200 Ku Klux Klan Force Lake City Negroes to Work for Less, Oct. 22, 1920

White caps 200 strong, with horses and riders clan in the Ku Klux Klan gard, road into Lake City, South Carolina, last Thursday night and as a result the cotton fields next day were thick with cotton pickers and the housewives of Lake city have all the help in the way of cooks and washerwomen they desire. Farmers now see a way out of the ruin which faced them by a deterioration of cotton turning blue in the fields for lack of pickers. The white caps appeared in the town of Lake City about 1 o'clock last Thursday night. First they called on some farmers who had been paying as much as $1.50 a hundred pounds for picking cotton and and suggested to them that this was too much. The price fell to $1 in a twinkling. Then the calvalcade proceeded to the negro section and threw out several hints to the effect that more work and less loafing among the negroes of that section would perhaps be a good thing. Hence the new hordes of pickers and the multitude of cooks and washers today. Mayor W.H. Whitehead was also visited. It was then about 2 o'clock in the morning. The mayor came to his door and was told he should enforce the vagrancy laws more vigorously. Mayor Whitehead responded by declaring that he had attempted to enforce these laws but his efforts had been met with severe criticism from some quarters, and that to make the laws more effective he must have the undivided support of the community. From the looks of things last night the mayor is sure of this support in the future. The white caps went about their business calmly and quietly. There was no evidence of any intention to offer violence to any of the many persons visited, but they meant business just the same. (From the front page of the Monroe Journal, Oct. 22, 1920)