In the guise of protecting community morals, it expanded its victims of vigilante justice to those it deemed lawbreakers, bootleggers, unfaithful spouses, corrupt politicians, etc.-all with no judge or jury beyond the local secret "klavern." Whippings, tar-and-featherings, threats of violence, and for black victims, lynching, became common practice in some regions of the South, Southwest, and Midwest (Indiana was the stronghold of Klan power in the decade).Īs the Klan marketed its message nationwide through paid "kleagles" and Klan membership climbed into the millions, many groups came to resemble community fraternal organizations rather than bands of masked nightriders. By equating white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism with "true Americanism," it fueled intolerance for blacks, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. Spreading far beyond its roots in the Reconstruction South, the resurgent Klan of the 1920s was a short-lived but potent phenomenon.
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