Anti-Klan Ticket Elected by Union

From The Indianapolis Star, Tuesday, August 14, 1923: At a meeting last night, delegates of the Central Labor Union overwhelming elected the American Federation of Labor slate, an exclusively anti-Ku Klux Klan ticket, whose handbills bore the motto “Keep Religious and Race Prejudice Out of the Labor Movement.” John Smith, candidate for president, defeated his opponent Louis Schwartz, 83 to 13. Other anti-Klan candidates for office defeated their opponents by similar margins. Although rumblings of a Klan fight within the Union had been heard for some time, it was a resolution introduced by the agent of the Motion Picture Operators disapproving of the Klan and calling it an un-American organization that brought matters out into the open. After the vote, the Electrotypers Union No. 30 withdrew from the central organization joining six other unions that had previously withdrawn their delegates.