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1920 – 1929
The machine was statewide; the Mishawaka document is not found: Indiana's second Ku Klux Klan was, at its mid-1920s peak, the most powerful political machine in the state, and St. Joseph County's documented share of it stands in South Bend's record — the dated threat letter of 1923, the guarded church, the clash at Notre Dame in May 1924, the headquarters at 230 South Michigan Street. The negative includes the city's own commissioned history: Mishawaka: A History contains no occurrence of the word "Klan" at all, a silence verified by search of the whole text. The county record across the river proves the machine was here, in this valley, in force; it does not document one act of it inside this city's limits, and this record prints the distinction rather than inflating the valley's evidence into a Mishawaka entry or skipping the era as though the question had not been asked.
The settling sources are named: the Mishawaka Enterprise run on film at the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library, the Klan's own Fiery Cross, Suzanne Gaughan Nevel's 1977 Princeton thesis on the South Bend Klan, and Leonard Moore's Citizen Klansmen. Until the Enterprise run is read for the 1920s, the Mishawaka Klan entry is this searched negative — a result about the record reached, printed as such, and not a claim that nothing happened.
Sources
- South Bend black-history file — the county's documented Klan record whole (the 1923 letter; May 1924; 230 South Michigan Street). Boundary: South Bend's record, pointer here.
- Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — searched whole; no occurrence of "Klan" or "African."
- This pass's searches, November 2026 — no Mishawaka klavern, rally, incident or membership record surfaced.