How many members did the Ku Klux Klan boast in 1946? Was it OK to express your support for the Klan in polite society? How was the Klan regarded in the South? How was it regarded outside the South?
When the Superman radio serial aired a story where Superman fights the Ku Klux Klan, was there any major backlash in the press?
Founded in 1915 by William J. Simmons, the Second Klan found mass appeal nationwide, with more chapters in the North than in the south, appealing to a larger white membership base than the first klan had. In both the south and the north the klan was a secret, vigilant organization modeled on other, similar, groups like the Freemasons or Woodsmen of the World. At its height, it had more than a million members nationwide.
The Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan's great decline started in the mid 1920s. Its leadership had shifted due to arrests, and the tide of public opinion began turning against them. One major cause was when D.C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of Indiana (state leader) raped, and murdered school teacher Madge Oberholtzer. When she was still living after a brutal assault and rape, Stephenson dropped her dying body off at her parents house, where she lived long enough to sign a statement. A later autopsy report noted "An examination of her body later revealed deep bite wounds were on her face, neck, breasts, back, legs, ankles, and tongue" (There are pictures of Madge Oberholtzers body online, NSFW)
When this hit the news the Klan in Indiana virtually disappeared hundreds of thousands of members quit the organization and lodges simply ceased to exist. Across the country, the entire Klan was disrupted as their numbers shrank from more than a million in the teens and early 1920s to 1928 when they were a fraction of what they once had. Numbers dropped again with the coming of the Great Depression, most people were more focused on finding food and jobs than terrorizing. When people refer to the Superman Radio Show being effective in dismantling or hurting membership numbers of the klan, you must realize that by this time the Klan is a splintered, weak, organization. Still commiting acts of terror, but without any large appeal. It wouldn't be until 1954 and the passage of Brown v. Board of Education that the Klan made a significant resurgence. EVen then, the numbers have never reached the height of the Invisible Empire.