His dramatic entrance reportedly elicited an explosion of cheers from the crowd, where several women fainted from excitement. He arrived at the ceremony in an airplane proudly sporting the letters “KKK,” and emerged swathed in purple robes with the tell-tale eighteen-inch white pointed hood upon his head. The man appointed as Grand Dragon that day was David Curtis Stephenson, a Republican politician from Evansville. Seven wagonloads of watermelon were bare by noon, showcasing the sheer mass of the crowd that flooded into Kokomo for the one-day event. People were encouraged to bring their own food in addition to the hundreds of truckloads of food provided. Still, the enormous amount of food was not enough.
A mountain of food was provided to the crowd, featuring hundreds of pounds of hamburger, five thousand cases of pop, two hundred fifty pounds of coffee, thousands of pies, and at least six tons of beef. ĭespite the efforts of opposing forces, however, the rally went on in excess. Travelling Klansmen also met with violence and opposition on their way to Kokomo, admitting that “every petty thing that could be used was put into force” by those who wished to stop the massive assembly. The Fiery Cross reported thousands of members were confused by road signs that had been changed to divert them 65 miles northeast to Bluffton, Indiana. The citizens of Kokomo who protested the Klan’s massive display of power did their best to dissuade the thousands of Klan members who drove into the city by manipulating road signs on the way to town. Train cars were specifically reserved to transport Klansmen and their families to Kokomo, and boys’ bands from Ohio traveled 300 miles to the rally, playing music to promote the event along the way. Rallies and initiations were held at the park twice a week, with separate meeting nights for men and women. The park was owned by the Kokomo Klavern, so it typically hosted Klan activities. The Malfalfa Park rally was unprecedented in its huge number of supporters and excessive displays.
Klan leaders thought Kokomo was a perfect site for the massive rally the town already had enormous Klan support, and it serendipitously contained two Ks in its name.
“Klaverns”, local units of the KKK, were chartered in every county, and Indiana was the only state where the governor and U.S. Their targets included African Americans, Jews, immigrants, and Catholics.īy the time of the mass gathering in Malfalfa Park in 1923, Indiana was home to the biggest Klan group in the United States and half of Kokomo’s residents were members of the KKK. The KKK originated in the South after the Civil War, but quickly spread to other states, where members pursued their mission to intimidate people that diverged from their profile of an ideal American. As the great number of attendees suggests, the Klan was well established in Indiana by the 1920s. The crowd gathered to celebrate the state’s transition from a KKK Province to a Realm and to inaugurate a new Indiana Grand Dragon. On July 4, 1923, approximately 200,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) met at Malfalfa Park in rural Kokomo, Indiana.
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