Without getting an official permit to hold the parade, the Ku Klux Klan announced that it would be held at 8:30 p.m. The sheriff notified the community that the parade was against the law and that he would not allow it. The word was carried to the Ku Klux Klan leaders. Messages were sent back and forth, and the Ku Kluxers tried to scare the sheriff into a retreat. He refused to back down, however, and ended the negotiations by telling the Klansmen that they had to obey the law as well as other citizens.
The sheriff said there was a law against uncertain masked men who refused to divulge their identity. He would agree to the parade if the names of the masked men were furnished to him. This the Klan leaders refused to do.
The Klansmen held a council of war at which the sheriff was denounced for daring to give them orders. They decided to show the people of Lorena that they were bigger than the sheriff or the law that he represented. The chief of the Klansmen gave the order for the parade to start.
With a posse of citizens and deputies, Sheriff Buchanan met the parade at the intersection of the main streets. Thousands of persons were out to witness the test of strength between the law and the Ku Klux Klan. The sheriff approached a masked Klansman who carried a fiery cross. He attempted to seize the cross. There was a shot. A bullet hit the sheriff in the right arm. A general gun fight followed and ten persons were injured. The Masked Knights hurriedly departed, carrying one of their number who was wounded.
Sheriff Buchanan is hailed as a hero in Texas by the law-abiding element. The United States needs more public officials like him—men with the courage to stand by their oaths of office.
OTHER OUTRAGES
Since the Ku Klux Klan was organized night outrages in which masked men are involved have increased to a frequency not known in the United States since the years just following the Civil War, when the original Ku Klux Klan was active in the southern states against "carpet baggers" and Negroes.
A murder was committed on June 9, 1921, at Sea Breeze, Fla., by masked men who said they were Ku Klux Klan. They took Thomas L. Reynolds from his bed and punched and kicked him. Then one of the masked men shot him. He died later. Official investigation failed to involve the Ku Klux Klan.