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I made nice money with an online classified site years ago after I applied for a rather rare gig. An  Investigative Journalist for a special assignment!

          I had done investigative journalism previously with a non-fiction feature about Untouchable (Dalit) Women in southern India called “To Marry a Dog.” For that, I had used as my centerpiece an Indian newspaper article about the marriage of an Untouchable girl to a wealthy man’s dog. Then I had conducted interviews in southern India with women from this deprived caste as well as with a former judge on the Supreme Court of India. When it turned out that no popular American magazine was interested in publishing my article, I submitted it to The International Journal of Women’s Studies where it found its home.   

         This gig for a researcher/writer would concern other kinds of horror. Newspaper coverage of The Klu Klux Klan from its  early days. 

        A private historical news project had posted the ad. I applied and sent a sample of my work.

         At first, I was absolutely thrilled to be hired . I was promised five hundred dollars on completion of my work. Nice money for a short assignment that required little travel. From sun up to sun down I immersed myself in online historical newspaper archives about the KKK. I also spent time at university libraries going over newspaper indexes and finding articles about the KKK that had been photographed on microfilm.

         Quickly I discovered the research I was doing about media coverage of the Klan was emotionally taxing. I had to shield myself from what I was beginning to understand. Newspapers presented violent acts against blacks by using words and ideas that hid the hideousness of the crime.  Here are some examples:

        "On March 1 in the small town of Oaksville in Ontario, the reporter states that Klu Klux Klansman “marched to the house occupied by a white girl, and her Negro sweetheart and courteously  and politely  evacuated the woman to the home of her parents and there they left her.” (The Gleaner, April 16, 1930)

        In this report, the Police Chief of Oaksville was called to “the scene of the demonstration.  Note the use of the word “demonstration” and not the word “crime!” The Klansmen were not “trespassers” or “transgressors.” In the words of the Police Chief, they were “visitors whose conduct was all that could be desired . They used no force. Nor did they create a disturbance of any kind. When they finished they disrobed. I recognized many of them as prominent Hamilton businessman.”

             The impression of a gallant incident enacted by outstanding citizens, rather than an offense perpetrated by outlaws, is strengthened by the positive reactions of witnesses. At first, neighbors watching the proceedings thought “it was only a surprise party with guests arriving in flowing white robes and a fiery cross over their left breast.” When it became known that it was not a party, but the enforced separation of a white girl from her black lover, they expressed their approval. “The Klansmen acted quite properly. The townspeople were against this relationship.”

            Years later, historians, scholars and contemporary journalists , basing themselves on sources other than newspapers and magazines, documented the repressed history of the Klu Klux Klan. Relying on minutes of KKK meetings, police reports and public records, the acts of terrorism that accompanied the Klu Klux Klan’s massive expansion throughout the United States and Canada was brought to light.

             In this way, the tragic events that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 came to the attention of the public at large only decades later. “On May 30, Klansmen went on a riot setting on fire hundreds of homes and businesses belonging to black residents. When the flames died down, three hundred black corpses were found smoldering. (Boy’s Life, May 2001, p18.)

         I sent in my article with an aching heart. The check of 500 dollars from  came in the mail the following week. But even as I write these words about this assignment and the nice amount of money, long ago spent, I am hounded by the sufferings of the victims and that the evil perpetrated was made to look good in the media.

         We have to search for truth in the outside world as well as inside ourselves.  That is what I have been doing. And that is what I 

hope to teach others to do.