When FDR saw fit to nominate a Klansman to the Supreme Court, Hugo Black, it prompted the editors at Literary Digest to recall the history of those terrorists and how they came into existence, their customs and practices, etc. Teddy Roosevelt's (1858 - 1919) magazine The Outlook, was often quite critical of the Ku Klux Klan, yet in this brief notice the editors seemed surprisingly Milquetoast in their reporting of the organization's growth and assorted activities. The article passively noted bizarre rumors that stood in contrast to the Klan's history:
"There have been some queer developments in the Ku Klux Klan. Thus in Georgia it has been alleged that Negroes have been asked to join..." Attached is a two-page article about that day in 1928 when the KKK stood before Judge W.H.S. Thomson in a Federal Court in Pittsburgh:
"A Daniel has come to judgment, in the opinion of many a newspaper writer, when a Federal judge in a formal opinion read the bench delivers a denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan in terms as strong as any of the private enemies of that organization have ever used. Federal Judge W.H.S. Thomson, in concluding that complicated KKK trial, remarked that the Klan was an 'unlawful organization' coming into court 'with filthy hands after open and flagrant violation' of the law..."
CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.
"The night before [the Miami] citizens went to the polls to decide among 15 candidates for three commissionerships, the old specter of the Ku Klux Klan was raised to scare away the colored votes."
The scheme didn't work. An article by one of the KKK's most outspoken enemies in the press, Stanley Frost (author of "Challenge of the Klan"), who reported on the political dust-up that took place in the Oklahoma state government when the Klan made serious attempts to be a dominate factor in Oklahoma politics.
"THE OUTLOOK sent Stanley Frost to Oklahoma to study the amazing political conflict which has taken place in the state. The forces at odds in the state may have a far-reaching influence upon national politics."
A few of the members of "the Hooded Order" down Alabama way got some unexpected news in 1927 when they discovered that their standard maneuvering tactics, so often relied upon to skirt the law, had failed them utterly. Three separate set-backs in as many months had resulted in the criminal convictions of thirty-six members of the Ku Klux Klan; so surprising was this event to the local residents, the Alabama press corps and those ink-stained wretches way up North at the THE LITERARY DIGEST, that soon the nation found everyone was discussing it. This article is essentially a collection of assorted opinions gathered from across the United States concerning this stunning defeat for the Alabama Klan. | 
