Tensas gazette. [volume] (St. Joseph, La.) 1886-current, 1922-11-24

home from a ball game by masked
men.
Friends of Mr.. Parker declare the
article of the Washington Post to be
without basis.
"A vague pooh-pooh of an article
! is that in the Washington Post" ac-
cording to two assistant attorney
generals, George Seth Guion and I.
Semmes Walmsley.
Both Mr.. Guion and Mr.. Walmsey
professed ignorance Of the condition
which the Posts article said existed
in Louisiana.
Assistant Attorneys General Guion
and Walmsley indicated they were
loath to believe the governor contem-
plated an absolute surrender of the
state to federal Intervention, or
that he had admitted there was an
abject paralysis Of the functioning
of state government in Louisiana.
! "Such drastic action in itself
should refute the report that the
visit of Governor Parker and At
torney General Coco at Washing
ton has any such drastic object in
view," said Messrs. Guion and Walm-
sley.
The dispatches follow:
Washington Post Syringe Khan Louie
lana Story.
The article in the Washington Post
says:
By George Rockwell Brown
Especial Dispatch to the Washing
ton Post)
BATON ROUGE, La, Nov. 90
The Ku Klux Klan has reached out
boldly for civil power over officers
of law and justice over an immense
territory and has virtually reduced
the sovereign state of Louisiana to
the vassalage Of the invisible EN-.
pire.
The machinery Of state govern
ment has almost ceased to function
as the unseen power Of the mysterious
secret society exerts its force in the
office of state and local authorities
and in the very courts Of law.
Governor John NJ Parker has
gone to Washington to lay the whole
situation before President Harding
to inform the federal authorities
that state law has virtually come to
q stop in Louisiana in the face OF
the mysterious power Of the kan,
and to ask the United States gov
ernment to take over the admins
tration of the law in Louisiana or
in certain specified portions OF the
state.
The governors conference with
the president on Monday will dis
close to the country one of the most
amazing and humiliating catastro-
phies in the whole history Of Ameri-
can government. Not since recon-
struction times, at least, has any
governor of a state laid bare to the
narion the fact that a secret power
in that state mas usurped the func-
tions of government and brought
the administration Of the laws to
a stop.
The governor of Louisiana today
is virtually helpless in the face Of
the power Of the most gigantic secret
organization which has ever reared
its head in America.
Great Secrecy Preserved.
Not only has it become impossible
for the state authorities to cope with
the unseen power Of -he new Ku
Klux Klan, reared upon the ashes
of that institution born Of a high
ly emontionalized chivalry which
saved white supremacy throughout
the South in the "carpetbag" days
which followed the close Of the
Civil war, but it is almost impos-
sible to detect the presence of the
vast invisible empire which appar-
emily covers Louisiana and has ex-
tended its way to adjacent states,
where there is reason 10 believe
conditions almost as bad a. those
in this state now prevail. Certain
counties in Texas are reported
through confidential grapevine"
channels to be in the grip of the
invisible empire which has reared
itself above the constitutional law
Of the state and dictates the admisis-
| tration of justice behind an inpene-
trable veil Of mystery and intimida-
ton.
Governor Parker will appeal to the
federal government to 60 into the
state Of Louisiana ane take over the
administration of government in the
face of the complete pal ialysis of The