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Federal Court Dismisses Klan’s Suit in Pittsburgh

April 16, 1928
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(Jewish Daily Balletin)

The Ku Klux Klan was arraigned as a lawless body coming into court with “filthy hands,” and Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard, personally was held responsible for the fatal Carnegie riots by Judge W. H. S. Thomson in Federal Court yesterday afternoon when he dismissed the suit of the Klan which sought to bar five banished members of Western Pennsylvania Klans from using the name of the Ku Klux Klan and asking damages in the sum of $100,000 from each of them.

Judge Thomson’s ruling held the Klan is an unlawful institution. He also charged it is “directly responsible for the breaking down of the fundamental principles upon which our Government is founded.”

Attorney Barrickman announced that he would probably start quo warranto proceedings before the Attorney General of Pennsylvania within two weeks to have the charter of the Ku Klux Klan revoked in this State. He will use the testimony secured at the trial and the decision of Judge Thomson as a basis for his request.

Evans took the stand yesterday and denied the wholesale charges of brutal atrocities and debauchery of courts, State and Municipal Governments, made by witnesses who were former Klansmen, but he failed to sway the judgment of the Court.

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