Edward Jackson (1925 – 1929) Ed Jackson was born in Howard County in 1873. He eventually passed the bar to become a lawyer and opened an office in Henry County. He handled work for the Prosecutor’s office and then was elected to the Prosecutor position, then as the Circuit Court Judge. He married Rosa Wilkinson and was married to her for 22 years before she died in the influenza epidemic of 1919.
Jackson won election to Secretary of State in 1916, but resigned to enlist in the Army in 1917 when the U.S. entered World War I. He was stationed in various locations in the U.S., ultimately ending up in West Lafayette, reaching the rank of major and commanded the Student Army Training Corps at Purdue. When the war ended, Jackson briefly took up a law practice in Lafayette. In 1920, he returned to the Secretary of State position, first by appointment, then by election. At some point during this period, Jackson joined the Klan. He had his eye on the governor’s office, and D.C. Stephenson had his eye on Jackson.
In 1924, Jackson ran for the governor’s office. “The first year of Jackson’s term was comparatively tranquil. He got the state-tax rate reduced from 30 cents to 22. He expanded the state park system buying the first land for Dunes Park on the shore of Lake Michigan and promoting the movement for the George Rogers Clark Memorial at Vincennes.” In 1925, he was caught up in a minor scandal involving Prohibition. Prohibition was a national policy, but states had enforcement responsibility. Under Jackson and at the urging of the Anti-Saloon League, Indiana passed the “Bone Dry Law,” which made Indiana’s enforcement relatively strict, banning even medicinal whiskey. After that passed, Jackson’s second wife got sick.
When Jackson’s wife, Lydia, was ill, the governor asked the attorney general to procure some medicinal whiskey for her, as the attorney general previously had for his own children. Revelation of the alcohol consumption prompted a minor scandal that diminished Jackson’s standing as governor.
But Jackson’s big problem was with the Klan. While he was Secretary of State, Jackson issued the Klan a state charter. Governor McCray demanded that it be rescinded since the leadership would not reveal themselves to sign the charter. Jackson refused. In 1923, Jackson was attempting to help the Klan secure the appointment of a favored individual, James McDonald, as Prosecutor of Marion County. When McCray’s former campaign manager could not make the sale, Jackson came in to make a pitch with the offer of a $10,000 bribe to make the appointment. McCray did not accept, appointing Will Remy as Prosecutor instead. It would not be long before McCray was forced to resign due to his legal problems (said to have been fanned by Klansmen who opposed him.)
D.C. Stephenson arranged to put Jackson at the head of a ticket pushed by the Klan. Jackson accepted $227,000 in campaign funds and promised to put Stephenson’s men in state positions. Thanks to Klan support, Jackson won a contested Republican primary. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, the Catholic support for anti-Klan, Lafayette mayor, George Durgan was not enough to win the primary against Tom Taggert’s machine candidate, Dr. Carleton McCulloch. McCulloch and Taggart had decided on a neutral strategy with respect to the Klan. The party rank and file was divided on the issue — the Democrats Catholic constituency was anti-Klan but there were plenty of Democratic Klansmen. Durgan’s strong showing, however, disrupted their plans. McCulloch only got a plurality, and he was therefore forced to contend with the strength of the anti-Klan movement in the party. After the primary, McCulloch was forced to speak out against the Klan to get the Democratic nomination. Despite the candidates’ efforts to mute the Klan issue, the newspaper coverage of the election turned the election into a referendum on the Klan. Stephenson’s man, Ed Jackson, beat McCulloch 53.4% to 46.6%. The election marked a demographic shift with Democrats losing a good number of white Protestants and picking up the support of black voters who had formerly been loyal Republicans.
Stephenson’s political ambitions caused friction with the national organization. The national organization was not so eager to engage overtly in politics. Many of its members looked upon the Klan as a lodge where they could talk about their vision of “pure American values” in private. But Stephenson was ambitious and not content to work in the political background. There was also the matter of money.
On July 4, 1923, Stephenson was appointed Grand Dragon of Indiana. Apparently the Klan organization was such that a semi-autonomous division could be created and a Grand Dragon appointed — this was not often done for financial reasons. But, in Stephenson’s case, the move seemed justified. Nevertheless, the Indiana Klan had to pay substantial “tribute” to the national organization. Stephenson resigned his positions in September of 1923 and, between then and the Spring of 1924, there was jockeying between him and the Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans for control of the Indiana organization. In May of 1924 — after the primary in which Jackson was nominated as the Republican gubernatorial nominee — Stephenson declared Indiana’s independence of the national Klan.
I saw this quote the other day and thought of the human scum that was D C Stephenson. And how effective soulless mendicants can be:
As Hannah Arendt wrote in Crisis of the Republic, “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear. He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible, whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected, for which we were not prepared.”