“Are you a Klansman?” Senator James Reed asked the mayor. “Yes,” he replied. His admission was a surprise only to those who were unwilling to read the true mood in the Heartland of the 1920s. As D. C. Stephenson had learned from his early days building the Invisible Empire along the banks of the Ohio, being a Klansman was no encumbrance in the great American midsection. When hate was on the ballot, especially in the guise of virtue, a majority of voters knew exactly what to do.
