Federal Control of Schools Urge by Wizard of Klan

From The Indianapolis Star, Thursday, February 14, 1924: Before a crowded Cadle Tabernacle last night, Hiram Evans, Ku Klux Klan emperor, urged creation of a cabinet level U. S. department of education, attacked the Catholic Church as an enemy of the public school system, and called for strict immigration laws. “I advocate adequate education of our future citizenship through a free public school system [and] a rigidly enforced immigration adapted to our ideals and needs. The two go together. Neither alone can re-Americanize and safeguard our sacred institutions. If this country continues to be flooded by inferior peoples whose assimilation is impossible the task of enlightened advancement will be hopeless. Let immigration of every undesirable type be stopped until our own illiteracy and internal strifes can be superseded by a literacy based on unselfish, unshackled truth and patriotism, Evans said.”