My jaw dropped when I ran across this incredible front page article in the Oct. 27, 1922 issue of The Walla Walla Valley Spectator, where the Ku Klux Klan is treated as if they were like the local garden club. And we're not talking about the Deep South here, this is in Prescott, Washington. Yes, good ol' Blue State progressive Washington that has legalized pot and Gay marriage and has never voted for a Bush for President.
What really struck me as I read through this was how much the Klan spokesman sounded like one of today's Tea Party proponents.
I love Eastern Washington. I was born there. My most prolific period as a cartoonist took place there in the 1980s. It sickens me that it also has a strong element of fear-based people willing to swallow the nonsense of the Klan, "Neo" Nazis, and Tea Baggers, all birds of a feather in my thinking.
Perhaps that good, patriotic, pious Christian, that man who spreads the word of God, the Rev. Burger, was really from the Church of the Nazirene.
Yours,
A Member of the "Adverse Element."
