Any community might welcome an organization seeking to be “a dignified, dependable agency for the achievement of civic righteousness.” But what if that organization also espoused the principle that the American population of white citizens “has proved its value and should not be mongrelized” through intermarriage or even association with other races, nationalities or non-Protestant faiths? This was the Ku Klux Klan, its name derived from the Greek word for “circle.” In the 1920s, it was at the peak of its membership, power, influence and (especially) violence, focused in the Midwest and Indiana in particular.