Opposition to Initiative No. 49
Returning to the public forums once again in 1924, leading up to the 1924 election, logging contractor and Klan critic Abraham Lincoln Clark once again attacked the Klan. Clark criticized the Good Government League, an organization that was later, under testimony of former Grand Dragon, O. H. Carpenter, in 1926, would be exposed to be a Klan funded and crafted organization put into place for the advancement of their political agenda.
Clark asserts that the Good Government League is no more trustworthy than the Spokane Civic League of 1922—another Klan orchestrated political arm. Clark attempts to expose further hypocrisy in the blatantly unfollowed creed of the Klan as cited from the Western American, a Klan paper in the northwest. Clark pushed against a common Klan rhetorical strategy of claiming misrepresentation surrounding the organization as a means to discredit critics and legal inquiry.
Nearing the fall election of ’24, the foremost item on the Klan political agenda was the passage of Washington State Initiative No. 49. The Initiative, often referred to as simply the “School Bill” mandated public school education for all Washington state children between the ages of seven and sixteen. While the rhetoric of the Bill was that of educational progress, the true intention of the Klan sponsored bill was to curb Catholic influence by the de facto outlawing of parochial primary schools. Proponents of the bill preached a separation of church and state when it came to education. Other political rhetoric of the Klan in 1924 centered around an opposition to liberal candidates such as the Lafollette bid for the presidency and a strong support of the reading of the Bible in public schools.
In August of 1924, Clark wrote out against the School Bill as a means of Klan control, once again denouncing the Good Government League as an arm of an organization that itself had sworn political involvement. Clark opposed the bill on the grounds of it’s anti-Catholic bias as well as it being the first step towards Klan control through indoctrination. By controlling legislation and mandating public schooling, the Klan sought control over the morals with which the children of the state were educated. Klan publications appealed to the White Protestant majority of the state as grounds for creating a public-school system which was not only mandatory, but explicitly served the majority.
The vocal and publicized opposition of Abraham Lincoln Clark to the school bill through both his opinion writing as well as his involvement in small level speaking engagements surrounding the initiative got the attention of the regional Klan who were hard at work promoting the initiative and attempting to control the narrative around it. The seemingly apt named Colfax Preacher, Rev. W. J. Blessing, wrote into the opinions forum of the Spokesman Review in favor of the bill. Blessing, while he had at this time, reportedly received multiple letters from Clark and others, did not at this time engage A. L. Clark specifically by name. Instead, He sought to discredit him by lumping those opposed to Initiative No. 49 as foolhardy people opposed to education in its entirety. Clark is alluded to in Blessing’s first letter by the denouncing of “lumberjacks and jackasses” opposed to the bill referencing Clark’s occupation as a logging contractor. Whether A. L. Clark was a jackass is unconfirmed.
The two shared further exchanges with Clark eventually challenging Blessing to a public debate. Blessing accepted and the debate was scheduled in the days leading up to the November 4th election. When the time came however, Blessing was deplatformed and the debate was cancelled last minute in favor of a singular speaker opposed to the Klan bill.
Amidst the State’s ongoing debates surrounding the school bill and Klan presence, Clark further spoke out against the Klan through published print. Publishing the book Why the Ku Klux Klan? in late 1924, he wrote of the organizations recent rebirth into the second Klan as well as the presence of the Klan in the Spokane region. Though long out of print, this book would prove to be the climax of Clark’s opposition to the Klan as following the failure of Initiative No. 49, his writings against the Klan largely ceased. Subsequent years however, proved less than fruitful for the Washington Klan, deflating in power and numbers as the decade continued.