned which both Wood and the Klan have 
determined to destroy as a result of clash in Columbus over certain work being 
done by the Good Shepherd organization. 
     At the same time it is learned the Klan offices in Atlanta are being 
flooded with information revealing the developments following a recent raid by 
forces of District Attorney Woolwine's office, in Los Angeles, of the office of 
W. S. Coburn, grand goblin of the Pacific Coast domain, when the membership 
records of that domain were seized.  These memberships have since been printed 
by numerous newspapers of that section, showing up the men of the local 
committees, whose names were on the lists, and, according to information which 
has come here.


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