The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1922–1925 · SOUTH BEND AND THE COUNTY AT BOUNDARY SIZE; CLAY AND HARRIS TESTED
In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan essentially governed Indiana: Governor Edward L. Jackson was a Klansman, and as many as one-third of all White Protestant men in the state were members. St. Joseph County's chapter, the Reparatory Commission reports, had hundreds of members in powerful positions, held an annual picnic and baseball game at Lake Maxinkuckee in Culver, and its members harassed and intimidated Black families. The Tribune's front page of 17 December 1922 already read "Threat of Ku Klux Grows." The era's dated, named episode on the record is a church. As Rev. Gordon led the building of a new A.M.E. Zion church on Eddy Street — the First A.M.E. Zion building, under construction from about 1923 — the Klan attempted to stop the project, threatening to tear down the building as it was being constructed and challenging it in court. Gordon carried a pistol and hired a lawyer; the congregation watched the construction site every night; and, in the Commission's words, "the congregation and students from the University of Notre Dame guarded the building until the work was completed in 1925." Attorney Charles Wills, a member of the Olivet A.M.E. congregation, led the legal fight against the Klan's attempt to stop the construction. The confrontation came into the open in May 1924, when the Klan announced a picnic and parade in South Bend and, on 17 May 1924, some 500 Notre Dame students marched downtown and confronted the Klansmen in a clash that ran three days, 17–19 May 1924; a Klan return announced for 18 October 1924 — 200,000 strong, it claimed — was cancelled after the Republican state chairman threatened to close the party's headquarters. The row asks for a dated letter or threat of 1923, and the distinction is printed plainly: no 1923 letter, as a document, was reached in any open source. The verified form of the 1923-era threat is the threat against the church construction itself, dated by the building's construction span, and no letter is invented to fill the row's phrasing.
Township test — tested negative. Searched for any Klan organising, letter, threat, klavern or incident seated in Clay or Harris Township: the Tribune's 1920s record as reachable on the open web, the county histories' township chapters, the Commission's report (which contains no mention of Granger, Clay Township or Harris Township anywhere in its 138 pages), and the Indiana Historical Society's Klan holdings as openly described. Nothing returned a township-level Klan fact of any kind. The Klan era's St. Joseph County record is a South Bend and county record; on Granger's ground it has no instance in the record reached. Settler for any deeper township test: the Indiana Historical Society's Klan records and the Tribune file at the St. Joseph County Public Library, neither openly searchable to township level.
Sources: South Bend Reparatory Justice Commission, Final Report, History §II.B; Belt Magazine (2016) on Gordon and the guarded church; Indiana Landmarks, Olivet A.M.E. Church National Register nomination (15 June 2022); University of Notre Dame News, RESIST! exhibit materials (Apr. 2024) on the May 1924 clash; Todd Tucker, Notre Dame vs. the Klan (2004/2018).