William Allen White (1868-1944), owner-editor of the Emporia Gazette in Kansas, was considered one of the leading spokesmen for liberal Republicanism in the Midwest. His newspaper had a limited circulation, but his syndicated editorials regularly reached a large national, audience. Throughout the 1920s the "Sage of Emporia" was an outspoken enemy of the Ku Klux Klan, which he considered representative of the worst aspects of the American national character. He eloquently expressed his attitude toward the Klan in an 18 May 1921 public letter to Herbert B. Swope, executive editor of the New York World:

American institutions, our courts, our legislatures . . . are strong enough to keep the justice and goodwill in the community. If these are not, then the thing to do is to change these institutions . . . but legally. For a self-constituted body of immoral idiots who would substitute the Ku...