Raleigh, July 8—Genuine Ku Klux Klansmen are doing quite a bit of sleuthing these hot days in the hope of finding the authorship of certain anonymous letter received by Raleigh newspaper men.
The first of these came to the Raleigh correspondent of the Greensboro Daily News following Tuesday morning’s write-up in which he declared that the parade planned by the klan had aroused quite a deal of opposition, especially among the Hinsdale men who construed it as a celebration of the klan’s victory n the recent district election which brought the Democratic nomination for solicitor to W.F. Evans over John W. Hinsdale.
Two days later the publisher of the Raleigh Times, John A. Park, received on Yarborough stationary a letter printed in an effort to disguise the authorship. This missive promised business reprisal and accused the editor of the paper, O.J. Coffin, of “shooting craps with negroes in the streets of Raleigh.” In the letter to the correspondent the writer says: “This is written by a friend of yours and in the best spirit. And I hope you will not regard it as a threat because it is only a warning.
“Our klan do not think that you deal with us fairly in the reports to your paper and we would like to have your support in the great reforms which we are determined to enforce and which we will have the power to enforce.
“We are striving for enough of our Klan ‘at court’ to fend your patriotic actions; we have just won a great victory and we have men even in the secret service of the Government who are high officials in the Klan and our boys are safe.
“When the boys discuss you and what measures should be used to get you to see our side I always defended you with the hope that you will some day be with us.
“In your article that we were very much disliked you quote mostly from the Raleigh Times; at our own good time we will deal with that in a firm but just manner.
“We are here YESTERDAY, TODAY and Forever and there are more victories of us and our friends.
KOTOP”
The klansmen do not believe that members of their order are sending out such stuff and they are comparing signatures and typewriting in the hope of learning something. With one accord they say these “warnings” are clumsy frauds. Spokesmen of the klan declare that while it wears robes and disguises itself, when it has anything against a man it dispatches an authorized committee to wait on the objectionable citizen.
These letters annoy the leaders very much because they do not know whether fools within or rascals without are trying to stir the people up against the order. Members of the klan now deny that the support of Evans was peculiar to themselves at all. They think as many members backed Hinsdale. The mode of reasoning is hard to follow. Certainly they are more generous in according support to Hinsdale now than they were a fortnight ago.
There are earmarks of fraud in these letters, but the peculiar habits of the klan lay the prima facie case at their door.
From the front page of The Charlotte News, July 8, 1922
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