The crusades: the Klan test, the Enterprise's campaigns, and the Pulitzer test

1920s–PRESENT · THREE TESTS PRINTED

The Klan test for the Mishawaka press: Indiana's second Klan was a press story as much as a political one — papers across the state took sides in print, and the neighboring county record is carried in this build at its proper size: the St. Joseph County Klan record is South Bend's frame, boundary-printed in City Controversies, and is not absorbed here. For Mishawaka's own paper, the test returns a named gap. The searches run in November 2026 for the Mishawaka Enterprise's stance toward the Klan returned no Mishawaka result — the Enterprise that surfaces in Klan-era press searches is the Saranac Lake, New York paper of the same name, a different Enterprise, and the Indiana anti-Klan exemplars the record celebrates are other men's papers: George R. Dale's Muncie Post-Democrat and the Indianapolis Recorder. What the Mishawaka Enterprise said of the Klan in 1921–1927, the decade of the Klan's Indiana power, therefore stands open, settling source named: the Enterprise run of those years, held by the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library and indexed through Hoosier State Chronicles. No stance is attributed to the paper that its own pages have not been read to prove.

Documented Enterprise crusades — the test at found size: no sustained Enterprise crusade — an annexation campaign, a prohibition campaign, a civic-reform campaign of the kind the crusading papers of the era are remembered by — was documented at found size in the records searched. The city's annexation course and prohibition course stand in this build where they belong, in Government and City Controversies, told from the official and court records; the Enterprise's editorial part in them is not separately documented in those tellings, and this addendum does not promote the paper from witness to campaigner without its pages. The settling source is the same run named above: the Enterprise's editorial columns, read whole, are where a Mishawaka crusade would live if one was waged.

The Pulitzer test, from the Pulitzer record itself: no Mishawaka paper holds a Pulitzer Prize. The test was run against the Pulitzer record as the Pulitzer Prizes publish it (pulitzer.org — winners by category and the site's own search) for the Enterprise, the Democrat, the Times and the Monitor, and against the Indiana winners list: Indiana's Pulitzer record is Indianapolis's — the Indianapolis Times won the 1928 Public Service prize for exposing political corruption in Indiana and the collusion between Governor Ed Jackson and Klan leader D. C. Stephenson (editor Boyd Gurley), and the Indianapolis Star holds the 1975 and 1991 Investigative Reporting prizes and the 2021 National Reporting prize. No Mishawaka title, and no journalist credited to a Mishawaka paper, appears anywhere in the winners record. The negative is printed at the strength of that record: the prizes are enumerated and complete, and Mishawaka is not in them.

Sources:

1. The Pulitzer Prizes, winners record (pulitzer.org), searched November 2026 for the Mishawaka Enterprise, Democrat, Times and Monitor — no entry; Indianapolis Times, Public Service, 1928; Indianapolis Star, Investigative Reporting 1975 and 1991, National Reporting 2021.
2. Indiana Historical Bureau / Hoosier State Chronicles (Indianapolis Times' 1928 prize; Governor Ed Jackson and D. C. Stephenson; George R. Dale's Muncie Post-Democrat as Indiana's anti-Klan exemplar).
3. Searches run, November 2026: "Mishawaka Enterprise Ku Klux Klan," "Mishawaka Enterprise editorial campaign annexation prohibition" — no Mishawaka result returned.
4. City Controversies, Government, this build (county Klan frame; annexation and prohibition courses) — pointers.