"Keep Kal Koolidge" in the Campaign of 1924

100 years ago the election was heading into the home stretch. The morning paper, the Statesman, was all in on Calvin Coolidge and started running ads and also supportive editorial content for him.

October 19th, 1924

The afternoon paper, the Capital Journal, did not support Coolidge.  On Halloween in 1924 they were starting to wrap with a note on the Klan.

October 31st, 1924

Repeatedly over the fall they had highlighted Klan support, riffing on the popularity of the slogan, "Keep Kal Koolidge."

VP Candidate Dawes, September 1st, 1924

September 8th, 1924

Though the commentary was framed as national perspective, the Klan remained active here locally and was a subtext for it. (Note "Grand Dragon, John J. Jefferies, formerly a Salem attorney" from September 8th.)

October 28th, 1924

The Klan sponsored a lecture at the Armory on the 28th. But there was finally enough opposition of various kinds, some internal conflict between the Powell and Gifford factions of the Klan, and some external criticism as from the afternoon paper, that they restricted admission, and the afternoon paper had not reported on it. The morning paper did share advance notice. And of course it was "respectable" and popular enough to be held at the Armory downtown. 

But it may have fizzled some, like the last round of lectures.

February 27th, 1924

In February of 1924 at the downtown Armory, a lecture by the deposed Klan leader Luther Powell promised "the truth about the Ku Klux Klan" and its decline under Fred Gifford.

His audience was small and he didn't deliver.

February 29th, 1924

A few days earlier the Gifford faction had held a meeting at the Grand Theater and invited the older faction, largely associated with Powell, for a peace offering. The Gifford Klan "did not have any difficulty seating the 'old timers' who attended. Less than forty people is all were present."

February 27th, 1924

Through 1924, as an organized, institutionalized force, as opposed to a general ethos, the Klan was dwindling. But plenty of people still seemed generally sympathetic to it, and the afternoon paper would not have revisited "Keep Kal Koolidge" so often if the critique had not remained important locally.