The Winkest Link

If you haven’t already, please read the Prelude and Part 1.

The Sage Hen
Evangeline S. McAllister
July 2, 1936 (Part 2 of 3)
(from The Minatare Free Press)

Such organizations as the Klan and the Black Legion appeal chiefly to lonesome young men who are starved for a proper social life, and ready to join anything in order to “belong.” They will survive so long as the masses are ignorant of their own constitutional rights, and so long as sleek-tongued organizers see a good thing in preying on this ignorance.
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Ten years ago, when the Klan revival was in it’s full and perfect flower, Dad fell for the silver-tongued oratory, and forked over his good ten-spot for which he got a lot of hot air and a length of muslin … also detailed instructions from a total stranger as to which of our neighbors we dared to trade with, and what candidates he should support in the coming elections.
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When we hit Longmont, in 1923, we had four children, a job, a paper which said that the bank would henceforth assume the responsibility of running our homestead and such chattels and appurtenances as belonged therewith … and, if I remember rightly, seven dollars and fifty cents United States money.

We went to a little grocery up on north Main street and arranged for credit. The proprietor and his wife kept a clean, neat place, and treated us well, so we continued to trade there. But when Dad joined the Klan we were told to stop trading with the Stephenson’s at once. The wife, it seemed, was a Catholic. Therefore our children could no longer thrive on their bread and butter and dill pickles. We must trade with a brother Klansman. Then Dad blew up. He told them Old Tom Stephenson had extended him credit when he didn’t have a dime, and he’d be ****ed if he would quit trading with him.

< TOMORROW: Part 3 of Evangeline vs KKK >
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