Klan Unstoppable In 1922 Senate Election

“Farmer Jim” Ferguson spent July 4, 1922, politicking at patriotic picnics in East Texas, but even the champion campaigner had his work cut out for him if he hoped to beat not one but two Klan-supported candidates in the race for the U.S. Senate.

Revived in Georgia in 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was exported to Texas five years later. In record time, the hooded order became the most powerful force in Lone Star politics. Although membership never exceeded 140,000, a microscopic three percent of the state population, the KKK could count on thousands of Texans to follow their lead come Election Day.

Encouraged by the failing health of five-term incumbent Charles Culberson, five different challengers filed for the 1922 Democratic Senate primary. Leading the list were James E. Ferguson, the impeached former governor who still packed a political punch in the countryside, and two reputed Klansmen: ex-congressman R.L. Henry and railroad commissioner Earle B. Mayfield. While Henry proudly boasted of his KKK affiliation, Mayfield played it close to the vest and stayed shrewdly silent on the subject.

The opening primary featured a strong first-place showing by Mayfield, who drew 30 percent of the vote, with Ferguson making the runoff by edging the incumbent Culberson for second. Gov. Pat Neff condemned both as unfit for the high office, but most prominent Democrats such as Sen. Morris Sheppard chose Mayfield, a prohibitionist, as the lesser of two evils over Farmer Jim, an unabashed “wet.”

Unusually nasty name-calling produced a heavy turnout for the next round of balloting on the last Saturday in August 1922. In contrast to brother Klansmen that went down to defeat in three other contests, Mayfield rode an anti-Ferguson backlash to a surprising 50,000-vote victory.

The nomination of the closet Klansman stunned Democratic Party regulars, especially liberals who had failed to take the Mayfield movement seriously. With seven short weeks until the general election in November, disaffected Democrats gathered in Dallas to select their own candidate.

The day before the meeting, Republicans endorsed sight unseen the impending choice of the so-called “Independent Democrats.” Still an ineffective minority a half century after Reconstruction, the GOP was ready to rally around a rebel Democrat so long as he was “a clean honorable man who is opposed to the Ku Klux Klan.”

Naturally no Democratic office-holder in his right mind was willing to risk his career by going against the party